Nuclear War

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.

colin reviewed Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen

Insulting

1 star

Honestly found this book insulting to its readers. The author loves sentence fragments and will make a point in a single sentence then pad it with half a dozen fragments from a batch of their favorite phrases. I don't think you need to work very hard to find a reasonably plausible scenario for an actual nuclear exchange, but the scenario in this book appears to be "the unnamed leader of North Korea decided to launch a decapitation strike against the USA for funsies". At one point the author has a sentence along the lines of "We don't know why NK launched this attack" -- MOTHERFUCKER YOU WROTE THE BOOK! YOU PUT THE IDEA IN THEIR HEAD!

There's random math errors that probably aren't important but are certainly confusing. There's a lot of arbitrary twists and turns to ensure the worst case outcome. Also, there's a lot of talk about EMP …

Honestly found this book insulting to its readers. The author loves sentence fragments and will make a point in a single sentence then pad it with half a dozen fragments from a batch of their favorite phrases. I don't think you need to work very hard to find a reasonably plausible scenario for an actual nuclear exchange, but the scenario in this book appears to be "the unnamed leader of North Korea decided to launch a decapitation strike against the USA for funsies". At one point the author has a sentence along the lines of "We don't know why NK launched this attack" -- MOTHERFUCKER YOU WROTE THE BOOK! YOU PUT THE IDEA IN THEIR HEAD!

There's random math errors that probably aren't important but are certainly confusing. There's a lot of arbitrary twists and turns to ensure the worst case outcome. Also, there's a lot of talk about EMP attacks in this book. It might actually be the bulk of the content here. This is particularly noteworthy because the author is largely (and directly) echoing right-wing talking points from the Newt Gingrich EMP people. We don't even know if an EMP would work at all, but in this book NK manages to get one off so successfully that it's unclear why they decided a nuke was required at all.

Editing this to mention that the President of the United States parachutes out of Marine One for some reason.

Anyway, you shouldn't waste your time with this. There's a pile of better options available to you if you'd like to be scared out of your wits about nuclear weapons. Read Command and Control by Eric Schlosser, or just go watch The Day After.

Tamsin reviewed Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen

Review of 'Nuclear War' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Will not help you to sleep at night

ghost with books 👻📚 reviewed Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen

A book the world should read 😳

5 stars

If you think you already know that nuclear weapons are a nightmare, you don't. I promise you.

Read this book. Then tell everyone you know about it. Call and write your representatives in government, ask them to read it.

Then ask them to work to rid the world of this nightmare before it ends us all.

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