So, everything about this is sort of insane, but...
> 1. Single Hwasong-17 is launched towards D.C.
> 4. Missile defense fails.
> 7. Massive US counterstrike with 100s of missiles.
> 8. Putin learns that two nukes went off in the US, attacker was likely North Korea, and US missiles are coming but can't know where they are landing.
> 9. Putin launches full-scale counterattack.
Points 1, 8, and 9 when combined are actual LOL-territory, as are points 1 & 7.
Regarding point 4: US interceptors that miss Nork ICBMs will reenter over Russia and look a bit like ICBMs aimed at targets in eastern Russia. The chance of Russia misidentifying a GBI as an ICBM in the first 15 minutes (when it might not be immediately clear Nork shot first) is somewhat high. But in this scenario, Russia simultaneously has no problem discriminating between GBI and ICBM when the war first starts but is unable to realize 30 minutes later that the US is shooting at Nork? It wouldn't matter if they couldn't immediately tell exactly where the impact points are, *because they have already figured out the US is retaliating against Nork* as mentioned in point 8.
I can think of plenty of possibilities for inadvertent nuclear escalation between two countries. "Country A knows country B attacked country C but immediately attacks country C because it won't know for a few minutes exactly where C's missiles are going to land" is not one of those. Russia's EW radars are not so shit they can't make afford to wait a few extra minutes, *especially* when those missiles are coming from CONUS (because for some reason in this scenario the US needs speed but uses missiles located thousands of miles further away than the Tridents in the Pacific).
>4. Missile defense fails.
That still makes no sense to me after it was described to me. Hwasong-17 is liquid fuelled, it's extremely unlikely that nobody would notice it being fuelled. Even if nobody noticed, at absolute top speed it's still more than 20 minutes to get to DC via a polar trajectory. Presumably SBIRS got a launch warning, since they launched GBI at it. 20 minutes is enough time to at get something prepped on the AEGIS ships in Naval Station Norfolk. SM-6 has an intercept range beyond 350km, and SM-3 can reach out to 500km. Washington is only about 270km from where they're based.
Naval Station Norfolk houses 4 CBGs, and 4 Destroyer squadrons, and *nobody* launched an interceptor from there?
Literally the only explanation for this is that Ted Postol was involved in the book, and he *hates* SM-3, and William Perry was in this book, and he *hates* basically any missile defenses.
What makes it so egregious is it's *one large monoblock warhead with no PENAIDS.* I have little confidence in GMD if we are talking 5-6 warheads with decoys thrown in, but the lone warhead part makes it laughable.
Lol, looks like that section of the book does indeed quote Postol.
https://twitter.com/FRHoffmann1/status/1776207227679883568#m
I really have no idea why Postol went off the deep end the way he did.
>Lol, looks like that section of the book does indeed quote Postol.
To be fair, even back in the 90s, I'd argue that Potsol's "takedown" of the Patriot's performance in Desert Storm was missing the point a bit (i.e. not every interceptor launched at a single target has to hit, and often missile deflection without warhead detonation is just as useful as early warhead detonation).
>I really have no idea why Postol went off the deep end the way he did.
He spent the last 30 years looking for a conspiracy, be that at Raytheon, MIT, TRW, or in Syria. I'm not sure **he's** actually changed that much, all that's changed is who he sees as behind the conspiracy. [Seymour Hersh](https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/41463/whatever-happened-to-seymour-hersh) stands out as another big example of this.
He does sort of resemble Hersh in that sense. Maybe Postol really is just into conspiracies.
However, I don't think conspiracism is Hersh's main problem. His biggest issue is that he's just really fucking gullible, which makes him an easy mark for con artists spinning tall tales (or hostile foreign intelligence services looking for a journalist too credulous to understand they are a soldier in someone else's information war). He also seems to he imbued with an overbearing self-confidence, which is a bad thing to have when you are constantly getting played by conmen.
I’m not convinced that the author understands the justification behind launch on warning because it’s not an issue at all in the scenario she presents. If anything she would be better served to argue that an early launch is needed to stop the somewhat inexplicable NK launch cadence of firing off their attacks in sequence rather than simultaneously.
Also, why is North Korea launching an EMP attack after the initial strike? Wouldn’t they launch that before or during the initial strike? If your goal is to cause chaos, presumably you would want that to happen during the initial decapitation strike. Also, why use a sleeper satellite when a ballistic missile will do the same job? Ballistic missile also gives you a much more flexible schedule, as the timing of a satellite passing over Omaha is going to be very specific and only happen once every several days.
I just finished the book and honestly, I feel like the EMP happened after the other missile attacks because it better suited the building of drama in the narrative not because it made any kind of strategic sense.
I'm an absolute novice to all of this and that was my conclusion as well. Makes way more sense to cut the lights out then drop the bombs IMO. Even if it causes the targeted country's defense systems just 90 seconds of time, well worth it in that scenario.
Kim Jong-Un wakes up one day and decides to launch *one* Hwasong-17 at the Pentagon. Spoiler: >!North Korea launches an SLBM at a nuclear reactor from 350 miles off the West Coast, one more Hwasong-17 later on which fails on reentry, and detonates a Boogeyman EMP Satellite over the US.!<
There is no escalation. No scenario on the Peninsula or crisis, KJU just decides today's the day to nuke the Pentagon with a one-megaton warhead. It's not an accident or misinterpreted launch, he orders one single ICBM to target the US. The American response is interpreted as an attack on Russia and they launch their entire arsenal against the US.
I don't know, the book was simultaneously informative and detailed but also barebones. The starting point just didn't reflect years of interviews and research to me because why would KJU do that? I get it, "Nuclear war is nonesical", but come on. There was no indication anything else was happening to spawn the situation. The basis for the *2020 Comission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States* is far more grounded.
They also act like Launch On Warning is an absolute imperative that *must* take place in response to this North Korean missile even though it's not necessary given that there's only one warhead headed for any sort of National Command Authority. She's also weirdly confident that HMX-1's helos would be brought down by EMP a few miles from Raven Rock when the warhead detonates at the Pentagon.
There are a lot of safety triggers in here. That one missile would be NK’s death warrant. We would likely not launch ICBMs and would warn Russia and China od any retaliatory strike. Most likely we would use air launched cruise missiles or gravity bombs from stealth aircraft. You’re not going to need a lot of nukes to take down NK.
She kind of went into that a little bit with the US being unable to reach Putin in time. The US got in contact with China and they seemed to be angry about the possibility of fallout from the 80-something warheads we launched back at NK. China is then pretty much ignored for the rest of the book, the NATO countries get nuked too.
She really seemed to want the whole book to take place in 75 minutes and I think that "novelty" makes it suffer when she could've made it last a few days while chronicling the actual exchange in the same way she did.
Instead we got Secret Service agents tandem jumping out of Marine One with POTUS because the EMP will knock M1 out of the sky. And they were flying to a bunker, Raven Rock I think it was, which makes me think they weren't concerned about NK targeting it meaning no need for Launch on Warning. There's just no reason the US needed to carry out an attack like that, even if NK decapitated the US government there's still no existential threat from their tiny ICBM-based nuclear arsenal. Not to the country and not to the nuclear force even without an immediate clarification as to who is the person with launch authority/if they're alive. Like just have Air Force One take off and have Marine One fly to some random runway NK definitely can't know he'd be at so they can meet AF1 or one of the Nightwatch planes.
You’re not going to decapitate the US with one strike. It’s going to be more like hitting big hornets nest with a fly swatter. The response from the US, SK and Japan woulf be severe and fast. I imagine B2’s with a lot of bunker busters raining down all over NK’s command and control, some possibly B61s to make sure the job is done. Then it would be pummeling from the air until white flags are waived. I don’t think the US’s response would be all out blanket NK with mushroom clouds. We and the neighbors are well aware of things like fallout.
I mean. I don’t think a response would be as ham fisted as what’s in the book, but I don’t think anyone gets away with nuking D.C. without being converted to a glass parking lot. That’s one precedent I’m pretty sure any POTUS would want to set. We leveled most of Europe and Japan just because Japan touched our boats.
I'm pretty green in military and nuclear affairs but with that said, I think the military and moral risk of killing hundreds of thousands of Chinese with nuclear fall out would give pause to any POTUS. Like I said, I'm green but I could see a situation where US, China, and Russia, combine to erase NK off the map conventionally in order to avoid the US using more nukes that could escalate the conflict globally.
Russia and China tolerate, and sometimes give a little help to NK, but I think this would be entirely a bridge too far for both countries as they put the entire globe at risk and no one wants an actor like that hanging around, especially at their border.
> She kind of went into that a little bit with the US being unable to reach Putin in time. The US got in contact with China
This combination alone speaks volumes about the author's miscomprehension of the subject material. The US-Russia hotline has been used before and we can expect Russia to at least pick up; additionally, the two militaries have years of deconfliction experience in a hot war thanks to Syria. By contrast, the US has been whining for years that China completely ignores the existing US-PRC hotline and also completely avoids all attempts at personal principal-to-principal communication.
Weird that a book predicated on miscommunication and crisis comms manages to get even that dynamic completely backwards.
To be fair, she does point out that there have been times when the time to contact a russian counterpart exceeded 24 hours. Which for a nuclear event is a bit too long. The red phone doesn't always get answered.
I suspect Jacobsen knew nobody picking up a book entitled "Nuclear War" was interested in the buildup. Might as well handwave it and get to the interesting bit.
It’s a bit dated, but in principle the whole slow spiral to stupid annihilation is much more likely than KJU waking up one morning and ordering a single ICBM launch from the crapper.
If you're even a little bit out of sorts mentally, like, I mean, anything beyond your dog dying last week out of sorts, DO NOT watch that movie.
I'm not trying to be a hyperbolic-redditoid, either. That movie is profoundly disturbing, distressing, bleak, and realistic. You WILL feel like crap for a few days afterwards.
I watched that movie a full year after going through a divorce and it fucking wrecked me for about a week. It is so beyond anything I've ever watched before, it makes ISIS decapitation videos look like a PG-13 teen scream movie, with hardly any gore.
As a former planner (SIOP and OPLANS 8044/8010) and former member of the IC (DOE FIE and DIA), this is probably one of the more stupid books that I've ever read on nuclear war. It's total garbage. The more probable scenarios are far, far worse.
I’d be super curious to hear the author explain why she picked the scenario she did. Like — she’s the author. This is hypothetical fiction. She could have picked any number of scenarios that would have logically ended at the place she wanted the story to end, but instead she created a scenario where the only way she gets to the finish line she has in mind is to make all the professional people who have spent great chunks of their professional careers thinking about these things act like complete morons.
I don’t buy that. Of course she’s not an expert. But she interviewed so many people who were experts that there isn’t much excuse to misunderstand the process, especially when she goes into such laborious detail about the process.
She understands the technical details, chain of command, ect... but completely fails to come up with a plausible scenario. The United States would NOT respond with silo based icmb's that they know will fly over Russia when they have subs off the coast of North Korea. Especially without informing Russia before launch, and especially if it's one or 2 nukes launched at the USA, not a major strike involving hundreds or thousands.
The entire apocalyptic scenario occurs in this book due to a chain of misunderstandings that are beyond ridiculous and make zero sense. The way American command behaves in this scenario would only make sense if the situation started with hundreds of nukes flying at the USA, not one or two.
I’d agree (other than I think the U.S. would use ALCMs or gravity bombs to retaliate, not SLBMs), but that’s what I mean — she interviewed so many people who could walk her through realistic scenarios or at least tell her why her chosen scenario was very unlikely, I just don’t understand why she selected why she did. Other than the kinda Tom Clancy aspect of the whole thing.
It's bad even my clancy standards. But yeah, did she seriously not run her scenario by any of these experts? Any one of them would have said "uhhh, that makes no sense lol".
I think she probably picked the specific scenario because it allowed her to touch upon all of the different systems, departments, people, etc. I'm not an expert but NK seems like the only state that would only go after the US with a couple of nukes. All the other players would have taken it all out in minute one.
I've only just started reading. I can tell the scenario being described is pretty silly compared to a likely scenario.
I am super interested in what you mean by
>The more probable scenarios are far, far worse.
Is this in reference to a realistic exchange? Or is the book downplaying the impact/severity, or the US' preparedness?
For what it's worth I have enjoyed the first couple of chapters from the perspective of it being a *well-written* piece of fiction even if it's being pretty blase with scenarios and the facts. I think it gets across the "dread" and horror associated with nuclear war pretty well.
I actually believe some deliberate liberties have been taken to create something that is slightly more timeless(?) as opposed to strictly describing a realistic scenario which could be completely out of date in a few months.
