colin reviewed Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen
Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen uses nuclear weapons knowledge gleaned from declassified documents and expert …
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.
