Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen

    This is really a horror novel. Jacobsen simulates the worst-case scenario of nuclear war. North Korea shoots a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) out of the blue at Washington. Washington responds by launching dozens of nuclear missiles at North Korea. In the middle, North Korea also hits the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in California with a nuclear submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). American missiles pass over Russian airspace and the Americans can't get in touch with the Russians. The Russians launch a massive counter-response at the United States, which responds by launching every nuclear missile it has left. In the meantime, North Korea also detonates an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) over the United States (which is basically just using a nuclear bomb out in space for its shockwaves that knock out electronics down on Earth) and also shoots chemical and biological weapons at South Korea. All of this happens in under an hour.

    In 1946, the American nuclear stockpile was just 9 nuclear bombs, growing to 13 in 1947, 50 in 1948, and 170 in 1949. In 1949, the Russians exploded their first atom bomb, almost an exact copy of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki four years earlier. By 1950, the US had 299 and Russia 5. By 1951, the US had 438 and by 1952, the US had 841 and the USSR had 50. In 1952, the thermonuclear bomb, or hydrogen bomb, was invented, which uses one nuclear explosion to trigger a larger nuclear explosion. The prototype thermonuclear bomb created in 1952 had the explosive power of 1,000 Hiroshima bombs exploding all at once. When tested, it completely obliterated an island called Elugelab in the Pacific, leaving only a crater in its place. By 1953, the United States had 1,169 nuclear bombs in its stockpile, and 1,703 by 1954. The United States manufactured 1.5 nuclear weapons per day and reached 2,422 nuclear bombs in 1955, including three new styles of thermonuclear bombs, and 3,692 bombs in 1956, making 3.5 nuclear bombs per day. By 1957, it was five a day for a total of 5,543 bombs, then 7,345 in 1958, 12,298 in 1959, 18638 in 1960, and an all time high of 31,255 in 1967. Today, both the United States and Russia each have around 1,700 deployed nuclear missiles, and China has a stockpile of 500, with Indian and Pakistani stockpiles of around 165 and 50 in North Korea. The US only has 44 missiles meant to intercept them.

    The book does an excellent job of conveying the difficulty of reacting to a nuclear launch. At best, the President has about a half an hour to react, but really a lot less since there is time to confirm that there is a nuclear launch and that also assumes that the president is immediately available to make the decision. The timing could be as short as seven minutes from launch to detonation if a sub parked itself 600 miles from our coastline. It would not be possible to fire a torpedo from another sub quickly enough to sink a sub launching nuclear missiles. Submarines are uniquely dangerous in the world of nuclear weapons, and that's why North Korea maintains one of the largest submarine fleets in the world. In shallow waters, where echoes make enough noise for subs to be undetectable, submarines can move hidden to launch nuclear weapons from anywhere.

    My biggest criticism of the book is just that it is about a worst-case scenario, not a realistic scenario. When the President reacts to the North Korean nuclear launch, he launches dozens of nuclear ICBMs from Wyoming in addition to SLBMs from the Pacific Ocean. But these ICBMS must pass over Russian airspace, alarming the Russians. I have to think that the Department of Defense has already gamed out how to shoot nuclear weapons at North Korea from subs in a way that would show both the Chinese and the Russians that the nukes aren't directed at them. But the biggest issue is the quantity. No one would start a nuclear war with just one nuke, since it would invite counter attack. If you're launching against a nuclear power, you want to hit all their nuclear capabilities first. So if North Korea launched a "bolt out of the blue" nuclear attack against the United States, it would make sense to respond with one, two, three, etc. SLBMs, not dozens of ICBMs. Launching dozens would look a lot more like a decapitation strike against a nuclear power if the trajectory could be mistaken for that, one or two not so much. Additionally, the book assumes that the Russians don't know about the North Korean launch and aren't in touch with the Americans (maybe not the most ridiculous assumption), and therefore don't understand that the United States is responding to that. Finally, after Russia responds with dozens more nuclear launches, the United States chooses to launch the rest of its arsenal, which basically ends the world. Use them or lose them.

    The situation of massive nuclear destruction that Jacobsen describes would cause a global temperature reduction of 27 degrees Fahrenheit, and a drop as large as 40 degrees in America. Nuclear winter would last for as much as ten years, and in places like Iowa and Ukraine, temperatures would not rise above freezing for six years. The ozone layer would also lose as much as 75% of its shielding power, pushing human life underground to avoid the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays. Maybe bugs inherit the Earth.

Miscellaneous Facts:

• Carbon dioxide from a nuclear explosion sinks, so cellars and subway tunnels are death traps for asphyxiation. But maybe that's one of the better ways to die in a nuclear war given the circumstances.
• Cars with electronic ignitions can't start after an EMP detonation. A nuclear detonation 300 miles over Omaha would cover the entire contiguous United States.
• The nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima was ten feet long and weighed 9,700 pounds, which is about as much as an elephant. To achieve the same level of explosion, the US would have needed to drop 2,100 tons of conventional weapons.
• Until 1960, the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force each controlled their own stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
• At a 1960 meeting to discuss strategic use of nuclear weapons, the only objector to a preemptive strike on the Soviet Union that would cause nuclear fallout in China was Marine Commandant General David M. Shoup, who said, "All I can say is, any plan that murders three hundred million Chinese when it might not even be their war is not a good plan. That is not the American way."
• The nuclear triad is the combination of three ways that America can launch nuclear weapons. 400 ICBMs on land, 66 nuclear capable bombers in the air, and 14 nuclear-armed submarines at sea (and also 100 tactical nuclear bombs at NATO bases in Europe).