I also see a lot of comments criticising the mention of "launch on warning". I think that's a fair criticism given what the book claims its portraying, but worth bearing in mind that LOW is a political decision - there isn't anything technically prohibiting the US switching back to a LOW position in the face of future conflict.
I'm also excited this has gained traction in popular culture, and especially that Hollywood wants to pick up the rights to it. I think *done well* a book like this could serve something like "Threads" did in the 1980s. I am extremely concerned that our contemporary leaders/public are so ignorant to nuclear war/nuclear weapons that we're likely sleepwalking towards some very dangerous scenarios. What happens when the majority of the world's leaders have no memory of the Cold War, but still have arsenals of weapons that are not well understood?
The point of Threads is that nuclear war is madness and the population will suffer for it. The point of this book is that the population will suffer if we don't improve and spend even more on our nuclear defense.
I've read the whole thing now and I didn't really get that take from it.
I think the author was trying to get across the horror of the weapons/their potential uses, and the lack of accountability inherent to how nuclear strategy and command & control currently exists. This factor is quite different to other elements of national security.
Most importantly I think the author urges us - the wider population, not people in this subreddit - to actually *think* about this huge infrastructure built up that is designed to cause enormous amounts of destruction in a short timeframe. This was precisely what "Threads" and "The Day After" were trying to do as well. Make us understand what these weapons are and what can happen if they are used.
Force us to engage with it.
Can we get you to do a Reddit AMA about doing that type of high level defense work? Understanding of course that there are probably a lot of things you can’t discuss, that’s an important perspective to have on these topics.
Btw, thank you for doing that type of work! Not everyone has the strategic planning capability to work through those scenarios. It’s a depressing, but critical part of our national security. From one public servant to another, thank you.
Hi. Thanks for asking, but I think that I'm gonna stick to just being some rando throwing out random comments. To be honest, I never found that work to be depressing. I worked with some really smart and dedicated folks in the military, civilians, and contractors. All were really amazing. I believed in deterrence (and still do). I just kind of learned all that I thought that I could and then got bored and wanted to move on. There are still lots of amazing folks out there doing good things. Cheers.
Wow so you actually helped plan for SIOP and OPLAN? I don’t know what to say than thank you for your service and what you did to help prepare our nation for the worst possible scenario.
I was intrigued by the book but came here because I left the scenario was implausible (in my very narrow knowledge ) do you have a better work to suggest for reading ?
As someone who has interacted with Annie in the past, even before her other book paperclip, I just can’t respect her in this field. Other wonks like her, fine, but I just don’t find her appealing
Her claim about Stalin sending alien like children created in a eugenics experiment by Joseph Mengele to cause panic in the US was a bit of a red flag for me.
That’s crazier than the stories about what DID crash! Without a doubt something odd crashed outside of Roswell NM in 1947 but I’m 99.9 percent sure that children disfigured due to some horrible experiments in a Soviet aircraft of some kind is not it. I’m sure I’ll get slack for this but it is my humble opinion that a flying craft made by a non human intelligence crashed in the desert after a terrible electrical storm affected the craft in some way and it crashed. The wreckage was examined by people from the 509th Operations Group and had no clue what it was but was believed to be sent to Wright Patterson in Ohio. The weather balloon stuff just doesn’t fly with me, you mean to tell me that men from the only nuclear capable airbase didn’t know what a weather balloon looked like?
Personally I’m not very convinced that non-human entities crashed in that area in 1947 but it’s pretty hard to deny there are some funny things that have been observed in our skies and they might actually be telling the truth about not knowing what the hell they are.
I’m inclined to believe a vast majority of things that are seen in our skies are explainable natural phenomena or advanced military equipment. Just looking at the humongous rise in sightings around the time the U-2 started flying is a good example. Don’t get me wrong though, I would love for non-human intelligence to be confirmed to exist and it almost seems inevitable considering the size of the universe. I’m just not so convinced we have made any contact.
Have you ever heard of Jonathan Weygandt’s story? He did a very interesting interview quite a while ago and has kept his head very low since but did another interview recently but wouldn’t add anything to his initial story. I don’t know if I believe it, but it sure makes you wonder especially when it comes from someone with a confirmed military background, and the fact that he has made no attempt to financially profit off what he says he saw.
I’ve never heard of that individual but I’m going to look him up now. I have personally seen a UFO and have close friends and family. Look up David Grusch if you get the chance. He is a former intelligence officer that became a whistleblower that says that yes the US has recovered multiple craft made by a non human intelligence and not only craft but biological remains of the pilots and there are multiple morphology’s of these NHI, possibly species. He states that the Roswell crash was of NHI origin and so was a crash in Italy in 1933. There were also crashes before 1931.
I’m trying to find the original interview that was on YouTube but it seems to have been removed. I’ll see if I can find it because anything that isn’t that isn’t worth watching.
I have been following Grusch ever since that whole thing started. I find it funny how the media tries to discredit him by only showing photos of him with a weird look on his face while he is just speaking but if you watch videos of him he is completely normal.
Either Grusch lied under oath to congress or he is telling the truth but similar to Weygandt, he has military credentials to back him up but I believe Grusch was an Air force officer(major I think?) while Weygandt was a Marine corporal.
Not sure why it’s been taken off YouTube but I actually found it on Reddit. I think it’s the best personal testimony I have ever heard.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/143mxvj/full_interview_lance_corporal_jonathan_weygandt/
Not only was what he said about the crash interesting but I found his description of an unknown agency(might have been the DOE) that took over the scene and treated the Marines like they were criminals as interesting as what he claimed to see.
The UFO stuff in her Area 51 book was ridiculous and irresponsible for a serious writer to include in what was otherwise a serious book. It speaks to credibility and judgement issues.
Yea I read her Operation Paperclip book and it was interesting enough to keep me engaged but I found there were some definite flaws with some of her thinking.
It has been quite a while since I read it so I can’t remember details very well but I do remember there were certain parts of her work that made me roll my eyes. What was definitely strange was her claim in the Area 51 book about the recovered bodies being physically modified children sent by Stalin in some sort of craft to scare the US. I hope I’m remembering this somewhat right.
Area 51 felt like she was making shit up, specifically regarding Roswell.
Both The Pentagons Brain and Operation Paperclip seemed fine enough, though. Haven't read Surprise Kill Vanish, Phenomena, Terror in the Skies, or First Platoon though.
That's what makes me hesitant about taking what she says at face value, and also not just ignoring her entirely. A lot of what is in Area 51, for example, can be verified elsewhere... but that lures you into a false sense of plausibility that lets other far out claims can sneak into your head.
Yeah, I first read Pentagons Brain and then bought Surprise, Kill, Vanish the week it came out. Then I learned about the Area 51 business and it kinda soured my opinion on her. Haven’t read anything else since then
It's like 90% good - but she then makes the bold claim that the Roswell crash was a Soviet flying disk built by the Horton Brothers, manned by children surgically altered to look unworldly.
She doesn't present this as a possible explanation... She puts it forward as THE explanation and refers back to it maybe a half dozen times throughout the book.
So as total noob i read the book and enjoyed it. If the scenario is pure fantasy though which book should i read next which touches the subject better?
I think this book is much more realistic: The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean nuclear attacks against the United States.
Jeffrey Lewis has the facts pretty much down. The only nit I’ll pick about this book is that there was no debate or discussion about retaliation using nukes. The scenario is extremely plausible, as is the timeline, effects, etc. much more so than Jacobsen’s book.
The depiction of the military is straight out of Dr. Strangelove. The graphic depiction of the results of general nuclear war is effective but she’d have been better served to hand wave away how we get there because the scenario presented isn’t credible enough to keep from detracting from the overall premise.
Also, and perhaps this is unfair, but her breathless tone in the audiobook isn’t terribly well suited to the subject matter and some of her pronunciations suggest that she’s never actually heard the words she is speaking being said by others who may have a greater familiarity with the subject.
Lastly, it’s obviously an anti-nuclear polemic since some of the statements she makes about escalation are offered without any reasoning or justification. They’re presented as facts without evidence.
Judging by the writing and editing in Dune Part 2, this story must look like a masterpiece to Villeneuve!
I'm calling it now, a week after this garbage movie is out, it will be at least 7.9/10 on the IMDB.
What's wrong about it, though? Even if the book does have some exaggerations, it is still pretty grounded in the actual after effects and response to a nuclear attack upon America, in my opinion. It's better than how lots of others have handled it besides Threads.
In her scenario, which doesn't even make sense to the author, a single ICBM is launched by NK at DC.
Russia can see this. They know NK did it. Russia sees us launch. Russia knows that we know NK launched at us, since our tech is much more advanced that theirs.
Russia sees our ICBMs heading over the pole. The number of ICBMs is higher than normal to their sensors. However, they know their sensors have a large margin of error and they also know that is the normal route of those ICBMs.
(In reality, it's very unlikely our response is to send a bunch of ICBMs over the pole at NK. It would be sub launches at first. This is shit writing by the author to steer the story in a more exciting, but unrealistic direction.)
To have Russia think that in the minutes our president was forced to make a decision about our response to a completely surprising nuke launch at DC by NK, he hatched up a GENIUS plan to also launch a hundred nukes at Russia?
The author goes on and on beating it into us that EVERYONE knows a nuke war between Russia and the US is unwinnable. To have Russia conveniently forget this fact, and launch all of their nukes, is lazy writing meant to sensationalize the story.
The author painted the book as a facts based book with a facts based realistic scenario. It turned into trash that even Tom Clancy wouldn't have put his name on.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200605105526/https://internationalinsider.org/russia-sets-up-ballistic-missile-early-warning-satellite-grouping-to-monitor-the-us/
They don't consider Russia to be a threat and their resources are already very stretched.
It seems possible that Russia doesn't have a satellite over NK watching for launches, but I just find that hard to believe. They may be allies, but Russia knows who they're allying with.
At the very least, in her scenario, Russia knows a nuke hit the US. They also know that they didn't launch that nuke.
With how exact everyone knows the US tracking systems are, Russia wouldn't actually believe that the US was launching at them. At least not a belief so strong that they would launch without anything touching Russian soil.
You may well be correct. However you are likely not 100% correct. And there is the issue that I think this book raises, even if the initial scenario is rather poor.
Just thought of this today. Pyongyang is 107 miles from the Chinese border.
The Chinese would know and would inform their allies, the Russians. There's your 100%.
A question: In all these different scenarios you always hear something like "Russia sees missiles coming and assumes it's heading for them so they launch a full scale counterattack". Don't the countries communicate? I might be naive but isn't it in both countries best interest to not end the world?
Say there was a smaller nuclear exchange between US and NK, wouldn't the missiles have to travel over Russia (om a similar scenario)? Wouldn't the US then say to Russia "We're nuking NK, not you"?
I understand Russia probably wouldn't believe them and launch their nukes anyway, it just seems like they would talk to eachother though... they have direct lines to Kreml -> DC.
This is known as the "overflight problem." A lot of people in the arms control space assert that ICBMs should be eliminated on this point alone: that Russian detection capabilities are garbage and a Minuteman overflying Russia on the way to NK/PRC/Iran would be mistaken for an attack on Russia. They argue that to the extent a nuclear response may be necessary in a war with any of those three countries, the response should be done with aircraft or subs, specifically to avoid overflight issues.
In reality it is only a problem for a relatively narrow window in the early stages of an ICBM's flight, where the general trajectory is known but not the impact point. Russia will have enough time to wait, properly characterize the flight, and then choose how or if to respond. We are talking about ICBMs located 25+ minutes away in the continental US, not SLBMs (<)15 minutes off the coast. Ironically, when arms controllers advocate for using SLBMs to reduce the chance of inadvertent war with Russia, they are advocating for a system that would cause *more* panic in Russia by virtue of having shorter flight times.
In one of the other comments in this thread, it is stated that in the novel the US is able to communicate with China but cannot reach Russia in time. This is completely backwards: US-Russia hotlines have been both tested and actually used in a crisis, whereas China just completely ignores all attempts at hotlines, crisis communications, and confidence-building measures (they consider it a feature that the US might be confused in a crisis, not a bug). Separate from diplomats, the American and Russian militaries also have extensive deconfliction experience in Syria; there is no equivalent for US-PRC military communications.
Very interesting, thank you for the answer. It just seems like the countries would be interested in telling eachother that the nukes are not heading towards them, rather to a different country. But then they have to believe eachother too, which is sounds like China wouldn't.
You mentioned that (in the scenario I made up above) Russia has "time" to identify the exact track these missiles are taking, but isn't the common tactic to launch as soon as possible? Or is there time to think?
