The Doomsday Machine
From the legendary whistle-blower who revealed the Pentagon Papers, an eyewitness exposé of the dangers of America's Top Secret, seventy-year-long nuclear policy that continues to this day. Here, for the first time, former high-level defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg reveals his shocking firsthand account of America's nuclear program in the 1960s. From the remotest air bases in the Pacific Command, where he discovered that the authority to initiate use of nuclear weapons was widely delegated, to the secret plans for general nuclear war under Eisenhower, which, if executed, would cause the near-extinction of humanity, Ellsberg shows that the legacy of this most dangerous arms buildup in the history of civilization--and its proposed renewal under the Trump administration--threatens our very survival. No other insider with high-level access has written so candidly of the nuclear strategy of the late Eisenhower and early Kennedy years, and nothing has fundamentally changed since that era. Framed as a memoir--a chronicle of madness in which Ellsberg acknowledges participating--this gripping exposé reads like a thriller and offers feasible steps we can take to dismantle the existing "doomsday machine" and avoid nuclear catastrophe, returning Ellsberg to his role as whistle-blower. The Doomsday Machine is thus a real-life Dr. Strangelove story and an ultimately hopeful--and powerfully important--book about not just our country, but the future of the world.
Stats for nerds
19recommend
46mentions
29people
2018–2026years
63% recommend37% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Although not especially “current,” Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies is a 1984 book by Yale sociologist Charles Perrow, which analyses complex systems from a sociological perspective. Perrow argues that multiple and unexpected failures are built into society's complex and tightly coupled systems, and that accidents are unavoidable and cannot be designed around. Several historical disasters are analysed. I read a newer edition published in 1999, and the author had added a chapter on Chernobyl, which turned out to be a textbook example of some Perrow’s theory (in particular, that adding fail-safes also adds complexity, thus not necessarily making for any more safety. The Chernobyl disaster was precipitated at least in part, because they were on a tight schedule to test a fail-safe system.) The book is fascinating and a good page turner, hard to put down. Perrow’s book is best combined with a reading of The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, by Daniel Ellsberg.
- And on the policy side:
The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner by Daniel Ellsberg
- Threads is one of the most memorable things I have watched. It is incredibly dark and unremittingly bleak.
Books that informed my understanding of nuclear war and that I recommend are: Hiroshima by John Hersey, Command and Control by Eric Schlosser, The Doomsday Machine by (recently deceased) Daniel Ellsberg.
- If anyone has not read Ellsberg’s 2017 book “The Doomsday Machine”, I highly recommend it. It covers his work and knowledge regarding potential nuclear war within US policy which was the main reason he wanted to become a whistleblower. Within the book he discuses numerous problems with US command and control procedures for launching nuclear attacks and even calls the movie “Dr. Strangelove” a “documentary” (tongue in cheek) because of its satirical yet accurate highlighting of these issues. It’s a captivating, informative, and frightening book.
- In the excellent (if rather terrifying) The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner Daniel Ellsberg describes going to see Dr Strangelove and basically concluding that a lot of the movie was pretty realistic - particularly the delegated use of nuclear weapons by a base commander without the approval of the President. This was actually possible for a long time even though publicly it was always said that only the President could authorise the use of nuclear weapons.
- The book "The Doomsday Machine" by Daniel Ellsberg. He had access to basically everything. I have read it and highly recommend it. I haven't read the others below but have them all on my shelves, waiting to be read.
"Command and Control" by Eric Schlosser, "Raven Rock: the story of the U.S. government's secret plan to save itself" by Garrett Graff for a historical, US-centric overview.
"On Thermonuclear War" by Herman Kahn for a more technical, if somewhat outdated, analysis.
"The Bomb" by Fred Kaplan, "The 300" by Daniel Wasserbly, and "The Dead Hand" by David Hoffman.
