The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the U.S.

A Speculative Novel

by Jeffrey Lewis

Paperback, 304 pages

English language

Published Aug. 7, 2018 by Mariner Books.

ISBN:: 978-1-328-57391-9
OCLC Number:: 1041227794

(7 reviews)

America lost 1.4 million citizens in the North Korean attacks of March 2020. This is the final, authorized report of the government commission charged with investigating the calamity.

“The skies over the Korean Peninsula on March 21, 2020, were clear and blue.” So begins this sobering report on the findings of the Commission on the Nuclear Attacks against the United States, established by law by Congress and President Donald J. Trump to investigate the horrific events of the next three days. An independent, bipartisan panel led by nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis, the commission was charged with finding and reporting the relevant facts, investigating how the nuclear war began, and determining whether our government was adequately prepared for combating a nuclear adversary and safeguarding U.S. citizens. Did President Trump and his advisers understand North Korean views about nuclear weapons? Did they appreciate the dangers of provoking the country’s ruler with social media posts and military exercises? Did the tragic milestones of that fateful month—North Korea's accidental shoot-down of Air Busan flight 411, the retaliatory strike by South Korea, and the tweet that triggered vastly more carnage—inevitably lead to war? Or did America’s leaders have the opportunity to avert the greatest calamity in the history of our nation?

Answering these questions will not bring back the lives lost in March 2020. It will not rebuild New York, Washington, or the other cities reduced to rubble. But at the very least, it might prevent a tragedy of this magnitude from occurring again. It is this hope, more than any other, that inspired The 2020 Commission Report.

1 edition

mikerickson reviewed The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the U.S. by Jeffrey Lewis

Review of 'The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the U.S.' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Horror is easily the genre I read the most and I've dipped my toe into just about every subgenre it has to offer. This book, despite being written and marketed as something wholly different, is probably the scariest thing I've read all year.

It's presented as a dry, technical, after-the-fact report of a hypothetical nuclear exchange that took place in March of 2020 (this book treats itself as being released publicly on May 1, 2023, and uses August 17, 2018 as a point-of-divergence from real history). The prose was distant and removed in an effort to appear professional and unbiased, but the sheer emotion of the tense brinkmanship leading up to the horrific aftermath of a gamble gone wrong still managed to seep through and I was hooked on every page. I felt like I was watching the world's most terrible arrangement of dominoes being set up, hoping that they wouldn't fall but knowing that they already had.

I do have criticisms of the book. For all the moving parts there were to keep track of and how believable it all was, I think the things that weren't mentioned were more noticeable. I don't understand how during high-stakes planning and negotiations over the span of just 48 hours, somehow the literal Vice President Mike Pence, or hell, Congress isn't even mentioned until the last chapter. Despite a lot of the early actions being centered on the Korean Peninsula, I thought it was strange how there were no mentions of NATO or non-Asian allies checking in with the US along the lines of "what's going on over there?" I also thought it was unusual that the governments of both China and Russia, two countries that share a land border with North Korea, were also absent for an evolving crisis right on their doorstep.

But I was so gripped by what was happening, I can overlook what didn't.

This book is not gonna be for everyone, but I've certainly never read anything like this and I find myself wanting more of this kind of speculative, "here's how it could happen" fiction.