Jacobsen, Annie.
Nuclear War: A Scenario. 2024. 400p. ISBN 9780593476093.
The dropping of atomic bombs on Japan to end the Second World War in 1945 ushered in the threat of nuclear war and the destruction of the human race as we know it. Nuclear War: A Scenario makes it perfectly clear that the U.S. policies of nuclear deterrence, escalating deployment of nuclear weapons, and mutually assured destructions are nothing but wishful thinking. In this scenario, on a a beautiful spring afternoon, North Korea launches a ballistic nuclear missile at Washington D.C. Following protocol, the president is evacuated, and the entire military apparatus of the United States engages in its highest response level. Interceptors are launched, but they fail, and the missile continues on its trajectory.
With less than 30 minutes from launch to detonation, U.S. authorities go through pre-planned hoops, and over a dozen missiles are launched back at North Korea. Russian satellites notice the launch. With these missiles flying towards Russia, it is impossible for the Russians to determine if they will go over or land on their territory. The Russians thus respond with a massive barrage of missiles heading for Europe and the United States. Even if the Russians chose to ignore the threat, the missiles heading to North Korea would land near China and kill millions of Chinese citizens, forcing the Chinese to respond and launch their own missiles. When U.S. satellites see the Russian launch, Strategic Command launches all remaining American nuclear missiles. Thus, within the span of two hours, over 2,000 nuclear bombs explode across the globe.
Folks who were not instantly vaporized by the fireballs in the millions of degrees are killed by the blast, or quickly die of burns, or, more slowly, of radiation poisoning. With so many toxic particles in the skies, the temperature drops by more than 20 degrees, and agriculture is no longer possible due to contaminated water. Mammals and fish quickly die out, followed by amphibians and reptiles. Only insects, with a higher tolerance to radiation, survive. Even if you somehow avoided being killed in a nuclear exchange, the lack of everything following destruction on such a massive scale would inevitably lead to death in the short or medium term. Pockets of humanity may survive, but the world as we know it would essentially stop to exist.
In a horrifyingly and accurately portrayed fashion, Nuclear War describes how the firing of even one nuclear weapon will trigger a rapid and massive response that will inevitably be misinterpreted by another one of the nuclear powers as an attack on themselves, and in the mind frame of use them or lose them, all nuclear missiles end up deployed within two hours of the first launch. Interviews with experts in the field, politicians and generals who have served in these roles, and through reviews of publicly available documents detail with precision what would happen, and why we must do everything we can to avoid nuclear war.
