How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III by Ron Rosenbaum

How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III Reviews

• 
  Matt

  When you read about the potentialities involved in a nuclear war, you go down a rabbit hole. The things you learn about this terrifying and paradoxical world compel you to find another source, and then another, and then another.
  
  I discovered this after reading Michael Dobbs’s book on the Cuban Missile Crisis, One Minute to Midnight. It struck me how many different moving parts were involved, and how close we came to some of those parts malfunctioning. In writing about the Crisis, most of the attention is given to the world leaders, Kennedy and Khrushchev, both of whose restraint led to a peaceful stand-down . Less attention is paid to the American spy plane pilot who went off course and drove over Russian airspace; or the Russian sub commander who decided to aim a nuclear-tipped warhead at an American vessel; or the mid-range nukes that were hauled to the outskirts of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Any of these players, far down the chain of command, might have triggered a cascading series of events that ends with us living out the fever-dreams of those folks who used to be on Doomsday Preppers.
  
  When I finished One Minute to Midnight, the first thing I did was grab another book on nuclear weapons. When I finished that, I got a third. I started reading Cold War Civil Defense Manuals that are freely available online. I visited the Fallout Shelter at my office (turns out it’s just the basement). When I go to YouTube, I am now inundated with documentaries about lost nukes and close calls.
  
  All this reading tends to make you a bit paranoid about the continued existence of the species. I assume that’s what happened to Ron Rosenbaum. In How the End Begins, he mentions the decade he has spent researching nuclear arms, the tens of thousands of pages he’s read, the dozens and dozens of people he’s interviewed. He clearly knows this topic well. He is also a bit – well, alarmist. He sees the end is nigh, and wants you to know about it in this rather disorganized, often shrill book.
  
  Rosenbaum’s purpose is twofold.
  
  First, he wants to scare you. That’s the obvious thing. He gathers a bunch of stray occurrences – the Israelis bombing a Syrian reactor; North Korea detonating atomic weapons; terrorists groups looking for loose nukes – and packages them together as an argument that we are on the brink of a global cataclysm. Based on the tenor, you might think this was written at the height of the Cold War. It’s not. It was published in 2011, long after international terrorism replaced full-scale nuclear war between superpowers as the fear du jour.
  
  The second thing he wants to do is a bit more subtle. He argues that the doctrine of “mutually assured destruction” (in which neither side uses nukes because it would involve all-out nuclear war) is a horrible idea. He thinks it is not only dangerous, but immoral. Therefore, he wants governments, specifically the United States, to unilaterally renounce an intent to deliver a full retaliatory strike despite being the victim of a nuclear attack. (And good luck with that).
  
  Rosenbaum is an intrepid journalist. That cannot be argued. He doesn’t just dig around in primary sources – though he does, extensively – but he gets out and talks to people. A lot of this book comprises conversations with people he’s met while doing research. He talks to missileers, generals, strategists, and ethicists. In doing so, he uncovers a lot of fascinating tidbits. Take, for instance, Great Britain’s Letter of Last Resort. This is – allegedly – a handwritten letter composed by every new Prime Minister when he or she takes office.
  
  

  Four copies of it are dispatched to the U.K.’s nuclear submarine fleet. The sealed letter is to be locked inside a safe, which itself is locked inside a safe on the sub’s control room floor. Both safes and the letter were only to be opened during certain specified conditions that indicate a nuclear attack has cut the submarine off from home island guidance. The prime minister’s letter…is to tell the sub commander what he thought he should do with his nuclear weapons and under what circumstances he should fire them.

  
  
  That’s a hell of a way of doing business, and it’s the kind of thing that tempts you to draw allusions to Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, even though such an allusion is incredibly cheap in nuclear war literature (Rosenbaum, unsurprisingly, goes to the well several times).
  
