Dutton Press
400 Pages
While I did not grow up in the shadow of the Cuban Missile Crisis, I did live through air raid drills at my elementary school, and “The Day After” was a huge TV movie during my early teens. Granted, my younger siblings did not go through the air raid drills and I was among the last of the generation to do so, the specter of nuclear annihilation was definitely a part of my formative years. We were told that Niagara Falls was a major target because the Russians would want to knock out our power producing capabilities. Because I grew up less than twenty miles from the famous cataract, I wondered what would happen if a nuke took out Niagara Falls. Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen gives us a glimpse of the aftermath. It isn’t pretty.
Jacobsen’s scenario starts with a missile being fired from North Korea towards parts unknown. The US authorities track the missile to determine where it’s heading. Of course, in this telling, it’s heading towards Washington, DC in order to decapitate the country and its leaders. The president, once it is known where the bomb is heading, has about half an hour to react. That’s in theory. In reality, it’s much less time than that. Once the bombs are in the air, there’s really nothing to do except sit and take it, or retaliate before you lose the capabilities to do so.
Once the Americans fire their own missiles, the Russians jump in on the game since there is no real hard target plotted yet and there’s even less time than the US had with the first missile. Just to be sure, they will fire their arsenal. At this point, there’s no turning back and human civilization will be driven back to the stone age with a bare minimum of survivors struggling in the centuries of the aftermath.
Jacobsen describes the immediate impact of a nuclear explosion in Washington, DC, directly over the Pentagon. The blast zone where people simply cease to exist, the shock waves that travels outwards, killing millions of others as they hit, and the inability for those areas to end in first responders. Each bomb explosion creates an area where even if you survive, you are severely injured and have zero chances of rescue. It would be an agonizing death.
Interspersed throughout the book are historical tidbits about the development of the nuclear bomb, both domestic and abroad. Historically, scenarios have been developed to test the reactions in the aftermath of a nuclear strike. Despite assurances to the public, reality is far bleaker than ever thought. There’s almost zero hope for survival. Even safeguards set up for the continuation of government are tenuous at best. There is no winner in a nuclear war. It would be the end of humanity. It would take true mad leaders to even consider actually pressing the button. Unfortunately, a Korean dictator and a Russian oligarch both seem psychopathic enough to do it.
Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen, is a terrifying look at the effects of a nuclear strike. Even what starts out as one or two missiles quickly turns into a conflagration of atomic fire with tens of thousands bombs exploding around the globe. There is no genie putting that monster back into the bottle once the first shot is fired. Ducking under your school desk or even building your own bunker will help you. Remember when that was the big thing? Well, it wouldn’t work. At least it wouldn’t work under your porch. You’d have to be deeper…much deeper if you were near a blast point. The bombs today are so powerful, there really is no hope. Everyone should read this book. And they should be scared. The future of the planet rests in the fingers of less than a dozen people, people who could indiscriminately vaporize billions of people. Let that sink in.
Craig Bacon is still scared by the movie, “The Day After” despite the fact that it gives too much hope in the aftermath. He does have an old school desk to hide under if worse comes to worst.