DirkReading reviewed Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen
Gripping, fascinating, but utterly horrifying.
5 stars
This minute by minute description of what would happen in a fictional nuclear escalation combined with deeply researched facts of the nuclear war machinery left me puzzled and utterly terrified. The thing is: We hear this "nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought" proverb and we know these bombs cause massive devastation but we do not have a picture in mind how unescapable the spiral of events would truly be once set in motion and how utterly horrific the result would look. Just realizing that each of the 14 nuclear armed submarines of the united states carries more than 20 times the explosive force of all bombs used in world war II (INCLUDING the two nuclear bombs in Japan!) should make it crystal clear how bizarre the system is we created.