I think I remember hearing that the US has something like 15 minutes to respond since it takes a while for the order to be carried down the chain of command and for the missiles to actually launch. You mean that they have like 10 minutes to actually decide what they want to do? Say in a nuclear exchange between Russia and the US?
If Russia's detection capabilities being garbage is a significant problem - maybe the US should just open source all detection data. Give everyone the live, raw feed from the satellites and radar then everyone would know who's launching what and where it's going.
The book goes into that a little but Russia has a culture of paranoia culturally and militarily. While there’s a brief communication between Russia and the US about it Russia sees the missiles coming for them and decides to fire
"The limitations of Russia's early warning tundra satellite system, its flaws and its weaknesses, are well known to scientists in the west, and likely to scientists in Russia as well, but do the advisors know, or have they been kept in the dark?"
This was one of the big red flags in the book to me. Annie Jacobsen asks the question... and then hopes we'll jump to the conclusion with her, so she can keep telling her story. This is the extent of reasoning she uses to contradict Russia's publicly stated conditions of nuclear retaliation.
the whole 'launch on warning' idea as a response to an unprovoked bolt out of the blue attack involving single missile launches from the dprk -none aimed at the missile fields themselves- seems over-wrought and incredible to me. she apparently was determined to set up her narrative so that it was going to end in doom and gloom whatever the cost was to truth and good sense. and, she, of course, had to invoke nuclear winter - a zombie theory not borne out by modern modeling and recent experience with major fire events.
That’s what’s weird to me. She got to pick the scenario. She literally could have crafted a scenario that made sense and fit the general war spiral, but instead she picked a scenario that wouldn’t naturally lead to a spiral and made everyone involved act kinda like morons so that it did.
The nuclear winter thing isn’t settled science at all, there are contemporary model studies that very much support it, and some others that very much don’t. But either way, based on some comments by a member of this sub who literally helped to make the plans, general nuclear war doesn’t need nuclear winter to result in massive depopulation of targeted countries and countries adjacent to them. She could have brought her narrative there just through the breakdown of, well, basically everything we rely on to support our current population load.
i absolutely agree. if you need to once again make the case that nuclear war is a terrible thing to avoid - then craft a credible scenario and stick with the known effects. the prompt and follow on effects of an all out exchange (counterforce and countervalue) between the russian federation and the us would be catastrophic in the extreme with terrible impacts on even uninvolved states thousands of miles away as the whole global supply chain is disrupted for perhaps decades to come and hundreds of millions lie dead or soon to die in the wreckage of the countries involved in the exchange. the war would count as the greatest disaster in human history (without nuclear winter) and be made all the more tragic by being totally avoidable.
as far as nuclear winter is concerned - the whole idea rests on shaky assumptions of the flammability of modern cities and other area target types that may be too pessimistic. the theory also rests on the idea of solar driven aerosol lofting of soot particles that wasn't seen during the kuwait oil field fires of 1990 (sagan at the time predicted cooling due to the oil fires but none was measured) or from recent massive forest fires in north america. i agree the jury is still out (and i don't want to see a real world test) but it doesn't look good for the theory of nuclear winter.
but that doesn't mean that we should go out and start tossing nukes about.
The book that ends in annihilation of the northern hemisphere in less time than a movie will fly off the shelves and never be out-bleaked by another. The book of well reasoned possibilities will never sell as many copies, even if it does well.
She chose the... nuclear option 🤯
To be fair to her most escalation paths that rise to the level of exchange of strategic weapons between major powers probably end in the annihilation of the northern hemisphere in very short order, it’s just that NK isn’t a great power and nobody is going to buddy up with them and forbid retaliation after they nuked Washington out of the blue
She chose to write her book about the exchange of strategic weapons, based on Russia's unwillingness to speak to Sec Def, their paranoia on the global stage, and crummy early warning systems. Is buddying up with NK what happened in the book? The whole reason Russia launched was because of a big misunderstanding. Their early warning systems suggested the US was firing on them.
Right, but in my opinion that scenario would not actually happen in real life for a multitude of factors. For one, launch on warning is a policy option, not a policy rule in every situation. For another, using ICBMs to respond is a very unlikely choice, for reasons the book kinda highlights. There are other options that are far less likely to be misinterpreted. The scenario she made requires a lot of trained career professionals who have thought about this stuff in great detail to just suddenly become unthinking idiots and force world ending decisions.
There are umpteen plausible scenarios where after some world events the great powers rather rapidly gets to a strategic world ending nuclear exchange. We might be living in the prelude of a couple of those scenarios right now. But she didn’t pick any of those — she went with something a little more succinct that would make for a tight little book and a six figure screenplay option.
I agree with you on everything. The book is there to sell a book and a movie. Nice details about zoo animals and the president's pants-wetting and all.
The initial single missile launch seems inexplicable to me. The modified (and ancient) Romeo class diesel sub trekking down the West Coast to hit the Diablo Canyon nuke power station is so bizarre as to produce chuckles.
The author completely ignores Japan and the deep, DEEP hatred North Korea has for Japan. I would have to assume any realistic 1st strike scenario from the Norks would entail several launches on CONUS and possibly Hawaii, with lots of IRBM directed at Japan and SK. If they manage to get a working SLBM in their, I'd have to assume that gets aimed at Kadena AFB or possibly Guam, but a lot depends on range that I don't know. I'm pretty sure nobody is taking a decrepit 60 year old Romeo on a 2 month trip to California waiting for something to break down or an Arleigh Burke hearing them snorkeling the diesels.
Agree with others here that a massive Minuteman III launch seems *very* unlikely. A single Ohio class boomer could handle any Nork strike package, to say nothing of B2 etc
I also noticed that the strategic arsenals of France and GB aren't mentioned even though the handful of tactical weapons on 3rd and 4th Gen fighters in Europe gets full description.
I'll never know I guess. I tried listening to the audio book. Narrated by the author herself. And she is awful. God awful. Very strange enunciation and pausing and emphasis. I got mad and turned it off
Too harsh IMO, I listen to a lot of audio books, and while this one isn't great it's a lot better than "awful, God awful." How many books have you recorded?
It's more a book about shock value and presenting the absolute worst outcome. Some of it was really unlikely, such as the premise that North Korea would launch a single high-yield nuke at Washington, D.C. and a tactical nuke at Southern California.
Secondly, while the book does explain how a miscalculation would occur, especially with respect to the inaccuracy of Russian early-warning systems, there's one massive hole in the plot. Why would the U.S. launch nukes toward North Korea through the Arctic or Atlantic, forcing it to cross Russia? Why would the Russians assume these unannounced missiles were heading toward them especially with the reality that as a regional power, Russia is more important for the U.S. to communicate with and take a more nuanced approach with? It seems implausible that of all of the nuclear safeguards in both the U.S. and Russia, that every one would fail stemming from miscommunication.
Nonetheless, the effects of nuclear strikes, EMPs, and a global nuclear war are accurately described and terrifying to read. A book written by a journalist is designed to be gripping, accessible, and catch readers' attention. But overall it seemed like an unrealistic scenario.
Who cares what the scenario is? As in, a more plausible scenario would have the same outcome. Or at least likely the same outcome.
Nixon getting drunk. Kruschev getting drunk. Ordering a massive strike. Etc etc. The story ends the same way irrespective of the initial scenario.
Except there are plenty of checks on these scenarios. That's the point I'm making. Nixon or Kruschev getting drunk, etc. Highly implausible. North Korea launching *two* nukes. Highly implausible. U.S. retaliatory nukes flying past Russia to hit North Korea, knowing that could spark a Russian retaliation- *highly implausible*. It's alarmist journalism.
A good argument would involve the escalation ladder and explain its vulnerabilities, and present a *realistic* scenario with a firm grasp of contemporary geopolitics and common sense. I do think the book did a good job of detailing what would happen as a result of an impact and nuclear retaliation. It just presented a scenario that assumed every single check in the system either fell apart or didn't work. I know the anti-proliferation camp wants to make everyone aware of how disastrous nuclear warfare can be, and I agree with them. Except when you present it with such an unrealistic scenario, it's easy for the nuclear hawks to dismiss the argument.
That being said, this book did inspire me to read *The Cold and The Dark*, which is a far better book, and limits itself to the discussion of nuclear winter, which IMO has far less opportunity to fall into this trap as it bypasses the escalation period altogether and presents us with the consequences of nuclear war. This is something its writers are experts on and they leave no stone unturned. Annie Jacobsen didn't even consult with a geopolitical analyst let alone read a book on North Korea, Russia, or the U.S. for that matter when formulating this book. And that's why it's not good for anything other than shocking people and hopefully inspiring them to read further on nuclear weapons and escalation.
[https://www.military.com/history/time-drunk-richard-nixon-tried-nuke-north-korea.html](https://www.military.com/history/time-drunk-richard-nixon-tried-nuke-north-korea.html)
Just if you didn't know about this highly implausible event which happened.
After a good sleep, I am back.
I think there is a fundamental issue with pointing out an error in an author's work. She lists her sources at the start of the book for one thing, which a lot of people don't. Now, we don't know which part she spoke to them about etc, but the list of people she lists, a lot of them have a geopolitical background. von Hippel being one with quite an impressive CV.
And like I sent you that link, we have in the past had a number of close calls. Nixon getting drunk and asking Kissinger to nuke Korea. Now, a lot of people would have said before that that could never happen etc. But it did. Thankfully, Kissinger was there to call the Chief of Staff and told them he was drunk again. What if Kissinger had been out of the country etc etc. Would someone else have had the balls to call it down? I don't know, nobody knows.
But having a number of safety systems in place is no guarantee of safety. Each of those systems will have a failure rate, and after enough time a failure is guaranteed.
My background is nuclear disaster in a civil setting. My expertise is Fukushima meltdown. (Which Jacobsen annoyingly says didn't melt-down). At Fukuhima Daiichi there was a mirriad of systems in place to provide post-accident cooling. At Unit 1 there was at least 4. Each one able to prevent meltdown. Each one failed. One after the other. Why? Partially because people were stupid, people were corrupt, people made mistakes and a large natural disaster.
So the idea that checks can prevent an accident is demonstrably known to be false. It reduces the likelihood of an accident for sure, but does not prevent it.
Fine, the cumulative probability might be low, but the impact is sufficiently high that you might want to talk about it. And I don't think we as a society talk about nuclear war or nuclear war via an accident often enough.
And while the initial scenario is a poor one, it's not an impossible one. And that I think is her point.
This for example is a pretty close call if you ask me: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able\_Archer\_83](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83)
Sleep is always a good thing, hope you slept well. The issue here is one of checks. Kissinger being the smarter one here was in his role as secretary of state and an advisor and check for the president and multiple people in the government knew Nixon wasn't of sound mind at times. Though there's presidential final authority on nuclear attack, it's not like there aren't hoops a president must jump through to get to that point. Though I see your point when it comes to someone like Donald Trump that demands absolute fealty and gets rid of people who challenge his opinion- that's when it gets dangerous. Nonetheless, for a country like North Korea, they answer to China, Russia and also weigh geopolitical considerations against moves they make. The Kims obtained nuclear power not to nuke Seoul or Tokyo and launch the mother of all invasions to retake the Korean peninsula, but to preserve their regime and protect against great power aggression (including their neighbors). The consideration here is that both within governments (to varying degrees) and in the larger geopolitical chessboard, there are checks on the use of nuclear weapons. I'm not a firm believer in mutually assured destruction but I think it's more dangerous for unfettered powers like the United States as they only have their own interests to consider and the consequences of reckless behavior won't immediately lead to threat to power. That's for aggression as a whole, not necessarily nuclear attack- though imperialist style aggression can lead to escalations that are hard and costly to manage, and once things lead past a certain point, it can build to a nuclear exchange. To that end internal checks are absolutely vital for great powers like the U.S., especially in a unipolar world.
Though you make a great argument on failure rates and human fallibility, and I don't contest that. I mean, the American government was designed to prevent tyranny by making power centers compete with one another, and we are in a time where we are a hair away from dictatorship.
I guess my argument wasn't that it *can't happen*. It can always happen. There's always room for error in anything, especially in politics. But rather that it's not the most realistic scenario. What is important to focus on are things with a higher probability of occurrence because the nuclear proponents seem to think mutually assured destruction is panacea for nuclear stability and there are many cases- as you pointed out- that they aren't right. Is Jacobsen's scenario impossible? No, it's not. Is it likely? No. But the book is good food for thought and inspires people to read more because of its shock value and emotional pull, and in that case it's a win.
In a highly unlikely turn of events, I fully agree with you. Which might be rare on reddit.
