Nuclear War
Finalist, Dayton Literary Peace Prize One of NPR's Books We Love One of Newsweek Staffers' Favorite Books of the Year Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize “In Nuclear War: A Scenario, Annie Jacobsen gives us a vivid picture of what could happen if our nuclear guardians fail…Terrifying.”—Wall Street Journal There is only one scenario other than an asteroid strike that could end the world as we know it in a matter of hours: nuclear war. And one of the triggers for that war would be a nuclear missile inbound toward the United States. Every generation, a journalist has looked deep into the heart of the nuclear military establishment: the technologies, the safeguards, the plans, and the risks. These investigations are vital to how we understand the world we really live in—where one nuclear missile will beget one in return, and where the choreography of the world’s end requires massive decisions made on seconds’ notice with information that is only as good as the intelligence we have. Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Biological War: A Scenario Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario explores this ticking-clock scenario, based on dozens of exclusive new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons, have been privy to the response plans, and have been responsible for those decisions should they have needed to be made. Nuclear War: A Scenario examines the handful of minutes after a nuclear missile launch.
Stats for nerds
16recommend
26mentions
23people
2024–2026years
65% recommend35% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Just finished Annie Jacobsen's "Nuclear War" book last week. Well put together, the timeline is interesting as is the idea that North Korea would use 1MT weapons, and that Russian missile detection is so poor that they can't tell the difference between something overflying them to detonate elsewhere and something aimed at them. I hope that's an incorrect US evaluation.
About to start her Biological War.
- Having recently read both of Annie Jacobsen’s books — _Nuclear War_ and _Biological War_ — I’m much more concerned about a bioweapon than a nuclear one.
Her conclusion to the latter book comes out and says it, paraphrasing here:
> Nuclear war is terrifying in its destruction, but the chain of command limits the risk of a rogue actor. Whereas bio weapons can be designed and manufactured in relatively low tech environments with equal or greater magnitudes of impact.
- Not sure how much Annie Jacobsen goes into the exact dynamics in Nuclear War, but it may be worth reading Ellsbergs' Doomsday Machine before you find comfort in the "chain of command."
- Any nation launching any nuke has the potential to eliminate most life on earth. Limited nuclear war is very unlikely. This is a nightmare.
Please read Nuclear War: A Scenario, a book by Annie Jacobsen that discusses the insanity of nuclear war.
- Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit by John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker
Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen
Animal Farm by George Orwell (a reread)
Night by Elie Wiesel
- This is so naive. I suggest you inform yourself more about things you clearly know nothing about. Ironically Iowa would be very much affected and likely depopulated by fallout from primary nuclear targets in Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, and North Dakota; not to mention the primary and/or secondary command and control targets in Iowa. Similarly Idaho not only has at the very leas secondary targets in Air Force bases and the nuclear weapons lab, but it would likely also get fallout radiation from the primary targets as winds shift. These things are based on current research and the military and government's own analysis and predictions.
There is also a book you may want to read called "Nuclear War: a Scenario" by Annie Jakobsen [1] so you can be more informed before you blather. It's a summary of what the government expects from a nuclear war, which would very much cause a nuclear winter and the death of at least 5 billion people. And she does not even take into account things you are also ignorant of, that South America/Caribbean, Africa, and Australia are very much also nuclear targets due to military installations in all those places, not to mention the famine. You should really try reading the books I mentioned about what happened during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, since you are also ignorant of what happens in America under such circumstances. There are many other events like the LA riots that also shine a light on on the reality of breakdown in the USA and any other place that is not culturally homogeneous, when the rules no longer apply and there is no one left to keep the savages at bay.
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