6 ms·

The book from which this is adapted (Command & Control) is fascinating and terrifying. Everyone should read it. You'll wonder how it is that we've managed to

by timr 13y ago

The book from which this is adapted (Command & Control) is fascinating and terrifying. Everyone should read it. You'll wonder how it is that we've managed to escape truly catastrophic accidents with these weapons.

rosser 13y ago
Command and Control kept me up reading well past when I should have been asleep many a night. I have a friend who grew up not far from the Damascus, AR silo, the story about which the book is structured around, which made it that much more compelling. After reading it, I'm convinced that sheer dumb luck has been the deciding factor in not having seen so very many unplanned nuclear detonations over the years.
- arethuza 13y ago
  Have you read "One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War" - I found that a lot more alarming than Command and Control (although I agree that Command and Control is an excellent book).
  - mikeash 13y ago
    Another fun one is the Cuban Missile War timeline, a frightening alternate history of the Cuban Missile Crisis turned into nuclear war. I'm not an expert, but my impression is that it's pretty realistic. http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=65071 http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=... The timeline diverges from reality when a Soviet submarine captain launches a nuclear torpedo at an American ship, which then gradually spirals into all-out nuclear war. This very nearly actually happened: the three main officers on the submarine had to unanimously agree to use nuclear weapons, and two of them were in favor. The third one managed to talk them down.
    - arethuza 13y ago
      That reminds me of the novel Resurrection Day, which is set 10 years after a global war over Cuba and has a damaged US run as a miltary dictatorship and pretty much an international pariah due to the extent of the US attack on the Soviets (e.g. surviving members of SAC are regarded as war criminals). Not a bad book - my main nitpick with it being that its scenario has Western Europe coming off fairly untouched by the war which would have been extremely unlikely. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_Day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_Day [Resurrection Day also features a "Lake Washington"]
      - res0nat0r 13y ago
        I read Command and Control in the span of a week (fast for me) over the Christmas holiday the other month, and it was enlightening (read: scary as hell that we for the most part lucked out not having a nuclear dead zone in the middle of the USA at this point in time). One thing I did take away: the military kept using more extreme and dangerous measures (mainly in my mind the fully loaded bombers circling 24x7 over Europe) with the military trying to install fail-deadly mission objectives (ie: circle Europe for your daily bombing run, and if you don't hear an all clear message, assume the USA is being attacked and bomb the Soviet Union). One point seemed to be made though was: for all of the idiocy and lack of control during the arms race there were no actual nuclear detonations, so were the weapons at the time actually safe (even though many improved safety mechanisms were ignored by the military), or was it just luck due to small-enough sample size and a luckily short enough time span? I actually ordered off of Amazon these two books cited by Schossler and just received them in the last two weeks and am really looking forward to reading them: The Making of the Atomic Bomb - Richard Rhodes: ~900 page book that is supposed to be the seminal book about the history of the bomb; also is apparently very detailed in the physics of the endeavor which should be very interesting. http://amzn.com/1451677618 http://amzn.com/1451677618 American Prometheus - Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin (this just arrived at my house yesterday actually): ~700 pages and the definitive biography of Robert J. Oppenheimer: http://amzn.com/0375412026 http://amzn.com/0375412026
