{"id":1486,"date":"2024-06-28T07:00:44","date_gmt":"2024-06-28T11:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.growpurpose.com\/bluecrab\/?p=1486"},"modified":"2024-06-27T14:12:43","modified_gmt":"2024-06-27T18:12:43","slug":"book-review-nuclear-war-a-scenario","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.growpurpose.com\/bluecrab\/book-review-nuclear-war-a-scenario\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK REVIEW: ‘Nuclear War: A Scenario’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor’s note: while we strongly prefer to focus on positive and inspiring content, we will occasionally share less hopeful perspectives that we, nonetheless, find quite motivating. When we do, we will be sure to include links to additional resources.
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Nuclear War: A Scenario
\nAnnie Jacobsen
\nDutton
\n373 pages\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Every nuclear-armed nation depends on the hope that Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) will keep us all safe from nuclear attack, because they all know that any nation that starts a nuclear war would be committing certain suicide.<\/p>\n

But what if one nation\u2019s mad leader actually did attack another?\u00a0 What would happen then?<\/p>\n

To answer that question, Annie Jacobsen, the internationally acclaimed American\u00a0investigative journalist<\/a>, interviewed dozens of top military and civilian experts who built the weapons, are privy to the response plans, and will be responsible for putting those plans into motion should it ever become necessary.<\/p>\n

The answers she received form the basis of this scenario, which takes us to the razor\u2019s edge of what can legally be known about what could happen, and almost certainly would happen, if we were attacked.\u00a0 It\u2019s a story of unimaginable horror, but Jacobsen, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist book The Pentagon\u2019s Brain, <\/em>can be trusted to write truth without exaggeration.<\/p>\n

In Jacobsen\u2019s scenario, North Korea unexpectedly launches a one-megaton thermonuclear weapon at the United States.\u00a0\u00a0 An American satellite discovers the launch within a fraction of a second after ignition, and less than three minutes later American officials in Washington know an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is headed for America\u2019s East Coast, probably New York or Washington.\u00a0 They also know that intercepting it would be next to impossible, akin to shooting a bullet with a bullet.<\/p>\n

That changes everything.\u00a0 No longer does MAD play a part; it is officially, automatically, instantly and irrevocably replaced by \u201cLaunch on Warning,\u201d which dictates that before North Korea\u2019s missile lands, the U.S. will return fire.<\/p>\n

Jacobsen traces what happens in the U.S. government\u2019s higher echelons of government during the 24 minutes it takes for the missile to reach America: the protocols that must be followed, the myriad decisions that must be made, how to protect the people who must survive so that the government can continue to operate, and the sparse information they have upon which they must make decisions that will affect tens of millions of lives forever.<\/p>\n

And then North Korea\u2019s missile lands inside the Pentagon.<\/p>\n

A flash of light and heat nearly five times hotter and brighter than the center of our sun — 180 million degrees Fahrenheit \u2013 creates a fireball that expands at millions of miles an hour.<\/p>\n

The fireball balloons to more than a mile across, disintegrating everything in its path.\u00a0 The Pentagon explodes into dust. Concrete surfaces elsewhere explode. Metal objects melt or evaporate.\u00a0 Stone shatters.\u00a0 Asphalt boils.\u00a0 Humans become soot.\u00a0 Nothing inside the fireball remains alive.\u00a0 Nothing.<\/p>\n

The intense heat creates a giant wall of highly compressed air that moves out in all directions, far beyond the fireball and faster than the speed of sound.\u00a0 The change in air pressure destroys every large building it touches.<\/p>\n

Winds behind the wave travel at several hundred miles an hour, multiple times faster than any hurricane winds that have ever hit the United States.\u00a0 They toss cars, trucks, rail cars, whatever is left from the exploded buildings \u2013 everything — into the air as if they were plastic toys.<\/p>\n

Next comes a deadly reverse suction effect, with all those objects sucked back into the burning inferno and consumed by flames.<\/p>\n

One mile away from ground zero, across the Potomac River, the marble walls and columns of the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials superheat, split, burst apart and disintegrate.\u00a0 Steel and stone bridges spanning the Potomac River heave and collapse.<\/p>\n

The White House, the United States Capitol and all other buildings in Washington crumble.<\/p>\n

Two and a half miles out, 35,000 people attending a Washington Nationals baseball game burn to death instantly.\u00a0 If any survive they are stripped of all their clothes and the outer layer of their skin.<\/p>\n

Seven and a half miles out cars and buses crash into one another.\u00a0 Asphalt streets melt into liquid, trapping survivors as if caught in molten lava or quicksand. Hurricane-force winds fuel hundreds of fires into thousands of fires, into millions of them.<\/p>\n

