Name: The bomb
ISBN: 9781982107291

What Hacker News says

pvgNov 2023

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Bomb/Fred-Kaplan/...

Is a fun read. Get the audiobook version and think of it as a long youtube video playlist that you play in the background.

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GalenErsoJan 2023

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"On Thermonuclear War" by Herman Kahn for a more technical, if somewhat outdated, analysis.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.

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PietertjeDec 2022

This year I've put myself to the challenge to read at least one book per week which I primarily could complete by reading in the middle of the night while holding our sleeping baby in my arms. It has been an interesting challenge which gave me a lot of fulfilment and has certainly changed my mind on how I view the world. This comment became quite a long read, apologies for that.

Books I highly recommend:

Churchill by Andrew Roberts (p:1105)

A biography about one of the most interesting figures in politics and WWII. Roberts gives a very detailed description of the life of Churchill and manages to keep you interested the entire length of the book.

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (p:374)

In The God Delusion Dawkins gives arguments why there is no God, why we do not need a God and why religion is damaging to our society. If you are religious it might not be the book for you unless you are open to hear his arguments and line of reasoning. Dawkins will challenge your worldview.

The Bomb by Fred Kaplan (p:384)

Kaplan describes the policy of different US presidents on the atomic bomb and war in general. And primarily on the inability of US presidents and policy-makers to tune down its military. A chilling read which makes you appreciate a nuclear holocaust did not happen (yet)....

Poor Economics by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo (p:320)

Banerjee and Duflo give a gripping portrait of how poor people live. They offer an insight in the choices and decisions people make surviving on less than 1 USD a day (corrected for purchasing power). It made me completely rethink my own view on poverty and development aid; stressing even more that in order to help one need to have a complete understanding of the individual's situation and the local boundary conditions.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (p:476)

This book triggered my science fiction reading. For some reason I never was interested in science fiction. Most likely triggered by reading Foundation by Asimov a few years back which apparently is not a book to my taste. But Andy Weir completely annihilated that wrong perspective on science fiction. Project Hail Mary is interesting, funny and gripping book.

Kindred by Octavia Butler (p:287)

This book.... From page one I was hooked and almost read it in one go. Butler is a wonderful author and Kindred is a must-read. The book is about a woman traveling back in time to end up on a slave plantation. It's a chilling account of slavery.

Other books I read this year, ask me anything about one of these books. I've added a + if I think its worth a recommendation

Biography:

Navalny by Dollbaum, Lallouet and Noble (p:280); The Man from the Future by Ananyo Bhattacharya (p:354) +

Sociology; Politics; Economics; Business:

Only the Paranoid Survive by Andrew S. Grove (p:224); The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (p:140); Winter is Coming by Garry Kasparov (p:290); Twilight of Democracy by Anne Applebaum (p:224) +; Man's Search for Meaning by Victor E. Frankl (p:164) +; We Are Bellingcat by Eliot Higgins (p:272); De Zeven Vinkjes by Joris Luyendijk (p:200); Waarom vuilnismannen meer verdienen dan bankiers by Rutger Bregman (p:104)

Comedy: The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams (p:336)

History:

Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose (p:432); The Nuclear Jihadist by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins (p:413) +; The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre (p:384) +; De Heineken Ontvoering by Peter R. de Vries (p:347); Red Famine by Anne Apllebaum (p:384); Night by Elie Wiesel (p:115) +

Science, Technology, Mathematics:

Fermat's Enigma by Simon Singh (p:315) +; A Mathematician's Apology by G.H. Hardy (p:153); The Great Influenza by John M. Barry (p:546); The Rise and Fall of the Dinousaurs by Stephen Brusatte (p:404) ++; The Double Helix by James Watson (p:144)

Sport:

Run or Die by Killian Jornet (p:208); The Secret Race by Tyler Hamilton (p:290) +; The Rise of the Ultra Runners by (p:304); Tom Dumoulin by Patrick Bernhart (p:203)

Fiction:

Anthem by Ayn Rand (p:105); Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (p:704); The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum (p:566); Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (p:466); Live and Let die by Ian Fleming (p:229)

Classics:

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (p:104); The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (p:201); The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzergerald (p:180); Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (p:139); Animal Farm by George Orwell (p:122) +; Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (p:227) +; The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (p:118)

Science Fiction:

The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin (p:399); All Systems Red by Martha Wells (p:144) +; A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine (p:462) +; A Psalm built for the Wild by Becky Chambers (p:160); Dune by Frank Herbert (p:658); Foundation by Isaac Asimov (p:244); The Martian by Andy Weir (p:384) +; The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (p:278)

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adameasterlingOct 2022

I recently read a fantastic book on Cold War brinksmanship. It was, "The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War" by Fred Kaplan, published in 2020.

