The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States

A Speculative Novel

by Jeffrey Lewis

eBook, 306 pages

English language

Published Aug. 7, 2018 by Mariner Books.

ISBN:: 978-1-328-57392-6

This "brilliantly conceived" novel imagines a devastating nuclear attack on America and the official government report of the calamity (Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and Command and Control).

"The skies over the Korean Peninsula on March 21, 2020, were clear and blue." So begins this sobering report by the Commission on the Nuclear Attacks against the United States, established by Congress and President Donald J. Trump to investigate the horrific events of the following 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.

Did President Trump and his advisers understand North Korean views about nuclear weapons? 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 that inspired The 2020 Commission Report.

"I couldn't put the book down, reading most of it in the course of one increasingly intense evening. If fear of nuclear war is going to keep you up at night, at least it can be a page-turner."--New Scientist

3 editions

ghost with books 👻📚 reviewed The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States by Jeffrey Lewis

A [mostly] plausible scenario for limited nuclear war with the DPRK

3 stars

Content warning Mild spoilers

Whereas Annie Jacobsen's Nuclear War is a primer on nuclear weapons and US nuclear policy with a fictional scenario used to illustrate how those nuclear weapons and policies could lead to the worst-possible outcome, this book is entirely a work of fiction and assumes that readers already have foundational knowledge about nuclear weapons and US nuclear policy. I wouldn't recommend this book to someone hoping to learn more about nuclear weapons and US nuclear policy—I would point those folks to Nuclear War and Command and Control, among other sources—but I would recommend this book to persons who enjoy military/political fiction.

I have just two complaints with this book:

First, it definitely reads like a [somewhat dry] novel rather than a Congressional commission report, as it proports to be.

Second, while the author was very careful to lay out a plausible scenario for the DPRK using nuclear weapons against the US and its allies—so much so that I felt that to be the raison d’être of this book—I felt that the US response to the DPRK's nuclear strikes stretched the very limits of believability. The scene with President Trump being mollified after the Navy officer runs out with the nuclear briefcase, in particular, seems utterly ridiculous to me. Combine Trump's ego with his volatility and the US's launch-on-warning posture, and I simply can't imagine a scenario in which the DPRK launches more than 50 nuclear missiles at US targets—including several on the US mainland—that doesn't result in nuclear retaliation.

I appreciate this book for its fast pace and the "it could happen" warning it relates, but it falls short both as a novel and as an educational resource.

Michel L. reviewed The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States by Jeffrey Lewis

Review of 'The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

A sobering, all too plausible near future hypothetical

Jeffrey Lewis very persuasively conjures up a scenario in which incompetent, petty leadership by #45 combined with undisciplined messaging could potentially lead us to war and destruction, given the relationship we have with nuclear-armed adversaries and the increasingly fraught ones with our allies.

What almost scares me more than the thought of the potential destruction and loss of lives, though, is that if despite all this it's still plausible that Pence would be our next President

anaulin reviewed 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States by Jeffrey Lewis

Review of '2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Since this book does try to resemble a Commission Report, it was a little dry (although not nearly as dry as a real report). It's gripping because it feels so plausible and real -- terrifyingly so.

ospalh reviewed 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States by Jeffrey Lewis

Review of '2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

This is not a novel. This is speculative fiction in the style of a non-fiction book. No protagonist, no dialogue, just description. Trump did this Mun Jaein¹ did that, Kim Chŏngŭn² did that. The rule for novels is “show, don’t tell”. The rule here was “Tell, tell, tell. Then tell some details everybody knows. Then tell some unimportant detail you came across during research.” That is how the whole book is written. “Now this politician decided this. That is like what happened before, in 2013 in Korea and in 2003 in Iraq.³” Again and again and again. It’s quite tedious.

Let’s take the first scene: in an airliner most of the instruments suffer a power failure. In a novel, you would start with one of the pilots thinking about this or that, maybe the young passengers going to live in yurts for a few weeks, and then you have em getting quite a fright when suddenly they whole aircraft is broken and ey has to work hard to keep it flying. Great drama. Nice opening scene.

But no, we get about a page or two about how several A320s did In Real Life suffer this exact problem. I have the receipts! Here is when and where it happened. (But something’s wrong there: a flight from London to Budapest had problems over Nantes‽) There is something else odd in the scene, too: an aircraft leaving the planned flight path and flying towards enemy territory without answering the radio is reason to scramble some QRA-style interceptors, especially when the transponder is off.⁴

No, seriously. Don’t print “novel” on the cover of works that are not novels. And don’t spend something like half of your “novel” talking about past events only remotely connected to the plot.

There’s a bunch of other stuff that would cost it one star (★★★★☆ instead of ★★★★★), some minor, some not so much. Who calls an A320 a “jumbo jet”? Why is nobody panicking because of fallout and radiation in chapter 6? Why isn’t the whole post-attack horror show done then, but only in chapter 10, after America is attacked?

That said, yeah, looks like a nuclear war might break out this way. That leaves the question: how to get the real politicians to be half as scared as this book has left me?

—
¹ In Revised Romanization, apparently the main Romanization in South Korea
² In McCune–Reischauer romanization, apparently the main Romanization in North Korea
³ And then there is an end note citing the sources to proof that those things in 2013 and 2003 really did happen.
⁴ With the transponder on, you usually just have to re-establish communications, that is, wake the pilots up.

samsterby

rated it

Sept. 21, 2018

🌿 (buffy)² 🌿

rated it

Nov. 10, 2024

Subjects

Nuclear terrorism--Fiction.
Nuclear weapons--Korea (North)--Fiction.
Korea (North)--Foreign relations--United States--Fiction.
United States--Foreign relations--Korea (North)--Fiction.

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