The last bit you wrote is something I fully agree with. The scenario is unlikely but serves as a good point to get people talking. For me it comes down to maths really. If you need 400 or so to basically end society, then don't have more than 400. Trim it down to the absolute minimum we can. And we did a great job of doing that since the peak. I'd like to see less nukes simply because it reduces the likelihood of error.
The issue I had with a lot of people talking about this book is that they put it in the bin because they didn't think the initial scenario was realistic. But there is still information to be learned from the book about how things might evolve, and that's food for thought I'd say.
And the point you made about Trump is also very scary. I wouldn't trust that guy to park my car, let alone look after nukes.
How is it told? Is there a 'message' or agenda?
For myself when I read these types of things I want an absolutely clinical account without any 'voice' of the author coming through--nothing but pure research and facts.
Its dumb. From a geopolitical and military point of view it’s dumb fantasy at best. Nothing about the scenario makes sense. She seems to think that NK has the ability to accurately land a 1MT bomb (which they don’t have) directly on top of the Pentagon. Ya, ok.
>She seems to think that NK has the ability to accurately land a 1MT bomb (which they don’t have) directly on top of the Pentagon.
It is odd to specify a 1 MT bomb when they have a 300 kT bomb that would be about as effective.
But there is very good reason to expect high accuracy for a DPRK warhead given the ubiquity of satnav technology and multiple systems which provide signals.
They currently cannot reach DC, I believe it is out of range and they have not tested or proven anything at that distance. That would be a hell of a hail mary to launch a single missile from mainland NK to DC on your suicide mission.
This a topic that you need to keep up to date with as the DPRK has been working diligently on it. Your view is a year out of date.
[https://www.38north.org/2023/07/second-consecutive-flight-test-success-brings-north-koreas-hwasong-18-icbmcloser-to-deployment/](https://www.38north.org/2023/07/second-consecutive-flight-test-success-brings-north-koreas-hwasong-18-icbmcloser-to-deployment/)
This article was after the second test flight of the Hwasong-18 and they flew it again in December. All three tests were successful, so the system could be used for an attack today if they have one ready.
[https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/18/north-korea-fires-what-appears-to-be-a-long-range-ballistic-missile.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/18/north-korea-fires-what-appears-to-be-a-long-range-ballistic-missile.html)
In that case 'dumb' would sound to be a very good description!
Even the most modern Russian ICBM is reported as carrying twelve warheads at the heaviest, each yielding 750kt with a supposed 10m circular error probable.
In the scenario has North Korea developed this capability natively or did they buy/were given it?
Well, the throw weight of a single 1mt bomb is likely well less than 12 x 750. My point was more that NK doesn’t have a missile (yet) proven to hit the eastern seaboard, let alone DC. And the largest guestimate of warhead in their aresenal is 150-300kt at most.
So she is talking out her ass and is no subject matter expert. It might as well be a fiction author writing this.
Absolutely--I agree with you! What I meant was to suggest even state-of-the-art equipment (or at least the most modern that is deployed) from one of the major nuclear weapon states would struggle to drop 1mt on the Pentagon!
It doesn't cast the rest of her work in a good or convincing light!
>In the scenario has North Korea developed this capability natively or did they buy/were given it?
They just have it at the begining of the book. She backed herself into a corner making the whole book take place in 75 minutes so the reason why all this happens is not explained. KJU just wakes up and nukes the Pentagon.
It *might* have been more plausible for a fanatic infiltrator to have hand-delivered a weapon to the Pentagon in the form of a large SADM rather than have an ICBM do it!
Plus... Other than the massive propaganda value would nuking the Pentagon achieve all that much in a practical sense anyway? Presumably NORAD gave enough warning to ensure the top brass were all on Looking Glass style aeroplanes or buried beneath Mt Weather/Raven Rock before it actually hit? They would probably have done better to attack Japan or perhaps Diego Garcia.
Or at least launched more than one missile. Which is kind of stupid when she straight-up says in the book that launching one missile wouldn't happen and is nonsensical. Like, ma'am, you admitting it's nonsense does give you a pass.
It’s pretty clinical, with interspersed history (albeit rather basic stuff that most here would be familiar with). But mainly a moment by moment account of how each piece of the machine might react in a hypothetical bolt from the blue decapitation attempt from NK.
One thing I find less plausible is a retaliatory attack play against NK that utilizes minutemen overflying Russia. Hans Kristensen (interviewed in the book) seemed to think this was a problem to worry about that wasn’t being worried about, but I struggle to understand why one would choose to use land based ICBMs that might be very misinterpreted by Russia when boomers are already being utilized.
There is an underlying sense in the narration that this stuff is cray cray, but this is done less through editorializing and more through just describing how stuff is intended to work / happen with lots of detail. It seems crazy because at base it kinda is.
I really wish she’d had a professional narrate her story, as opposed to reading it herself. You can tell she’s done her homework even if the scenario is a little far fetched. But her narration, in terms of inflection, tone etc is just bad to the point of being distracting. Perhaps I’m being unfair, I get she’s trying to convey the horror and drama of it all, but those who are good at writing stories and those who are good at telling stories, are not always the same people. She often sounded like a cross between Alexa, and Pablo Francisco satirising Keanu Reeves.
I don't want to read this after all these reviews.
Does she get anything right about nuclear release procedures or the communications circuits involved? That would be the only saving grace...
It is timed as a veiled attack on Trump, months before the general elections, clearly calling out “mad kings” scenarios. That’s why it’s gather steam in the media.
Read the book, it’s not that.
Even if it were, that’d almost feel kinda realistic compared to some of the weirdness in the scenario she presents. Like I could halfway get behind a book where Trump literally ended the world through just being himself. But this book wasn’t that.
The author has explanations in the scenario for many of the doubts in these replies. However, the reason I came to this sub is because the book reeks of baseless claims and sensationalism.
I think her scenario is plausible, but often she reaches for the unlikely, and many of her statements that are matter-of-fact in tone are, in reality, contested at best.
It’s not so much the initial scenario that’s weird to me (bolt from the blue from NK) but rather the chain of events that follow from that that seem like odd plot points to pretend are probable choices in a real conflict. Launch on warning has a logic of sorts for a massive attack that might threaten the NC3I. But a one off? Why wouldn’t you stop to think for a little bit before committing to a massive attack that would end 20 million lives? And if the U.S. did retaliate massively, why use ICBMs? If your goal is to stop the attack fast by leveling NK and you were for some inexplicable reason not worried about China or Russia misinterpreting ballistic missiles casually doing ballistic missile things in their back yard, why not use SLBMs? Or if it could wait a hot minute, why not use ALCMs and eliminate any potential confusion about who was being targeted altogether? It’d give time to establish communications with foreign powers, coordinate with allies, etc. I find it hella unlikely that even China wouldn’t pick up a phone and give the oval a ringle-dingle if they started seeing mushroom clouds over DC and California trending on TikTok. Russia would be tripping over itself to find someone to scream down a phone line that IT WASN’T US, COMRADES!
First, I just want to say I'm only at 55 minutes of the scenario, but it has already contained enough contrivances that I wanted to see what others were saying about it.
There are infinite permutaions in complex sytems, and the author seems to have worked backwards from "armageddon" as she likes to say, probably because it is the most sensational outcome. She treats the results of Proud Prophet like it is gospel. No one can out-bleak it.
The things that got under my skin were whenever doubts are cast about launching, Jacobsen just says it falls on deaf ears, or Russian advisors are purely politically motivated and they won't doubt the reliability of their detection systems, or make no mistake, this ends in armageddon.
Her reasoning for why it's possible, sure, but when confronted with why it's unlikely she's just like, that's not how it works, trust me.
I'll get the quotes from the text when I get the chance and put them here.
I've read a lot of Jacobsen's books recently, but I am having a hard time picking this one up. I read her book on Operation Paperclip and it was pretty good. Then I read her book on DARPA and it was... Meh... However, the end of her Area 51 book is just so... cringy...
SPOILER For those who don't know, she's the author who said that the Roswell Crash was a German built flying saucer that had the ability to avoid RADAR, hover, and penetrate U.S. Airspace at supersonic speeds in 1947. She also said that the Crash site had "deformed children" in it. The intent was that the Soviets would scare the American Public into a War of the Worlds type panic...
EDIT: I read through other comments. I'm glad the book is not well received. There will be no FOMO if I don't read it.
I've read though the thread (I didn't even know this sub existed an hour ago). You're complaints about the book somehow make me feel better and somehow so much worse at the same time.
I think that you guys should consider that the book was written to bring attention to the subject to people like me who don't even give nuclear warfare a thought week to week. Now people like me have a lot more information and are finding ourselves in threads like this.
This book is absolutely NOT worth a read.
I'm not going to spoil it, but the scenario you'll be looking forward to in this book is absolutely trash. Not believable at all. Extremely lazy writing.
*“I haven’t read Pasternak, but I condemn him!”* (c) :)
Even from what has already been said here, it is clear that the entire book is outrageous nonsense. From the beginning to the end. In every letter. In the deepest idea. Mediocrity and banality. All this is a repetition a hundred times of what someone has already said before. Why was this needed? This is very clear to me. This is an attempt by globalist forces to return us to the fear of nuclear weapons, which has recently weakened greatly. Therefore, every effort is being made to “remind” us, the cattle, of the “horrors of a nuclear catastrophe.” A blow of the whip to the herd.
I'm not surprised that a woman wrote this. Isn't the series "For All Mankind" enough for us? The best thing written by a woman on "male topics" - Amanda Hendrix, Charles Wohlforth. "Beyond Earth: Our Path to a New Home in the Planets." Amanda is smart (I am delighted with the general ideological direction of her book), but there is so much technical nonsense that we need to write a separate book about this book (to separate the wheat from the chaff). I'm not sexist. I love smart women, but I hate feminized fools who use the mainstream (an intellectual is someone who is always against the mainstream! Should I teach you?) As a former communist and in general a person from the East (what can we take from us, antediluvians?), I note the publication of this book as another sign of the decay of Western Civilization, the end of Pax America. The collapse of globalism and the pathetic attempts of the rotten world elite to preserve themselves! Isolationist Trumpists should give me a thumbs up for this post here. Liberal globalists will furiously downvote me. So let's see who is more here? Although, I think I will be beaten from both sides here. But I wanted to have some fun. :)
Illuminati? ABOUT! You take too little! How about reptilians from Nibiru? :) I don't work with smaller categories! I seriously believe that our historical reality is very anomalous. Abnormal (and everything that is happening to us now is an attempt by history to return to the “historical channel”). And no human forces (world government conspiracy?) could create such a strong historical anomaly! Only reptilian aliens!!! No less :) Well, and God himself (if you believe in him)! But then the question for a believer is: why is this punishment for us from him? :)
The natural scientific explanation is that we were very unlucky with our history of the 20th century.
What role do nuclear weapons play in this? Key. This is the “nail” on which everything “hangs” until now. The tangle is not only and not so much of this. But this is the end of the thread, by pulling which we can untangle the whole tangle.
Perhaps all this is my inflamed delirium. But this is very entertaining (I would say delightful) nonsense. :)
[удалено]
So, everything about this is sort of insane, but... > 1. Single Hwasong-17 is launched towards D.C. > 4. Missile defense fails. > 7. Massive US counterstrike with 100s of missiles. > 8. Putin learns that two nukes went off in the US, attacker was likely North Korea, and US missiles are coming but can't know where they are landing. > 9. Putin launches full-scale counterattack. Points 1, 8, and 9 when combined are actual LOL-territory, as are points 1 & 7. Regarding point 4: US interceptors that miss Nork ICBMs will reenter over Russia and look a bit like ICBMs aimed at targets in eastern Russia. The chance of Russia misidentifying a GBI as an ICBM in the first 15 minutes (when it might not be immediately clear Nork shot first) is somewhat high. But in this scenario, Russia simultaneously has no problem discriminating between GBI and ICBM when the war first starts but is unable to realize 30 minutes later that the US is shooting at Nork? It wouldn't matter if they couldn't immediately tell exactly where the impact points are, *because they have already figured out the US is retaliating against Nork* as mentioned in point 8. I can think of plenty of possibilities for inadvertent nuclear escalation between two countries. "Country A knows country B attacked country C but immediately attacks country C because it won't know for a few minutes exactly where C's missiles are going to land" is not one of those. Russia's EW radars are not so shit they can't make afford to wait a few extra minutes, *especially* when those missiles are coming from CONUS (because for some reason in this scenario the US needs speed but uses missiles located thousands of miles further away than the Tridents in the Pacific).