  There are chilling bits like this sprinkled throughout. At one point, Rosenbaum tells the story of the Russian Colonel Petrov of the Strategic Rocket Force, who received a radar signal that the U.S. had launched against them. Instead of following the retaliatory checklist, he wisely did nothing, and the signal turned out to be an error. Rosenbaum also interviews Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, regarding what Rosenbaum calls “the Number.” (He has an irritating, fantasy-novelist’s habit of turning normal nouns into proper nouns). In this case, the number refers to the expected casualties if the U.S. ever unleashed its Single Integrated Operational Plan, which is the rather euphemistic name given to our nuclear launch strategy. The tally, if China was included in the SIOP, was 600 million people. That’s a lot! You can’t help but shudder at the technocrats who were able to plan for that without ever stopping to consider what 600 million meant. (I mean, can you imagine 600 million of anything, much less 600 million men, women, and children?). From Russia’s “Dead Hand” system to Israel’s “Samson Option,” I found much of interest in these pages. Rosenbaum is a curious man, and he asks the exact kind of questions I wanted answered.
  
  Nevertheless, How the End Begins is marred by digression and tone. The former is the lesser problem. This is a meander that jumps from topic to topic, and back in forth in time. The chapters are not arranged in any particular order, either by theme or chronology. The result is that it takes awhile to divine the particular point Rosenbaum is trying to make. He also tends to mention something on one page, assuming you know exactly what he’s talking about, but only get around to explaining it later. These are not cardinal sins, but it makes a roughly 200-page book feel a lot longer.
  
  The bigger problem for me is the semi-hysterical tone that Rosenbaum employs. I mean, this is a book that’s last line is a plea to nuclear missileers not to “twist those keys.” He is also really, really pleased with himself for taking on this mission. He is constantly self-congratulatory about his own moral courage in asking the “Forbidden Question” (those proper nouns again!) regarding the ethics of massive nuclear retaliation to a first strike.
  
  Rosenbaum’s self-righteousness would have been annoying enough on its own. Here, though, it is coupled with logic gaps. The front cover promises to tell you what “the road to a nuclear World War III” looks like. Instead, it mainly lists close calls and global hotspots and tries to tether that to an argument regarding the immorality of massive retaliation. For example, in the first chapter, he retells the 2007 story of Israeli planes destroying a nuclear facility. How does that fit into any of his theses? It doesn’t. Rosenbaum never completes the equation wherein the destruction of Syria’s nuclear capabilities leads to a nuclear exchange that even contemplates massive retaliation. Clearly, there is an ever-present risk of a nuclear detonation occurring at some point in time, somewhere on earth. Pakistan, for instance, is a usual suspect in these hypotheticals. But that has nothing to do with Rosenbaum’s chief windmill, the specter of nuclear deterrence (letting your enemy know you’re unleashing everything) spilling over into massive retaliation (giving your enemy everything you have, if he so much as drops a nuclear-tipped artillery shell in your vicinity).
  
  Rosenbaum is an expert; I am an interested dilettante. He’s forgotten more after a night of hard drinking than I’ll ever learn (also, likely, after a night of hard drinking). With that said, I’m a bit more sanguine on our chances. Maybe massive retaliation is morally questionable, at least in the friction-free world of ethical studies. At the same time, it has worked and continues to work by creating an existential risk for anyone thinking about using these weapons. Terrorism is a different question, but I think that a nuclear exchange between established nation-states is unlikely.
  
  Rosenbaum would disagree, but I also think it’s unlikely that “suicidal states” such as North Korea would trigger a Third World War. It strikes me that North Korea’s leaders have always gone to great and criminal lengths to propagate their own survival. Would they risk their political and literal lives by courting nuclear doom?
  
  Cassandras have the advantage of the broken analog clock in that they are eventually right. In the long history of the world, few have gone hungry by predicting catastrophe. There are a lot ways (Israel-Iran, Pakistan-India) for Rosenbaum to be right. The bright side for me is that if I’m wrong, there’s not going to be anyone around to tell me about it.
  
• 
  Vegantrav

  How the End Begins is both fascinating and frightening. Many people seem to think that the threat of a nuclear holocaust ended with the fall of the Soviet Union and dissolution of the Communist regimes in the former Warsaw Pact states. Those people are completely wrong, and Ron Rosenbaum shows why in How the End Begins.
  
  In fact, in 1995, a nuclear strike was barely averted: the US had launched a scientific rocket for study of the aurora borealis (the northern lights) in Norway. The US had advised Russia of the nature of this rocket launch, but the information somehow did not get relayed appropriately, and the Russian military observed this rocket and believed it to be a US nuclear strike. Boris Yeltsin’s nuclear “football” was activated, and Yeltsin was only minutes away from ordering a retaliatory nuclear strike against the US before he decided that the rocket launch was not actually a US nuclear attack. Rosenbaum details several other similar close calls where the US or the Soviets erroneously believed that a nuclear strike was underway and were mere minutes from initiating a nuclear response.
  
