Two books examine atomic weaponry and its potential for global annihilation
had around 18,000 nuclear weapons. It also had detailed plans for how to use them. Had it implemented them, 275m people in the Soviet Union would have been killed in the first hour of war. Another 325m would have died from radioactive fallout over the following six months. Even if China stayed out of this prospective war, the fallout would kill as many as 300m of its citizens.
The American satellites which pick up the North Korean launch have sensors “so powerful they can see a single lighted match from 200 miles away”, she writes. Within 15 seconds radars can work out that the missile is headed for America. It will take just over half an hour to arrive. Once the president has been briefed he has six minutes to make a choice.
The genre receded in the 1990s and 2000s: nuclear weapons were tools of the past. Yet Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put them squarely back at the forefront of geopolitics and culture. Consider the success of Christopher Nolan’s biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, and the commercial revival of “American Prometheus”, the book on which that film was based.
It is possible to quibble with details in Ms Jacobsen’s scenario. It is hard to see why North Korea would risk a suicidal bolt from the blue. America might have a “launch on warning” policy, but as Dick Cheney, a former defence secretary and vice-president, has observed, “realistically, most presidents wouldn’t do it”.
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