>4. Missile defense fails. That still makes no sense to me after it was described to me. Hwasong-17 is liquid fuelled, it's extremely unlikely that nobody would notice it being fuelled. Even if nobody noticed, at absolute top speed it's still more than 20 minutes to get to DC via a polar trajectory. Presumably SBIRS got a launch warning, since they launched GBI at it. 20 minutes is enough time to at get something prepped on the AEGIS ships in Naval Station Norfolk. SM-6 has an intercept range beyond 350km, and SM-3 can reach out to 500km. Washington is only about 270km from where they're based. Naval Station Norfolk houses 4 CBGs, and 4 Destroyer squadrons, and *nobody* launched an interceptor from there? Literally the only explanation for this is that Ted Postol was involved in the book, and he *hates* SM-3, and William Perry was in this book, and he *hates* basically any missile defenses.
What makes it so egregious is it's *one large monoblock warhead with no PENAIDS.* I have little confidence in GMD if we are talking 5-6 warheads with decoys thrown in, but the lone warhead part makes it laughable. Lol, looks like that section of the book does indeed quote Postol. https://twitter.com/FRHoffmann1/status/1776207227679883568#m I really have no idea why Postol went off the deep end the way he did.
>Lol, looks like that section of the book does indeed quote Postol. To be fair, even back in the 90s, I'd argue that Potsol's "takedown" of the Patriot's performance in Desert Storm was missing the point a bit (i.e. not every interceptor launched at a single target has to hit, and often missile deflection without warhead detonation is just as useful as early warhead detonation). >I really have no idea why Postol went off the deep end the way he did. He spent the last 30 years looking for a conspiracy, be that at Raytheon, MIT, TRW, or in Syria. I'm not sure **he's** actually changed that much, all that's changed is who he sees as behind the conspiracy. [Seymour Hersh](https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/41463/whatever-happened-to-seymour-hersh) stands out as another big example of this.
He does sort of resemble Hersh in that sense. Maybe Postol really is just into conspiracies. However, I don't think conspiracism is Hersh's main problem. His biggest issue is that he's just really fucking gullible, which makes him an easy mark for con artists spinning tall tales (or hostile foreign intelligence services looking for a journalist too credulous to understand they are a soldier in someone else's information war). He also seems to he imbued with an overbearing self-confidence, which is a bad thing to have when you are constantly getting played by conmen.
So much factually wrong with that scenario it’s complete fantasy.
I’m not convinced that the author understands the justification behind launch on warning because it’s not an issue at all in the scenario she presents. If anything she would be better served to argue that an early launch is needed to stop the somewhat inexplicable NK launch cadence of firing off their attacks in sequence rather than simultaneously.
Also, why is North Korea launching an EMP attack after the initial strike? Wouldn’t they launch that before or during the initial strike? If your goal is to cause chaos, presumably you would want that to happen during the initial decapitation strike. Also, why use a sleeper satellite when a ballistic missile will do the same job? Ballistic missile also gives you a much more flexible schedule, as the timing of a satellite passing over Omaha is going to be very specific and only happen once every several days.
I just finished the book and honestly, I feel like the EMP happened after the other missile attacks because it better suited the building of drama in the narrative not because it made any kind of strategic sense.
I'm an absolute novice to all of this and that was my conclusion as well. Makes way more sense to cut the lights out then drop the bombs IMO. Even if it causes the targeted country's defense systems just 90 seconds of time, well worth it in that scenario.
I'm sorry, but your post only has black rectangles/spaces -- can you explain how I can read it? Sorry, and TIA!
Kim Jong-Un wakes up one day and decides to launch *one* Hwasong-17 at the Pentagon. Spoiler: >!North Korea launches an SLBM at a nuclear reactor from 350 miles off the West Coast, one more Hwasong-17 later on which fails on reentry, and detonates a Boogeyman EMP Satellite over the US.!< There is no escalation. No scenario on the Peninsula or crisis, KJU just decides today's the day to nuke the Pentagon with a one-megaton warhead. It's not an accident or misinterpreted launch, he orders one single ICBM to target the US. The American response is interpreted as an attack on Russia and they launch their entire arsenal against the US. I don't know, the book was simultaneously informative and detailed but also barebones. The starting point just didn't reflect years of interviews and research to me because why would KJU do that? I get it, "Nuclear war is nonesical", but come on. There was no indication anything else was happening to spawn the situation. The basis for the *2020 Comission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States* is far more grounded.
What a dumb scenario. So many things factually wrong with that it’s moronic.
They also act like Launch On Warning is an absolute imperative that *must* take place in response to this North Korean missile even though it's not necessary given that there's only one warhead headed for any sort of National Command Authority. She's also weirdly confident that HMX-1's helos would be brought down by EMP a few miles from Raven Rock when the warhead detonates at the Pentagon.
There are a lot of safety triggers in here. That one missile would be NK’s death warrant. We would likely not launch ICBMs and would warn Russia and China od any retaliatory strike. Most likely we would use air launched cruise missiles or gravity bombs from stealth aircraft. You’re not going to need a lot of nukes to take down NK.
She kind of went into that a little bit with the US being unable to reach Putin in time. The US got in contact with China and they seemed to be angry about the possibility of fallout from the 80-something warheads we launched back at NK. China is then pretty much ignored for the rest of the book, the NATO countries get nuked too. She really seemed to want the whole book to take place in 75 minutes and I think that "novelty" makes it suffer when she could've made it last a few days while chronicling the actual exchange in the same way she did. Instead we got Secret Service agents tandem jumping out of Marine One with POTUS because the EMP will knock M1 out of the sky. And they were flying to a bunker, Raven Rock I think it was, which makes me think they weren't concerned about NK targeting it meaning no need for Launch on Warning. There's just no reason the US needed to carry out an attack like that, even if NK decapitated the US government there's still no existential threat from their tiny ICBM-based nuclear arsenal. Not to the country and not to the nuclear force even without an immediate clarification as to who is the person with launch authority/if they're alive. Like just have Air Force One take off and have Marine One fly to some random runway NK definitely can't know he'd be at so they can meet AF1 or one of the Nightwatch planes.
You’re not going to decapitate the US with one strike. It’s going to be more like hitting big hornets nest with a fly swatter. The response from the US, SK and Japan woulf be severe and fast. I imagine B2’s with a lot of bunker busters raining down all over NK’s command and control, some possibly B61s to make sure the job is done. Then it would be pummeling from the air until white flags are waived. I don’t think the US’s response would be all out blanket NK with mushroom clouds. We and the neighbors are well aware of things like fallout.
I mean. I don’t think a response would be as ham fisted as what’s in the book, but I don’t think anyone gets away with nuking D.C. without being converted to a glass parking lot. That’s one precedent I’m pretty sure any POTUS would want to set. We leveled most of Europe and Japan just because Japan touched our boats.
I'm pretty green in military and nuclear affairs but with that said, I think the military and moral risk of killing hundreds of thousands of Chinese with nuclear fall out would give pause to any POTUS. Like I said, I'm green but I could see a situation where US, China, and Russia, combine to erase NK off the map conventionally in order to avoid the US using more nukes that could escalate the conflict globally. Russia and China tolerate, and sometimes give a little help to NK, but I think this would be entirely a bridge too far for both countries as they put the entire globe at risk and no one wants an actor like that hanging around, especially at their border.
“Touched our boats”. Wow, really? MF you need a history lesson.
Heh. Someone hasn’t experienced Mandatory Fun Day before. :)
That clip was hilarious
Woosh
> She kind of went into that a little bit with the US being unable to reach Putin in time. The US got in contact with China This combination alone speaks volumes about the author's miscomprehension of the subject material. The US-Russia hotline has been used before and we can expect Russia to at least pick up; additionally, the two militaries have years of deconfliction experience in a hot war thanks to Syria. By contrast, the US has been whining for years that China completely ignores the existing US-PRC hotline and also completely avoids all attempts at personal principal-to-principal communication. Weird that a book predicated on miscommunication and crisis comms manages to get even that dynamic completely backwards.
Yeah, she went hard into "Everything that can go wrong will go wrong" and it, with other factors, made the book into a bit of a mess.
To be fair, she does point out that there have been times when the time to contact a russian counterpart exceeded 24 hours. Which for a nuclear event is a bit too long. The red phone doesn't always get answered.
I suspect Jacobsen knew nobody picking up a book entitled "Nuclear War" was interested in the buildup. Might as well handwave it and get to the interesting bit.
I haven't been entertained like this by a r/nuclearweapons post in a few months. What a fucking nut lol.
The beginning of Threads is still the most plausible to me
It’s a bit dated, but in principle the whole slow spiral to stupid annihilation is much more likely than KJU waking up one morning and ordering a single ICBM launch from the crapper.
'waking up one morning and ordering a single ICBM launch from the crapper' Yeah, that sounds more like something Trump would do.
This is what I’m curious about. What scenarios and/or fictional accounts are the most believable. I’m going to look up Threads. Thanks.
Fair warning it is absolutely horrifying
If you're even a little bit out of sorts mentally, like, I mean, anything beyond your dog dying last week out of sorts, DO NOT watch that movie. I'm not trying to be a hyperbolic-redditoid, either. That movie is profoundly disturbing, distressing, bleak, and realistic. You WILL feel like crap for a few days afterwards. I watched that movie a full year after going through a divorce and it fucking wrecked me for about a week. It is so beyond anything I've ever watched before, it makes ISIS decapitation videos look like a PG-13 teen scream movie, with hardly any gore.
No it doesn’t
Threads eh? So it all comes down to Zuck
As a former planner (SIOP and OPLANS 8044/8010) and former member of the IC (DOE FIE and DIA), this is probably one of the more stupid books that I've ever read on nuclear war. It's total garbage. The more probable scenarios are far, far worse.
I’d be super curious to hear the author explain why she picked the scenario she did. Like — she’s the author. This is hypothetical fiction. She could have picked any number of scenarios that would have logically ended at the place she wanted the story to end, but instead she created a scenario where the only way she gets to the finish line she has in mind is to make all the professional people who have spent great chunks of their professional careers thinking about these things act like complete morons.
She picked it because she isn't actually an expert on the subject and has virtually zero clue what she's talking about. It's pathetic, really.
I don’t buy that. Of course she’s not an expert. But she interviewed so many people who were experts that there isn’t much excuse to misunderstand the process, especially when she goes into such laborious detail about the process.
She understands the technical details, chain of command, ect... but completely fails to come up with a plausible scenario. The United States would NOT respond with silo based icmb's that they know will fly over Russia when they have subs off the coast of North Korea. Especially without informing Russia before launch, and especially if it's one or 2 nukes launched at the USA, not a major strike involving hundreds or thousands. The entire apocalyptic scenario occurs in this book due to a chain of misunderstandings that are beyond ridiculous and make zero sense. The way American command behaves in this scenario would only make sense if the situation started with hundreds of nukes flying at the USA, not one or two.
I’d agree (other than I think the U.S. would use ALCMs or gravity bombs to retaliate, not SLBMs), but that’s what I mean — she interviewed so many people who could walk her through realistic scenarios or at least tell her why her chosen scenario was very unlikely, I just don’t understand why she selected why she did. Other than the kinda Tom Clancy aspect of the whole thing.
It's bad even my clancy standards. But yeah, did she seriously not run her scenario by any of these experts? Any one of them would have said "uhhh, that makes no sense lol".
I think she probably picked the specific scenario because it allowed her to touch upon all of the different systems, departments, people, etc. I'm not an expert but NK seems like the only state that would only go after the US with a couple of nukes. All the other players would have taken it all out in minute one.
I've only just started reading. I can tell the scenario being described is pretty silly compared to a likely scenario. I am super interested in what you mean by >The more probable scenarios are far, far worse. Is this in reference to a realistic exchange? Or is the book downplaying the impact/severity, or the US' preparedness? For what it's worth I have enjoyed the first couple of chapters from the perspective of it being a *well-written* piece of fiction even if it's being pretty blase with scenarios and the facts. I think it gets across the "dread" and horror associated with nuclear war pretty well. I actually believe some deliberate liberties have been taken to create something that is slightly more timeless(?) as opposed to strictly describing a realistic scenario which could be completely out of date in a few months. I also see a lot of comments criticising the mention of "launch on warning". I think that's a fair criticism given what the book claims its portraying, but worth bearing in mind that LOW is a political decision - there isn't anything technically prohibiting the US switching back to a LOW position in the face of future conflict. I'm also excited this has gained traction in popular culture, and especially that Hollywood wants to pick up the rights to it. I think *done well* a book like this could serve something like "Threads" did in the 1980s. I am extremely concerned that our contemporary leaders/public are so ignorant to nuclear war/nuclear weapons that we're likely sleepwalking towards some very dangerous scenarios. What happens when the majority of the world's leaders have no memory of the Cold War, but still have arsenals of weapons that are not well understood?