It's a fantastic book. I couldn't put it down. (Okay, technically, I listened to it. The audio is very good!)

Kaplan agrees that Able Archer is probably the closest we ever got to nuclear war. But, something else interesting happened at this very same time, in Autumn of '83. A made-for-TV movie was released called, "The Day After."

Kaplan argues, based on Reagan's own diaries, that it was this movie that was largely responsible for Reagan's sudden about-face in '84 and beyond. Here's what Reagan wrote the first time he watched it:

> (Monday, October 10, 1983) Columbus day. In the morning at Camp D. I ran the tape of the movie ABC is running on the air Nov. 20. It’s called “The Day After.” It has Lawrence Kansas wiped out in a nuclear war with Russia. It is powerfully done—all $7 mil. worth. It’s very effective & left me greatly depressed. So far they haven’t sold any of the 25 spot ads scheduled & I can see why. Whether it will be of help to the “anti nukes” or not, I cant say. My own reaction was one of our having to do all we can to have a deterrent & to see there is never a nuclear war. Back to W.H."

Almost immediately, Reagan cooled his bellicose rhetoric. In the next few years, he started a friendship with Gorbachev, the new Soviet premier. Together, they finally ended the arms race. We got 30+ years of not needing to worry about nuclear war, all because of a story (maybe). Stories are powerful.

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sabootAug 2022

Fred Kaplan's book "The Bomb" is a good read too, haven't read doomsday machine but they sound similar.

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belochNov 2022

"One weapon that nuclear planners want to make from recycled parts and designs is the W93 — billed as the first new warhead for the nation’s nuclear arsenal since the Cold War."

...

“It’s important to keep these parts around,” said Franklin C. Miller, a nuclear expert who held federal posts for three decades before leaving government service in 2005. “If we had the manufacturing complex we once did, we wouldn’t have to rely on the old parts.” He added that other nuclear powers can and do make new atomic parts.

---------------

If you read "The Bomb", by Fred Kaplan, there is a telling scene in which Trump was briefed by the Pentagon on the state of the U.S.'s nuclear arsenal. Trump was shown a chart that showed the dramatic drop in the total number of nuclear warheads in the arsenals of both the U.S. and Russia. The U.S. has peaked at over 32,000 in 1969, but was down to about 2,500 in the active arsenal. This was presented as a good thing. The U.S.'s warhead count had dropped dramatically because they had phased out tactical warheads intended for battlefield use. Such warheads were hazardous to maintain and the military had eagerly retired them once they were obviated by more modern conventional weapons that could do the same job with less collateral damage. The nuclear warheads that the U.S. still had were tailored to meet modern requirements and were far better suited to that task than 1969's arsenal would have been.

Trump didn't understand that being able to do the same job with fewer nuclear warheads was good, and told the group that he wanted more warheads. He wanted the 32,000 the U.S. had once had and was not satisfied by arguments to the contrary. This prompted secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, to comment that Trump was a "fucking moron" shortly after he left the meeting. Trump would become obsessed with this number and repeatedly ask for more nuclear warheads to be made on several later occasions.

The B83 had the largest yield of any nuclear weapon in the U.S.'s arsenal, but it's an obsolete weapon. If the U.S. gets into a hot nuclear war, they're unlikely to rely on bomber planes with gravity bombs such as the B83, like they would have in the 60's. Such a war would likely be over before they even got to their targets. If the U.S. is retiring the B83 now, it's because they can destroy the same targets in far less time with other weapon systems.

Dismantling weapons such as the B83 does reduce the risk of accidents, theft, and loss, even if the components go onto shelves for potential reuse in new weapons. However, one should not make the mistake of thinking that the U.S. is, in any way, losing capabilities here. Let's just hope those capabilities are never actually tested.

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