Nuclear War - Annie Jacobsen

Nuclear War

By Annie Jacobsen

  • Release Date: 2024-03-26
  • Genre: Military History
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 385 Ratings
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Description

The INSTANT New York Times bestseller

Instant Los Angeles Times bestseller

“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 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. It is essential reading, and unlike any other book in its depth and urgency.

Reviews

  • Epic

    5
    By Lvmedic3481
    Would love a I see this book turned into a movie.

  • Dan

    4
    By periodsn
    Very detailed well researched… pretty horrific.

  • Essential reading.

    5
    By Reader with standards
    Every world leader should be compelled to read this book-immediately.

  • Terrifying

    5
    By Tanker198
    Really puts things into a perspective anyone can understand and brings fear and dread knowing that no one who has the power to change things will care.

  • Nightmare Fuel

    5
    By jlh73
    As a 50 year old man I clearly remember being a boy in the 1980’s in the rural Midwest of the USA. My fears then weren’t of vampires or werewolves my fear at the age of 12 was at any moment we were doomed to die from the effects of a nuclear war. Time passed, the world changed in ways that I couldn’t have imagined or comprehended. I grew up and I let the fears of the past slide away. Now what Annie Jacobson writes is in both ways absolutely terrifying and incredibly educational and enlightened. As a boy and even into my college years I still calculated how close I was to a target and would I be vaporized or die an extremely horrid death. My Generation failed to keep this top of mind. My hope is a young future policy maker or physicist reads this book and finds a way to end the 80 years of terror that has quietly hung like a sword over our planet. As for Ms. Jacobsen, you’ve written pure nightmare fuel. Thank you.

  • Jesus Christ

    5
    By saulnierpr
    We’re doomed.

  • Scariest book I ever read

    5
    By Geo from reality
    For real

  • Must Read

    5
    By Chiggg
    As a teen in 1983, I remember watching The Day After, a made for TV movie about a hypothetical escalation of a conflict with the USSR into full scale nuclear war. At the end of the movie, the film makers were careful to state that the actual reality would be much worse than they could have depicted onscreen. I remember being very scared then, and wondering why we would senselessly destroy each other like that. In reading Ms. Jacobsen’s book, all those fears have come back home. At times the book reads like a technical treatise, with tons of government and military acronyms, but it is also very human in that it describes a very plausible scenario to rapid escalation due to human failures. Graphic descriptions of the physical effects of nuclear weapons are liberally sprinkled throughout the book. I must admit that after reading cover to cover within a few hours, I found it difficult to sleep. At first I found it curious the author doesn’t really offer a solution, but that was never her goal in the first place. This is a call to action, not only to remind older folks like me (and younger folks for the first time) that nuclear detente was never truly a thing, but if anything we are in far more danger due to “Mad Kings” who have acquired the bomb. Sadly history has showed we are a warlike species, bent on dominating our adversaries, even if it means self-immolation.

  • Far Fetched Scenario

    3
    By Carlos Danger 2017
    Interesting but painfully redundant. Also, if Korea wanted to successfully attack the US with an “Out of the Blue” attack, why not use the EMT Doomesday explosion first? Why wait?

  • Great from a second by second description, but...

    4
    By ChristianRiley
    Great from a second by second description, but naive in thinking the "mad kings" will give up their nuclear weapons which would just leave the rest of the world at the mercy of Iran, North Korea, and Russia. Wishing they would won't change reality.

Comments

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