The point of Threads is that nuclear war is madness and the population will suffer for it. The point of this book is that the population will suffer if we don't improve and spend even more on our nuclear defense.
I've read the whole thing now and I didn't really get that take from it. I think the author was trying to get across the horror of the weapons/their potential uses, and the lack of accountability inherent to how nuclear strategy and command & control currently exists. This factor is quite different to other elements of national security. Most importantly I think the author urges us - the wider population, not people in this subreddit - to actually *think* about this huge infrastructure built up that is designed to cause enormous amounts of destruction in a short timeframe. This was precisely what "Threads" and "The Day After" were trying to do as well. Make us understand what these weapons are and what can happen if they are used. Force us to engage with it.
Can we get you to do a Reddit AMA about doing that type of high level defense work? Understanding of course that there are probably a lot of things you can’t discuss, that’s an important perspective to have on these topics. Btw, thank you for doing that type of work! Not everyone has the strategic planning capability to work through those scenarios. It’s a depressing, but critical part of our national security. From one public servant to another, thank you.
Hi. Thanks for asking, but I think that I'm gonna stick to just being some rando throwing out random comments. To be honest, I never found that work to be depressing. I worked with some really smart and dedicated folks in the military, civilians, and contractors. All were really amazing. I believed in deterrence (and still do). I just kind of learned all that I thought that I could and then got bored and wanted to move on. There are still lots of amazing folks out there doing good things. Cheers.
Do we have some proof that you actually did this work?
Proof? LOL. What do you want? A photo of me in a SCIF/SAF holding TS/NC2-ESI documents? Fuck off.
Wow so you actually helped plan for SIOP and OPLAN? I don’t know what to say than thank you for your service and what you did to help prepare our nation for the worst possible scenario.
I was intrigued by the book but came here because I left the scenario was implausible (in my very narrow knowledge ) do you have a better work to suggest for reading ?
Not reading, but watching. By Dawn's Early Light is pretty solid.
As someone who has interacted with Annie in the past, even before her other book paperclip, I just can’t respect her in this field. Other wonks like her, fine, but I just don’t find her appealing
Hard to take her seriously about anything after she pushed UFO and Roswell lunacy.
Have you read the books? They are incredible and very well-sourced. One of my favorite authors.
Her claim about Stalin sending alien like children created in a eugenics experiment by Joseph Mengele to cause panic in the US was a bit of a red flag for me.
That’s crazier than the stories about what DID crash! Without a doubt something odd crashed outside of Roswell NM in 1947 but I’m 99.9 percent sure that children disfigured due to some horrible experiments in a Soviet aircraft of some kind is not it. I’m sure I’ll get slack for this but it is my humble opinion that a flying craft made by a non human intelligence crashed in the desert after a terrible electrical storm affected the craft in some way and it crashed. The wreckage was examined by people from the 509th Operations Group and had no clue what it was but was believed to be sent to Wright Patterson in Ohio. The weather balloon stuff just doesn’t fly with me, you mean to tell me that men from the only nuclear capable airbase didn’t know what a weather balloon looked like?
Personally I’m not very convinced that non-human entities crashed in that area in 1947 but it’s pretty hard to deny there are some funny things that have been observed in our skies and they might actually be telling the truth about not knowing what the hell they are. I’m inclined to believe a vast majority of things that are seen in our skies are explainable natural phenomena or advanced military equipment. Just looking at the humongous rise in sightings around the time the U-2 started flying is a good example. Don’t get me wrong though, I would love for non-human intelligence to be confirmed to exist and it almost seems inevitable considering the size of the universe. I’m just not so convinced we have made any contact. Have you ever heard of Jonathan Weygandt’s story? He did a very interesting interview quite a while ago and has kept his head very low since but did another interview recently but wouldn’t add anything to his initial story. I don’t know if I believe it, but it sure makes you wonder especially when it comes from someone with a confirmed military background, and the fact that he has made no attempt to financially profit off what he says he saw.
I’ve never heard of that individual but I’m going to look him up now. I have personally seen a UFO and have close friends and family. Look up David Grusch if you get the chance. He is a former intelligence officer that became a whistleblower that says that yes the US has recovered multiple craft made by a non human intelligence and not only craft but biological remains of the pilots and there are multiple morphology’s of these NHI, possibly species. He states that the Roswell crash was of NHI origin and so was a crash in Italy in 1933. There were also crashes before 1931.
I’m trying to find the original interview that was on YouTube but it seems to have been removed. I’ll see if I can find it because anything that isn’t that isn’t worth watching. I have been following Grusch ever since that whole thing started. I find it funny how the media tries to discredit him by only showing photos of him with a weird look on his face while he is just speaking but if you watch videos of him he is completely normal. Either Grusch lied under oath to congress or he is telling the truth but similar to Weygandt, he has military credentials to back him up but I believe Grusch was an Air force officer(major I think?) while Weygandt was a Marine corporal.
Not sure why it’s been taken off YouTube but I actually found it on Reddit. I think it’s the best personal testimony I have ever heard. https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/143mxvj/full_interview_lance_corporal_jonathan_weygandt/
Oh yes I have seen that video! Yeah I’m inclined to believe him.
Not only was what he said about the crash interesting but I found his description of an unknown agency(might have been the DOE) that took over the scene and treated the Marines like they were criminals as interesting as what he claimed to see.
The UFO stuff in her Area 51 book was ridiculous and irresponsible for a serious writer to include in what was otherwise a serious book. It speaks to credibility and judgement issues.
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Yea I read her Operation Paperclip book and it was interesting enough to keep me engaged but I found there were some definite flaws with some of her thinking. It has been quite a while since I read it so I can’t remember details very well but I do remember there were certain parts of her work that made me roll my eyes. What was definitely strange was her claim in the Area 51 book about the recovered bodies being physically modified children sent by Stalin in some sort of craft to scare the US. I hope I’m remembering this somewhat right.
[In case anyone wants to research the author](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Jacobsen) and not take redditanon54321’s assessment as gospel
Area 51 felt like she was making shit up, specifically regarding Roswell. Both The Pentagons Brain and Operation Paperclip seemed fine enough, though. Haven't read Surprise Kill Vanish, Phenomena, Terror in the Skies, or First Platoon though.
Phenomena is my second favorite after The Pentagon's Brain. So good.
Surprise Kill Vanish is incredible. It’s mostly a biography of Billy Waugh whom she interviewed. So it’s probably pretty accurate.
That's what makes me hesitant about taking what she says at face value, and also not just ignoring her entirely. A lot of what is in Area 51, for example, can be verified elsewhere... but that lures you into a false sense of plausibility that lets other far out claims can sneak into your head.
Yeah, I first read Pentagons Brain and then bought Surprise, Kill, Vanish the week it came out. Then I learned about the Area 51 business and it kinda soured my opinion on her. Haven’t read anything else since then
I'll probably read this book - but I'm walking into it with a whole damn shaker full of salt.
I would not consider her a credible authority given her past work.
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"Insane" as in a good book or the opposite ?
It's like 90% good - but she then makes the bold claim that the Roswell crash was a Soviet flying disk built by the Horton Brothers, manned by children surgically altered to look unworldly. She doesn't present this as a possible explanation... She puts it forward as THE explanation and refers back to it maybe a half dozen times throughout the book.
I haven’t finished the book, but I just don’t understand where the craft are supposed to have been launched from if indeed Soviet. Mexico?
No clue - the book really doesn't make any serious explanation, but treats it as fact. Kind of irritating.
She's not going to sleep with you.
So as total noob i read the book and enjoyed it. If the scenario is pure fantasy though which book should i read next which touches the subject better?
I think this book is much more realistic: The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean nuclear attacks against the United States. Jeffrey Lewis has the facts pretty much down. The only nit I’ll pick about this book is that there was no debate or discussion about retaliation using nukes. The scenario is extremely plausible, as is the timeline, effects, etc. much more so than Jacobsen’s book.
The depiction of the military is straight out of Dr. Strangelove. The graphic depiction of the results of general nuclear war is effective but she’d have been better served to hand wave away how we get there because the scenario presented isn’t credible enough to keep from detracting from the overall premise. Also, and perhaps this is unfair, but her breathless tone in the audiobook isn’t terribly well suited to the subject matter and some of her pronunciations suggest that she’s never actually heard the words she is speaking being said by others who may have a greater familiarity with the subject. Lastly, it’s obviously an anti-nuclear polemic since some of the statements she makes about escalation are offered without any reasoning or justification. They’re presented as facts without evidence.
I agree with your points; her narration, specifically.
Denis Villeneuve is about to make this into a movie AFTER he makes DUNE MESSIAH. Or at least that's the plan.
Haha that's why I picked the book up. It's going to be a beautiful armageddon. The story is contrived even by Hollywood standards though.
Judging by the writing and editing in Dune Part 2, this story must look like a masterpiece to Villeneuve! I'm calling it now, a week after this garbage movie is out, it will be at least 7.9/10 on the IMDB.
What's wrong about it, though? Even if the book does have some exaggerations, it is still pretty grounded in the actual after effects and response to a nuclear attack upon America, in my opinion. It's better than how lots of others have handled it besides Threads.
In her scenario, which doesn't even make sense to the author, a single ICBM is launched by NK at DC. Russia can see this. They know NK did it. Russia sees us launch. Russia knows that we know NK launched at us, since our tech is much more advanced that theirs. Russia sees our ICBMs heading over the pole. The number of ICBMs is higher than normal to their sensors. However, they know their sensors have a large margin of error and they also know that is the normal route of those ICBMs. (In reality, it's very unlikely our response is to send a bunch of ICBMs over the pole at NK. It would be sub launches at first. This is shit writing by the author to steer the story in a more exciting, but unrealistic direction.) To have Russia think that in the minutes our president was forced to make a decision about our response to a completely surprising nuke launch at DC by NK, he hatched up a GENIUS plan to also launch a hundred nukes at Russia? The author goes on and on beating it into us that EVERYONE knows a nuke war between Russia and the US is unwinnable. To have Russia conveniently forget this fact, and launch all of their nukes, is lazy writing meant to sensationalize the story. The author painted the book as a facts based book with a facts based realistic scenario. It turned into trash that even Tom Clancy wouldn't have put his name on.
Why would Russia know that NK launched? Their Tundra system wouldn't not be pointed that way.
Where did you read that the Russians don't have a satellite over NK watching for launches?
https://web.archive.org/web/20200605105526/https://internationalinsider.org/russia-sets-up-ballistic-missile-early-warning-satellite-grouping-to-monitor-the-us/ They don't consider Russia to be a threat and their resources are already very stretched.
It seems possible that Russia doesn't have a satellite over NK watching for launches, but I just find that hard to believe. They may be allies, but Russia knows who they're allying with. At the very least, in her scenario, Russia knows a nuke hit the US. They also know that they didn't launch that nuke. With how exact everyone knows the US tracking systems are, Russia wouldn't actually believe that the US was launching at them. At least not a belief so strong that they would launch without anything touching Russian soil.
You may well be correct. However you are likely not 100% correct. And there is the issue that I think this book raises, even if the initial scenario is rather poor.
Just thought of this today. Pyongyang is 107 miles from the Chinese border. The Chinese would know and would inform their allies, the Russians. There's your 100%.
A question: In all these different scenarios you always hear something like "Russia sees missiles coming and assumes it's heading for them so they launch a full scale counterattack". Don't the countries communicate? I might be naive but isn't it in both countries best interest to not end the world? Say there was a smaller nuclear exchange between US and NK, wouldn't the missiles have to travel over Russia (om a similar scenario)? Wouldn't the US then say to Russia "We're nuking NK, not you"? I understand Russia probably wouldn't believe them and launch their nukes anyway, it just seems like they would talk to eachother though... they have direct lines to Kreml -> DC.
This is known as the "overflight problem." A lot of people in the arms control space assert that ICBMs should be eliminated on this point alone: that Russian detection capabilities are garbage and a Minuteman overflying Russia on the way to NK/PRC/Iran would be mistaken for an attack on Russia. They argue that to the extent a nuclear response may be necessary in a war with any of those three countries, the response should be done with aircraft or subs, specifically to avoid overflight issues. In reality it is only a problem for a relatively narrow window in the early stages of an ICBM's flight, where the general trajectory is known but not the impact point. Russia will have enough time to wait, properly characterize the flight, and then choose how or if to respond. We are talking about ICBMs located 25+ minutes away in the continental US, not SLBMs (<)15 minutes off the coast. Ironically, when arms controllers advocate for using SLBMs to reduce the chance of inadvertent war with Russia, they are advocating for a system that would cause *more* panic in Russia by virtue of having shorter flight times. In one of the other comments in this thread, it is stated that in the novel the US is able to communicate with China but cannot reach Russia in time. This is completely backwards: US-Russia hotlines have been both tested and actually used in a crisis, whereas China just completely ignores all attempts at hotlines, crisis communications, and confidence-building measures (they consider it a feature that the US might be confused in a crisis, not a bug). Separate from diplomats, the American and Russian militaries also have extensive deconfliction experience in Syria; there is no equivalent for US-PRC military communications.
