Command and Control

By Eric Schlosser
  • Non-Fiction
  • Science

Decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War the threat of nuclear conflict has receded from public consciousness despite the continued existence of vast arsenals of nuclear weapons around the world which are ready to be fired if the orders are given. Schlosser traces the origin of nuclear doctrine after 1945 through the course of the confrontation between the US and USSR while focusing on “broken arrows" – incidents when nuclear weapons were accidentally lost – and major accidents that almost resulted in catastrophe.

After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the US were the sole nuclear power and began building up a stockpile of these weapons fearing a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Soon Russia detonated its own atomic bombs before both superpowers developed even more powerful thermonuclear weapons thousands of times more powerful carrying out hundreds of surface, sea, land and space tests. Eventually these weapons could be mounted on ballistic missiles capable of being launched from land based silos, mobile launchers, jet bombers and nuclear powered submarines. In the event of war which almost broke out during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 hundreds of millions of people would die as cities were devastated by nuclear explosions before the survivors would be plunged into a nuclear winter on a planet poisoned by radioactive fallout.

Bungling mistakes and near misses often kept top secret for many years could have resulted in a mistaken outbreak of war. In the aftermath of one B52 bomber crash the various safety measures to prevent a nuclear bomb aboard the aircraft almost failed. In another incident a fully fuelled ballistic missile exploded inside its silo. In other incidents bombs were lost at sea when planes came down or when submarines accidentally sank. By the 1970s and 1980s the Americans and Russians were involved in arms limitation talks while hot lines were in place to allow direct communication between leaders to prevent misunderstandings.

Authoritative, chilling, disturbing and often funny Schlosser recreates the paranoia of the Cold War nuclear stand off.

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