Book review by Dave Patterson, VFP Chapter 91
This is one of the most interesting technical books I’ve read, and it won’t put you to sleep! The story of the US nuclear weapons programs backed up with 100 pages of references is authority that we can use as peace mongers. Written in story form it covers the 1980 Arkansas Titan missile accident interlaced with a chronological story of the development and deployment of nuclear weapons, and how paranoid and careless our leadership was.
How we managed to not have a nuclear yield accident is a miracle, listing so many accidents where weapons melted down, were accidentally dropped from planes or were blown out of silos onto the ground nearby. Thousands of nuclear weapons that anyone could arm and fire, some housed in bunkers in Europe controlled by one person with a key. Nuclear weapons that could easily go off from a nearby lighting strike, a fire or a crash.
If the chain of command was lost, i.e. Washington DC nuked, The Strategic Air Command’s plans were to literally wipe out the Soviet Union with 10,000 nuclear weapons. Never mind that the cloud of fallout might kill all life on the planet.
The movie Dr. Strangelove while preposterous in it’s depiction of our military leadership in the 1960s did little justice to how insane the generals were in reality.
Don’t skip this book. Motivation to take on nuclear weapons is on every page.
Dave Patterson
Chapter 91