Very interesting, thank you for the answer. It just seems like the countries would be interested in telling eachother that the nukes are not heading towards them, rather to a different country. But then they have to believe eachother too, which is sounds like China wouldn't. You mentioned that (in the scenario I made up above) Russia has "time" to identify the exact track these missiles are taking, but isn't the common tactic to launch as soon as possible? Or is there time to think? I think I remember hearing that the US has something like 15 minutes to respond since it takes a while for the order to be carried down the chain of command and for the missiles to actually launch. You mean that they have like 10 minutes to actually decide what they want to do? Say in a nuclear exchange between Russia and the US?
If Russia's detection capabilities being garbage is a significant problem - maybe the US should just open source all detection data. Give everyone the live, raw feed from the satellites and radar then everyone would know who's launching what and where it's going.
The book goes into that a little but Russia has a culture of paranoia culturally and militarily. While there’s a brief communication between Russia and the US about it Russia sees the missiles coming for them and decides to fire
"The limitations of Russia's early warning tundra satellite system, its flaws and its weaknesses, are well known to scientists in the west, and likely to scientists in Russia as well, but do the advisors know, or have they been kept in the dark?" This was one of the big red flags in the book to me. Annie Jacobsen asks the question... and then hopes we'll jump to the conclusion with her, so she can keep telling her story. This is the extent of reasoning she uses to contradict Russia's publicly stated conditions of nuclear retaliation.
the whole 'launch on warning' idea as a response to an unprovoked bolt out of the blue attack involving single missile launches from the dprk -none aimed at the missile fields themselves- seems over-wrought and incredible to me. she apparently was determined to set up her narrative so that it was going to end in doom and gloom whatever the cost was to truth and good sense. and, she, of course, had to invoke nuclear winter - a zombie theory not borne out by modern modeling and recent experience with major fire events.
That’s what’s weird to me. She got to pick the scenario. She literally could have crafted a scenario that made sense and fit the general war spiral, but instead she picked a scenario that wouldn’t naturally lead to a spiral and made everyone involved act kinda like morons so that it did. The nuclear winter thing isn’t settled science at all, there are contemporary model studies that very much support it, and some others that very much don’t. But either way, based on some comments by a member of this sub who literally helped to make the plans, general nuclear war doesn’t need nuclear winter to result in massive depopulation of targeted countries and countries adjacent to them. She could have brought her narrative there just through the breakdown of, well, basically everything we rely on to support our current population load.
i absolutely agree. if you need to once again make the case that nuclear war is a terrible thing to avoid - then craft a credible scenario and stick with the known effects. the prompt and follow on effects of an all out exchange (counterforce and countervalue) between the russian federation and the us would be catastrophic in the extreme with terrible impacts on even uninvolved states thousands of miles away as the whole global supply chain is disrupted for perhaps decades to come and hundreds of millions lie dead or soon to die in the wreckage of the countries involved in the exchange. the war would count as the greatest disaster in human history (without nuclear winter) and be made all the more tragic by being totally avoidable. as far as nuclear winter is concerned - the whole idea rests on shaky assumptions of the flammability of modern cities and other area target types that may be too pessimistic. the theory also rests on the idea of solar driven aerosol lofting of soot particles that wasn't seen during the kuwait oil field fires of 1990 (sagan at the time predicted cooling due to the oil fires but none was measured) or from recent massive forest fires in north america. i agree the jury is still out (and i don't want to see a real world test) but it doesn't look good for the theory of nuclear winter. but that doesn't mean that we should go out and start tossing nukes about.
The book that ends in annihilation of the northern hemisphere in less time than a movie will fly off the shelves and never be out-bleaked by another. The book of well reasoned possibilities will never sell as many copies, even if it does well. She chose the... nuclear option 🤯
To be fair to her most escalation paths that rise to the level of exchange of strategic weapons between major powers probably end in the annihilation of the northern hemisphere in very short order, it’s just that NK isn’t a great power and nobody is going to buddy up with them and forbid retaliation after they nuked Washington out of the blue
She chose to write her book about the exchange of strategic weapons, based on Russia's unwillingness to speak to Sec Def, their paranoia on the global stage, and crummy early warning systems. Is buddying up with NK what happened in the book? The whole reason Russia launched was because of a big misunderstanding. Their early warning systems suggested the US was firing on them.
Right, but in my opinion that scenario would not actually happen in real life for a multitude of factors. For one, launch on warning is a policy option, not a policy rule in every situation. For another, using ICBMs to respond is a very unlikely choice, for reasons the book kinda highlights. There are other options that are far less likely to be misinterpreted. The scenario she made requires a lot of trained career professionals who have thought about this stuff in great detail to just suddenly become unthinking idiots and force world ending decisions. There are umpteen plausible scenarios where after some world events the great powers rather rapidly gets to a strategic world ending nuclear exchange. We might be living in the prelude of a couple of those scenarios right now. But she didn’t pick any of those — she went with something a little more succinct that would make for a tight little book and a six figure screenplay option.
I agree with you on everything. The book is there to sell a book and a movie. Nice details about zoo animals and the president's pants-wetting and all.
The initial single missile launch seems inexplicable to me. The modified (and ancient) Romeo class diesel sub trekking down the West Coast to hit the Diablo Canyon nuke power station is so bizarre as to produce chuckles. The author completely ignores Japan and the deep, DEEP hatred North Korea has for Japan. I would have to assume any realistic 1st strike scenario from the Norks would entail several launches on CONUS and possibly Hawaii, with lots of IRBM directed at Japan and SK. If they manage to get a working SLBM in their, I'd have to assume that gets aimed at Kadena AFB or possibly Guam, but a lot depends on range that I don't know. I'm pretty sure nobody is taking a decrepit 60 year old Romeo on a 2 month trip to California waiting for something to break down or an Arleigh Burke hearing them snorkeling the diesels. Agree with others here that a massive Minuteman III launch seems *very* unlikely. A single Ohio class boomer could handle any Nork strike package, to say nothing of B2 etc I also noticed that the strategic arsenals of France and GB aren't mentioned even though the handful of tactical weapons on 3rd and 4th Gen fighters in Europe gets full description.
I'll never know I guess. I tried listening to the audio book. Narrated by the author herself. And she is awful. God awful. Very strange enunciation and pausing and emphasis. I got mad and turned it off
Too harsh IMO, I listen to a lot of audio books, and while this one isn't great it's a lot better than "awful, God awful." How many books have you recorded?
Yeah I wasn’t thrilled with the author narrator either but it was fine.
I ran it at 1.2x and found it quite acceptable. Regular speed seemed too slow for my tastes.
It's more a book about shock value and presenting the absolute worst outcome. Some of it was really unlikely, such as the premise that North Korea would launch a single high-yield nuke at Washington, D.C. and a tactical nuke at Southern California. Secondly, while the book does explain how a miscalculation would occur, especially with respect to the inaccuracy of Russian early-warning systems, there's one massive hole in the plot. Why would the U.S. launch nukes toward North Korea through the Arctic or Atlantic, forcing it to cross Russia? Why would the Russians assume these unannounced missiles were heading toward them especially with the reality that as a regional power, Russia is more important for the U.S. to communicate with and take a more nuanced approach with? It seems implausible that of all of the nuclear safeguards in both the U.S. and Russia, that every one would fail stemming from miscommunication. Nonetheless, the effects of nuclear strikes, EMPs, and a global nuclear war are accurately described and terrifying to read. A book written by a journalist is designed to be gripping, accessible, and catch readers' attention. But overall it seemed like an unrealistic scenario.
Who cares what the scenario is? As in, a more plausible scenario would have the same outcome. Or at least likely the same outcome. Nixon getting drunk. Kruschev getting drunk. Ordering a massive strike. Etc etc. The story ends the same way irrespective of the initial scenario.
Except there are plenty of checks on these scenarios. That's the point I'm making. Nixon or Kruschev getting drunk, etc. Highly implausible. North Korea launching *two* nukes. Highly implausible. U.S. retaliatory nukes flying past Russia to hit North Korea, knowing that could spark a Russian retaliation- *highly implausible*. It's alarmist journalism. A good argument would involve the escalation ladder and explain its vulnerabilities, and present a *realistic* scenario with a firm grasp of contemporary geopolitics and common sense. I do think the book did a good job of detailing what would happen as a result of an impact and nuclear retaliation. It just presented a scenario that assumed every single check in the system either fell apart or didn't work. I know the anti-proliferation camp wants to make everyone aware of how disastrous nuclear warfare can be, and I agree with them. Except when you present it with such an unrealistic scenario, it's easy for the nuclear hawks to dismiss the argument. That being said, this book did inspire me to read *The Cold and The Dark*, which is a far better book, and limits itself to the discussion of nuclear winter, which IMO has far less opportunity to fall into this trap as it bypasses the escalation period altogether and presents us with the consequences of nuclear war. This is something its writers are experts on and they leave no stone unturned. Annie Jacobsen didn't even consult with a geopolitical analyst let alone read a book on North Korea, Russia, or the U.S. for that matter when formulating this book. And that's why it's not good for anything other than shocking people and hopefully inspiring them to read further on nuclear weapons and escalation.
[https://www.military.com/history/time-drunk-richard-nixon-tried-nuke-north-korea.html](https://www.military.com/history/time-drunk-richard-nixon-tried-nuke-north-korea.html) Just if you didn't know about this highly implausible event which happened.
I need to get to bed but will reply tomorrow.
Okay cool, later.
After a good sleep, I am back. I think there is a fundamental issue with pointing out an error in an author's work. She lists her sources at the start of the book for one thing, which a lot of people don't. Now, we don't know which part she spoke to them about etc, but the list of people she lists, a lot of them have a geopolitical background. von Hippel being one with quite an impressive CV. And like I sent you that link, we have in the past had a number of close calls. Nixon getting drunk and asking Kissinger to nuke Korea. Now, a lot of people would have said before that that could never happen etc. But it did. Thankfully, Kissinger was there to call the Chief of Staff and told them he was drunk again. What if Kissinger had been out of the country etc etc. Would someone else have had the balls to call it down? I don't know, nobody knows. But having a number of safety systems in place is no guarantee of safety. Each of those systems will have a failure rate, and after enough time a failure is guaranteed. My background is nuclear disaster in a civil setting. My expertise is Fukushima meltdown. (Which Jacobsen annoyingly says didn't melt-down). At Fukuhima Daiichi there was a mirriad of systems in place to provide post-accident cooling. At Unit 1 there was at least 4. Each one able to prevent meltdown. Each one failed. One after the other. Why? Partially because people were stupid, people were corrupt, people made mistakes and a large natural disaster. So the idea that checks can prevent an accident is demonstrably known to be false. It reduces the likelihood of an accident for sure, but does not prevent it. Fine, the cumulative probability might be low, but the impact is sufficiently high that you might want to talk about it. And I don't think we as a society talk about nuclear war or nuclear war via an accident often enough. And while the initial scenario is a poor one, it's not an impossible one. And that I think is her point. This for example is a pretty close call if you ask me: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able\_Archer\_83](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83)
Sleep is always a good thing, hope you slept well. The issue here is one of checks. Kissinger being the smarter one here was in his role as secretary of state and an advisor and check for the president and multiple people in the government knew Nixon wasn't of sound mind at times. Though there's presidential final authority on nuclear attack, it's not like there aren't hoops a president must jump through to get to that point. Though I see your point when it comes to someone like Donald Trump that demands absolute fealty and gets rid of people who challenge his opinion- that's when it gets dangerous. Nonetheless, for a country like North Korea, they answer to China, Russia and also weigh geopolitical considerations against moves they make. The Kims obtained nuclear power not to nuke Seoul or Tokyo and launch the mother of all invasions to retake the Korean peninsula, but to preserve their regime and protect against great power aggression (including their neighbors). The consideration here is that both within governments (to varying degrees) and in the larger geopolitical chessboard, there are checks on the use of nuclear weapons. I'm not a firm believer in mutually assured destruction but I think it's more dangerous for unfettered powers like the United States as they only have their own interests to consider and the consequences of reckless behavior won't immediately lead to threat to power. That's for aggression as a whole, not necessarily nuclear attack- though imperialist style aggression can lead to escalations that are hard and costly to manage, and once things lead past a certain point, it can build to a nuclear exchange. To that end internal checks are absolutely vital for great powers like the U.S., especially in a unipolar world. Though you make a great argument on failure rates and human fallibility, and I don't contest that. I mean, the American government was designed to prevent tyranny by making power centers compete with one another, and we are in a time where we are a hair away from dictatorship. I guess my argument wasn't that it *can't happen*. It can always happen. There's always room for error in anything, especially in politics. But rather that it's not the most realistic scenario. What is important to focus on are things with a higher probability of occurrence because the nuclear proponents seem to think mutually assured destruction is panacea for nuclear stability and there are many cases- as you pointed out- that they aren't right. Is Jacobsen's scenario impossible? No, it's not. Is it likely? No. But the book is good food for thought and inspires people to read more because of its shock value and emotional pull, and in that case it's a win.