        arethuza 13y ago
        Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb by Richard Rhodes is the follow up to The Making of the Atomic Bomb and is even more interesting as it tells the story of the Soviet bomb project at the same time as the US H-bomb project: http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb/dp/0684824140 http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb/dp/06848...
  - scott_s 13y ago
    The documentary "Fog of War", which is basically a long interview with Robert McNamara, also covers some of that time, and was surprising. Actually, here's some of the relevant stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZVR-DKERhc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZVR-DKERhc
matthewmcg 13y ago
Agreed. I've read pretty much every book I can get my hands on covering Cold War nuclear history and Command and Control has lots of new and terrifying details.
aaronem 13y ago
I don't wonder. It's simply that, while certainly no one is perfect, almost everyone is better than almost anyone imagines that anyone could possibly be.
- mildtrepidation 13y ago
  I think you have a very, very optimistic view of humanity. It's entirely possible you and I have completely opposite experiences, because while I've known plenty of good, decent people, I've known more that fell somewhere between mediocre and horrid. I'm also not sure how you could consume any sort of news for any period of time and still hold on to this belief. Of course we hear about the worst, and it's put as shockingly as possible, but with all the terrible things that happen every day, "almost everyone" just doesn't seem to me to work in your statement.
  - aaronem 13y ago
    > I think you have a very, very optimistic view of humanity. Indeed, very much so! Having once lost my faith in progressivism, I found myself no longer wedded to the peculiar species of pessimism, regarding humanity and human affairs, which is part and parcel of that strain of political belief, and I further found myself capable for once of considering the possibility that for someone's politics to disagree with mine, however fundamentally, did not necessarily make that person a horrible human being. This discovery came as no small relief to me, in that it brought to swift and successful conclusion what had theretofore been a decade-long and losing battle against an increasingly black and pervasive depression. > I'm also not sure how you could consume any sort of news for any period of time and still hold on to this belief. Granted, and that's precisely why for the most part I don't. News that's local enough or big enough to matter in my life, I will hear about soon enough, and that's the only sort of news with which I choose to concern myself; as far as I'm concerned, everything else can go and whistle. What, after all, is the point in flagellating myself with a litany of trumped-up disaster stories regarding matters over which I have no power or influence in any case? Such obsessive behavior does no one any good. > with all the terrible things that happen every day Oh? This seems to me a rather lopsided view. What of all the terrible things that don't?
- 13y ago
hudibras 13y ago
The story from Command and Control that sticks in my head is how, a few months after WW2 ended, the Truman Administration wanted to get an exact count of how many A-bombs the U.S. had available in their inventory. The answer came back from Los Alamos, "Hmm, we could probably put together one or two in a couple weeks." This quickly led to a crash program in standardization of atomic (and later, nuclear) weapons and increasing their shelf-life.
Kequc 13y ago
The same incompetence that leads to accidents being possible also keeps us safe.
caf 13y ago
The Dead Hand is also worth a read.

