Nuclear War

A Scenario

By Annie Jacobsen
Published by Torva/Penguin Random House
RRP $36.99 in paperback
ISBN 9781911709602

 

Warning: This is a book that might keep you awake at nights.

Author Annie Jacobsen, who has spent years interviewing a diverse range of scientists and experts in the field, puts forward a scenario of Washington DC being hit with a one-megaton thermonuclear bomb in a ‘bolt out of the blue’ attack.

The target would, of course, be the Pentagon but the eventual outcome as America responded would be the beginning of an Armageddon-like General Nuclear War, which would result in the end of civilisation as we know it.

She helpfully explains in detail the horror that is a 1-megaton thermonuclear weapon detonating over its target.

The air is heated to millions of degrees, creating a massive fireball that expands at millions of miles per hour. It takes no imagination at all to understand what happens to anyone caught in this maelstrom. It’s sufficient to know everyone will perish instantly.

She goes on to describe Washington landmarks being obliterated.

And then readers are treated to a minute-by-minute description of the world as we know it in its final throes. This takes approximately 72 minutes. It is horrible. It is devastating.

Jacobsen describes the prospect of nuclear war as ‘insane’, a term I think we would all use.

“Every person I interviewed for this book knows this,” she writes. “Every person. The whole premise of using nuclear weapons is madness. It is irrational. And yet here we are. Russian president Vladimir Putin recently said that he is ‘not bluffing’ about the possibility of using weapons of mass destruction.”

Jacobsen offers up no words of comfort for the reader, only chilling reminders that ‘the world could end in the next couple of hours’ but she does ask the question: how did we get here? How did we allow ourselves to engage in a crazy race of one-upmanship that meant mutually assured destruction for any nation that used nuclear weapons?

I was reminded of Nevil Shute’s classic novel from 1957, ‘On the Beach’, where the few remaining survivors of nuclear war await their fate in southern Australia, certain death from a radioactive cloud heading their way.

Jacobsen’s scenarios in ‘Nuclear War’ focus on the northern hemisphere and the countries from which nuclear weapons are being hurled at one another but it seems to me Nevil Shute’s fictional scenario might well become fact in such a devastating conflict.

Verdict: Not a book for readers with high anxiety levels, in my opinion, but thought-provoking nonetheless. It is, in reality, a demonstration of the stupidity of mankind.