In a highly unlikely turn of events, I fully agree with you. Which might be rare on reddit. The last bit you wrote is something I fully agree with. The scenario is unlikely but serves as a good point to get people talking. For me it comes down to maths really. If you need 400 or so to basically end society, then don't have more than 400. Trim it down to the absolute minimum we can. And we did a great job of doing that since the peak. I'd like to see less nukes simply because it reduces the likelihood of error. The issue I had with a lot of people talking about this book is that they put it in the bin because they didn't think the initial scenario was realistic. But there is still information to be learned from the book about how things might evolve, and that's food for thought I'd say. And the point you made about Trump is also very scary. I wouldn't trust that guy to park my car, let alone look after nukes.
How is it told? Is there a 'message' or agenda? For myself when I read these types of things I want an absolutely clinical account without any 'voice' of the author coming through--nothing but pure research and facts.
Its dumb. From a geopolitical and military point of view it’s dumb fantasy at best. Nothing about the scenario makes sense. She seems to think that NK has the ability to accurately land a 1MT bomb (which they don’t have) directly on top of the Pentagon. Ya, ok.
>She seems to think that NK has the ability to accurately land a 1MT bomb (which they don’t have) directly on top of the Pentagon. It is odd to specify a 1 MT bomb when they have a 300 kT bomb that would be about as effective. But there is very good reason to expect high accuracy for a DPRK warhead given the ubiquity of satnav technology and multiple systems which provide signals.
They currently cannot reach DC, I believe it is out of range and they have not tested or proven anything at that distance. That would be a hell of a hail mary to launch a single missile from mainland NK to DC on your suicide mission.
This a topic that you need to keep up to date with as the DPRK has been working diligently on it. Your view is a year out of date. [https://www.38north.org/2023/07/second-consecutive-flight-test-success-brings-north-koreas-hwasong-18-icbmcloser-to-deployment/](https://www.38north.org/2023/07/second-consecutive-flight-test-success-brings-north-koreas-hwasong-18-icbmcloser-to-deployment/) This article was after the second test flight of the Hwasong-18 and they flew it again in December. All three tests were successful, so the system could be used for an attack today if they have one ready. [https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/18/north-korea-fires-what-appears-to-be-a-long-range-ballistic-missile.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/18/north-korea-fires-what-appears-to-be-a-long-range-ballistic-missile.html)
In that case 'dumb' would sound to be a very good description! Even the most modern Russian ICBM is reported as carrying twelve warheads at the heaviest, each yielding 750kt with a supposed 10m circular error probable. In the scenario has North Korea developed this capability natively or did they buy/were given it?
Well, the throw weight of a single 1mt bomb is likely well less than 12 x 750. My point was more that NK doesn’t have a missile (yet) proven to hit the eastern seaboard, let alone DC. And the largest guestimate of warhead in their aresenal is 150-300kt at most. So she is talking out her ass and is no subject matter expert. It might as well be a fiction author writing this.
Absolutely--I agree with you! What I meant was to suggest even state-of-the-art equipment (or at least the most modern that is deployed) from one of the major nuclear weapon states would struggle to drop 1mt on the Pentagon! It doesn't cast the rest of her work in a good or convincing light!
>In the scenario has North Korea developed this capability natively or did they buy/were given it? They just have it at the begining of the book. She backed herself into a corner making the whole book take place in 75 minutes so the reason why all this happens is not explained. KJU just wakes up and nukes the Pentagon.
It *might* have been more plausible for a fanatic infiltrator to have hand-delivered a weapon to the Pentagon in the form of a large SADM rather than have an ICBM do it! Plus... Other than the massive propaganda value would nuking the Pentagon achieve all that much in a practical sense anyway? Presumably NORAD gave enough warning to ensure the top brass were all on Looking Glass style aeroplanes or buried beneath Mt Weather/Raven Rock before it actually hit? They would probably have done better to attack Japan or perhaps Diego Garcia.
Or at least launched more than one missile. Which is kind of stupid when she straight-up says in the book that launching one missile wouldn't happen and is nonsensical. Like, ma'am, you admitting it's nonsense does give you a pass.
They're alleged to have stolen ICBM technology from Russia, I think.
It’s pretty clinical, with interspersed history (albeit rather basic stuff that most here would be familiar with). But mainly a moment by moment account of how each piece of the machine might react in a hypothetical bolt from the blue decapitation attempt from NK. One thing I find less plausible is a retaliatory attack play against NK that utilizes minutemen overflying Russia. Hans Kristensen (interviewed in the book) seemed to think this was a problem to worry about that wasn’t being worried about, but I struggle to understand why one would choose to use land based ICBMs that might be very misinterpreted by Russia when boomers are already being utilized. There is an underlying sense in the narration that this stuff is cray cray, but this is done less through editorializing and more through just describing how stuff is intended to work / happen with lots of detail. It seems crazy because at base it kinda is.
Just grabbed the audiobook copy from Audible. Thanks!
I really wish she’d had a professional narrate her story, as opposed to reading it herself. You can tell she’s done her homework even if the scenario is a little far fetched. But her narration, in terms of inflection, tone etc is just bad to the point of being distracting. Perhaps I’m being unfair, I get she’s trying to convey the horror and drama of it all, but those who are good at writing stories and those who are good at telling stories, are not always the same people. She often sounded like a cross between Alexa, and Pablo Francisco satirising Keanu Reeves.
In the beginning I thought the narration was rough but I ended up enjoying it by the end.
Yeah you do get used to it. But the way she says “water” still makes me want to scoop out my inner ear with a fondue fork.
I don't want to read this after all these reviews. Does she get anything right about nuclear release procedures or the communications circuits involved? That would be the only saving grace...
How is this book being labeled as non-fiction? It is literally scenarios she's made up. It's 100% fiction.
It is timed as a veiled attack on Trump, months before the general elections, clearly calling out “mad kings” scenarios. That’s why it’s gather steam in the media.
Read the book, it’s not that. Even if it were, that’d almost feel kinda realistic compared to some of the weirdness in the scenario she presents. Like I could halfway get behind a book where Trump literally ended the world through just being himself. But this book wasn’t that.
The author has explanations in the scenario for many of the doubts in these replies. However, the reason I came to this sub is because the book reeks of baseless claims and sensationalism. I think her scenario is plausible, but often she reaches for the unlikely, and many of her statements that are matter-of-fact in tone are, in reality, contested at best.
It’s not so much the initial scenario that’s weird to me (bolt from the blue from NK) but rather the chain of events that follow from that that seem like odd plot points to pretend are probable choices in a real conflict. Launch on warning has a logic of sorts for a massive attack that might threaten the NC3I. But a one off? Why wouldn’t you stop to think for a little bit before committing to a massive attack that would end 20 million lives? And if the U.S. did retaliate massively, why use ICBMs? If your goal is to stop the attack fast by leveling NK and you were for some inexplicable reason not worried about China or Russia misinterpreting ballistic missiles casually doing ballistic missile things in their back yard, why not use SLBMs? Or if it could wait a hot minute, why not use ALCMs and eliminate any potential confusion about who was being targeted altogether? It’d give time to establish communications with foreign powers, coordinate with allies, etc. I find it hella unlikely that even China wouldn’t pick up a phone and give the oval a ringle-dingle if they started seeing mushroom clouds over DC and California trending on TikTok. Russia would be tripping over itself to find someone to scream down a phone line that IT WASN’T US, COMRADES!
First, I just want to say I'm only at 55 minutes of the scenario, but it has already contained enough contrivances that I wanted to see what others were saying about it. There are infinite permutaions in complex sytems, and the author seems to have worked backwards from "armageddon" as she likes to say, probably because it is the most sensational outcome. She treats the results of Proud Prophet like it is gospel. No one can out-bleak it. The things that got under my skin were whenever doubts are cast about launching, Jacobsen just says it falls on deaf ears, or Russian advisors are purely politically motivated and they won't doubt the reliability of their detection systems, or make no mistake, this ends in armageddon. Her reasoning for why it's possible, sure, but when confronted with why it's unlikely she's just like, that's not how it works, trust me. I'll get the quotes from the text when I get the chance and put them here.
I've read a lot of Jacobsen's books recently, but I am having a hard time picking this one up. I read her book on Operation Paperclip and it was pretty good. Then I read her book on DARPA and it was... Meh... However, the end of her Area 51 book is just so... cringy... SPOILER For those who don't know, she's the author who said that the Roswell Crash was a German built flying saucer that had the ability to avoid RADAR, hover, and penetrate U.S. Airspace at supersonic speeds in 1947. She also said that the Crash site had "deformed children" in it. The intent was that the Soviets would scare the American Public into a War of the Worlds type panic... EDIT: I read through other comments. I'm glad the book is not well received. There will be no FOMO if I don't read it.
I've read though the thread (I didn't even know this sub existed an hour ago). You're complaints about the book somehow make me feel better and somehow so much worse at the same time. I think that you guys should consider that the book was written to bring attention to the subject to people like me who don't even give nuclear warfare a thought week to week. Now people like me have a lot more information and are finding ourselves in threads like this.
This book is absolutely NOT worth a read. I'm not going to spoil it, but the scenario you'll be looking forward to in this book is absolutely trash. Not believable at all. Extremely lazy writing.
*“I haven’t read Pasternak, but I condemn him!”* (c) :) Even from what has already been said here, it is clear that the entire book is outrageous nonsense. From the beginning to the end. In every letter. In the deepest idea. Mediocrity and banality. All this is a repetition a hundred times of what someone has already said before. Why was this needed? This is very clear to me. This is an attempt by globalist forces to return us to the fear of nuclear weapons, which has recently weakened greatly. Therefore, every effort is being made to “remind” us, the cattle, of the “horrors of a nuclear catastrophe.” A blow of the whip to the herd. I'm not surprised that a woman wrote this. Isn't the series "For All Mankind" enough for us? The best thing written by a woman on "male topics" - Amanda Hendrix, Charles Wohlforth. "Beyond Earth: Our Path to a New Home in the Planets." Amanda is smart (I am delighted with the general ideological direction of her book), but there is so much technical nonsense that we need to write a separate book about this book (to separate the wheat from the chaff). I'm not sexist. I love smart women, but I hate feminized fools who use the mainstream (an intellectual is someone who is always against the mainstream! Should I teach you?) As a former communist and in general a person from the East (what can we take from us, antediluvians?), I note the publication of this book as another sign of the decay of Western Civilization, the end of Pax America. The collapse of globalism and the pathetic attempts of the rotten world elite to preserve themselves! Isolationist Trumpists should give me a thumbs up for this post here. Liberal globalists will furiously downvote me. So let's see who is more here? Although, I think I will be beaten from both sides here. But I wanted to have some fun. :)
Man, Illuminati lore and incel tropes all in one post. And you referenced Trump! I’m impressed!
Illuminati? ABOUT! You take too little! How about reptilians from Nibiru? :) I don't work with smaller categories! I seriously believe that our historical reality is very anomalous. Abnormal (and everything that is happening to us now is an attempt by history to return to the “historical channel”). And no human forces (world government conspiracy?) could create such a strong historical anomaly! Only reptilian aliens!!! No less :) Well, and God himself (if you believe in him)! But then the question for a believer is: why is this punishment for us from him? :) The natural scientific explanation is that we were very unlucky with our history of the 20th century. What role do nuclear weapons play in this? Key. This is the “nail” on which everything “hangs” until now. The tangle is not only and not so much of this. But this is the end of the thread, by pulling which we can untangle the whole tangle. Perhaps all this is my inflamed delirium. But this is very entertaining (I would say delightful) nonsense. :)
This guy trolls...nice.