by timr 13y ago

rosser 13y ago

Command and Control kept me up reading well past when I should have been asleep many a night. I have a friend who grew up not far from the Damascus, AR silo, the story about which the book is structured around, which made it that much more compelling. After reading it, I'm convinced that sheer dumb luck has been the deciding factor in not having seen so very many unplanned nuclear detonations over the years.

arethuza 13y ago
Have you read "One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War" - I found that a lot more alarming than Command and Control (although I agree that Command and Control is an excellent book).
- mikeash 13y ago
  Another fun one is the Cuban Missile War timeline, a frightening alternate history of the Cuban Missile Crisis turned into nuclear war. I'm not an expert, but my impression is that it's pretty realistic. http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=65071 http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=... The timeline diverges from reality when a Soviet submarine captain launches a nuclear torpedo at an American ship, which then gradually spirals into all-out nuclear war. This very nearly actually happened: the three main officers on the submarine had to unanimously agree to use nuclear weapons, and two of them were in favor. The third one managed to talk them down.
  - arethuza 13y ago
    That reminds me of the novel Resurrection Day, which is set 10 years after a global war over Cuba and has a damaged US run as a miltary dictatorship and pretty much an international pariah due to the extent of the US attack on the Soviets (e.g. surviving members of SAC are regarded as war criminals). Not a bad book - my main nitpick with it being that its scenario has Western Europe coming off fairly untouched by the war which would have been extremely unlikely. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_Day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_Day [Resurrection Day also features a "Lake Washington"]
    - res0nat0r 13y ago
      I read Command and Control in the span of a week (fast for me) over the Christmas holiday the other month, and it was enlightening (read: scary as hell that we for the most part lucked out not having a nuclear dead zone in the middle of the USA at this point in time). One thing I did take away: the military kept using more extreme and dangerous measures (mainly in my mind the fully loaded bombers circling 24x7 over Europe) with the military trying to install fail-deadly mission objectives (ie: circle Europe for your daily bombing run, and if you don't hear an all clear message, assume the USA is being attacked and bomb the Soviet Union). One point seemed to be made though was: for all of the idiocy and lack of control during the arms race there were no actual nuclear detonations, so were the weapons at the time actually safe (even though many improved safety mechanisms were ignored by the military), or was it just luck due to small-enough sample size and a luckily short enough time span? I actually ordered off of Amazon these two books cited by Schossler and just received them in the last two weeks and am really looking forward to reading them: The Making of the Atomic Bomb - Richard Rhodes: ~900 page book that is supposed to be the seminal book about the history of the bomb; also is apparently very detailed in the physics of the endeavor which should be very interesting. http://amzn.com/1451677618 http://amzn.com/1451677618 American Prometheus - Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin (this just arrived at my house yesterday actually): ~700 pages and the definitive biography of Robert J. Oppenheimer: http://amzn.com/0375412026 http://amzn.com/0375412026
      - arethuza 13y ago
        Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb by Richard Rhodes is the follow up to The Making of the Atomic Bomb and is even more interesting as it tells the story of the Soviet bomb project at the same time as the US H-bomb project: http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb/dp/0684824140 http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb/dp/06848...
- scott_s 13y ago
  The documentary "Fog of War", which is basically a long interview with Robert McNamara, also covers some of that time, and was surprising. Actually, here's some of the relevant stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZVR-DKERhc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZVR-DKERhc

matthewmcg 13y ago

Agreed. I've read pretty much every book I can get my hands on covering Cold War nuclear history and Command and Control has lots of new and terrifying details.

aaronem 13y ago

I don't wonder. It's simply that, while certainly no one is perfect, almost everyone is better than almost anyone imagines that anyone could possibly be.

mildtrepidation 13y ago
I think you have a very, very optimistic view of humanity. It's entirely possible you and I have completely opposite experiences, because while I've known plenty of good, decent people, I've known more that fell somewhere between mediocre and horrid. I'm also not sure how you could consume any sort of news for any period of time and still hold on to this belief. Of course we hear about the worst, and it's put as shockingly as possible, but with all the terrible things that happen every day, "almost everyone" just doesn't seem to me to work in your statement.
- aaronem 13y ago
  > I think you have a very, very optimistic view of humanity. Indeed, very much so! Having once lost my faith in progressivism, I found myself no longer wedded to the peculiar species of pessimism, regarding humanity and human affairs, which is part and parcel of that strain of political belief, and I further found myself capable for once of considering the possibility that for someone's politics to disagree with mine, however fundamentally, did not necessarily make that person a horrible human being. This discovery came as no small relief to me, in that it brought to swift and successful conclusion what had theretofore been a decade-long and losing battle against an increasingly black and pervasive depression. > I'm also not sure how you could consume any sort of news for any period of time and still hold on to this belief. Granted, and that's precisely why for the most part I don't. News that's local enough or big enough to matter in my life, I will hear about soon enough, and that's the only sort of news with which I choose to concern myself; as far as I'm concerned, everything else can go and whistle. What, after all, is the point in flagellating myself with a litany of trumped-up disaster stories regarding matters over which I have no power or influence in any case? Such obsessive behavior does no one any good. > with all the terrible things that happen every day Oh? This seems to me a rather lopsided view. What of all the terrible things that don't?
13y ago

hudibras 13y ago

The story from Command and Control that sticks in my head is how, a few months after WW2 ended, the Truman Administration wanted to get an exact count of how many A-bombs the U.S. had available in their inventory. The answer came back from Los Alamos, "Hmm, we could probably put together one or two in a couple weeks." This quickly led to a crash program in standardization of atomic (and later, nuclear) weapons and increasing their shelf-life.

Kequc 13y ago

The same incompetence that leads to accidents being possible also keeps us safe.

caf 13y ago

The Dead Hand is also worth a read.