Ten and 12 miles out, tens of thousands of people have ruptured lungs. Birds in flight ignite into flames and fall from the sky.<\/p>\n

Fifty miles out, the flash of light at least temporarily blinds anyone who happens to be looking in that general direction.<\/p>\n

Millions of people are dead or dying.<\/p>\n

The bomb\u2019s mushroom stem climbs into the troposphere, higher than commercial jet planes fly and the region where most of Earth\u2019s weather phenomena occurs.\u00a0 The cap extends outward 30 miles or more, spewing radioactive particles on everything below.<\/p>\n

No help is coming for anyone.\u00a0 Millions of fires burn wildly out of control, and there is no point in trying to extinguish them.<\/p>\n

But, in Jacobsen\u2019s scenario, the Pentagon attack is just the beginning of North Korea\u2019s attack.\u00a0 The worst is yet to come.<\/p>\n

Shortly before the missile hits the Pentagon, a North Korean submarine off America\u2019s West Coast launches a nuclear missile at the nuclear power plant in Diablo Canyon.\u00a0 There is no way to stop it.\u00a0 It lands three minutes later, causing a core reactor meltdown.\u00a0 A huge, molten radioactive mass sinks into the earth that will continue to grow for about two years.\u00a0 A hot sphere of radioactive lava about 100 feet in diameter will form and will persist for a decade.\u00a0 It cannot be extinguished and it will force the abandonment of an area the size of two New Jerseys for thousands of years, if not forever.<\/p>\n

And yet, the worst of all, by far, is still yet to come.<\/p>\n

After that attacks on the Pentagon and Diablo Canyon\u2019s nuclear reactor, North Korea detonates a nuclear device 300 miles over Nebraska \u2013 yes, it really has that capacity — that destroys America\u2019s electrical grid. Millions of valves along 2.6 million miles of oil and gas pipelines rupture and explode. Coal-fired boiler systems falter and explode, causing dams to burst and sweep away infrastructures and people.\u00a0 The detonation from space assures that 90 percent of Americans will be dead inside a year.<\/p>\n

But the United States has an overload of wherewithal it can use, and does use, to retaliate.<\/p>\n

The bomb that hit the Pentagon was a one-megaton thermonuclear weapon.\u00a0 The United States has nuclear weapons more than 10 times that powerful.<\/p>\n

It has thousands of nuclear weapons at the ready, including 400 ICBMs that are buried in silos around the nation and are on hair-trigger alerts, primed to be launched at a moment\u2019s notice.<\/p>\n

It also maintains 14 Ohio-class nuclear submarines, 12 of which are believed to be prowling the oceans at any given time.\u00a0 Each submarine carries 80 nuclear warheads, all of which can be launched within 90 seconds.<\/p>\n

The U.S., following its suddenly activated Launch on Warning protocol, begins its response two minutes before the Pentagon explodes by launching 50 nuclear-armed missiles at North Korea.\u00a0 However, because of limitations on how far they can travel, they must fly over the Arctic Ocean and then over Russia.\u00a0 The American president must personally notify the Russian president that the launch is intended for North Korea, not Russia.<\/p>\n

But because of the time restraints and the madhouse actions being taken in America to protect the president and deal with all the other problems, the call is not completed.\u00a0 Russian officials therefore believe America\u2019s missiles are aimed at them, and according to their Launch on Warning protocol they reply in kind \u2013 not only at the U.S., but at all NATO nations because they know NATO nations are obligated to respond if another NATO nation is attacked, and the U.S. is a NATO nation.<\/p>\n

The U.S. has nuclear weapons at the ready in those nations so, under NATO\u2019s Launch on Warning plan, those weapons are unleashed on Russia.<\/p>\n

American submarines rise to 150 feet beneath the ocean\u2019s surface and within 90 seconds unload all their weapons, then disappear again deep under the surface.<\/p>\n

The war lasts two, maybe three hours.<\/p>\n

And then, all around the Northern Hemisphere, intense firestorms involving forests, oil refineries, peat moss, cities, towns, everything everywhere, burn out of control.\u00a0 Over the next weeks and months a thick coating of soot develops in the entire world\u2019s upper troposphere, reducing the sun\u2019s rays by 70 percent.<\/p>\n

The result is a nuclear winter.\u00a0 Temperatures across the northernmost states \u2013 and nations at and above that latitude throughout the world — drop below freezing and stay there for six years.\u00a0 Farther south there is not enough sunlight to grow plants on whatever land that has not been contaminated by fallout.\u00a0 Nothing grows.\u00a0 Rivers and streams are poisoned.\u00a0 Aquatic life dies.\u00a0 Billions of people died as a direct result of the war, and those who survive starve.<\/p>\n

Insects survive and proliferate, but only time will tell if humanity does.<\/p>\n

Related Reading<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n