  Besides the ever present danger of accidental nuclear launches on the basis of bad information, Rosenbaum describes two other scenarios where nuclear attacks are serious possibilities. The first is Pakistan: given the long-standing hostilities between Pakistan and India, there is an ever present danger that Pakistan might launch a nuclear strike against India, and India, itself a nuclear power, could very well respond in kind. Such an exchange could possibly draw the US, China, and Russia into the conflict and escalate the situation beyond the Indian subcontinent. Moreover, if any of the radical Muslims in the Pakistani military were able to gain control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, they might target not only India but even Israel, long a target of radical Muslims’ hatred. If Pakistan attacked Israel, the Israelis could also respond using their submarine-based nuclear weapons, and if Israel did respond by attacking the Muslim nation of Pakistan, World War III could easily erupt.
  
  The other danger is Iran. Rosenbaum lays out a clear cut case that Iran is actively seeking to develop nuclear weapons, and most Western and Israeli intelligence agencies agree. Given the extreme anti-Semitic rhetoric of the Ayatollah and of Iranian president Ahmadinejad as well as their Shiite apocalyptic beliefs about the destruction of Israel being coupled with the return of the hidden imam (the 12th Imam) at the end of the world, it is quite plausible that Iran would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons to attack Israel. Of course, Israel, being a very small state in terms of its geography, would be quite easy to destroy by a nuclear attack: nuclear missiles aimed at Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa would nearly destroy the entire Israeli population and render the small nation, due to radiation poisoning, uninhabitable for years to come. And if Israel were subjected to a nuclear attack by Iran, then, again, their nuclear submarines would quite likely respond with an attack on Iran, and again, a scenario arises where World War III begins.
  
  This danger in the Middle East was especially evident in 2007 when the Israelis destroyed a Syrian facility that, with the help of the North Koreans, was on the verge of producing nuclear weapons. Had the Israelis not acted and their Syrian enemies obtained their own nuclear weapons, a nuclear exchange between Israel and Syria could well have followed. Should Israeli and Western intelligence be able to identify an Iranian facility that is on the verge of completing the nuclear weaponization process, it is almost certain that the Israeli air force would carry out a strike to destroy that facility. Some analysts think that the Israelis might even execute a pre-emptive nuclear strike against Iran if they believe Iran is on the brink of joining the world nuclear club. And to repeat myself, if Israel attacked Iran, this could easily bring about World War III and might even draw Pakistan into launching a nuclear attack on Israel.
  
  How the End Begins makes clear that the most dangerous threat presently facing the world is the possibility that Iran might obtain nuclear weapons. Rosenbaum has a very pessimistic view here: he believes that some sort of military engagement between Israel and Iran is very likely, and he believes it is quite possible that it will be a nuclear exchange.
  
  Besides discussing the present dangers associated with nuclear weapons, Rosenbaum spends a great deal of time discussing the ethics of nuclear strikes. One key issue upon which he focuses is the morality of a retaliatory strike: say, for example, that the Russians have launched their nuclear missiles, aiming them at the US’s own nuclear missile silos as well as Washington, DC, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and other major population centers; such an attack is guaranteed to kill tens of millions of Americans, destroy the world economy, and bring about a nuclear winter that could kill even hundreds of millions of people. If the President knew that the Russians had launched such an attack, would it be ethical for him to retaliate by launching a US nuclear strike (before the Russian missiles hit the US silos or using submarine- and bomber-based nuclear weapons) against the major Russian areas of population? Such a retaliatory strike would be guaranteed to kill tens of millions of Russians but would be unable to do anything to forestall the coming devastation to the US. Rosenbaum argues that such retaliation would be unethical: it would be genocide, and it would be completely pointless. Of course, the threat of such retaliation (commonly referred to as MAD: mutually assured destruction) has long been believed to have served to deter both the US and the Soviets (now the Russians) from launching attacks against one another. Surprisingly, many of the military leaders (both US and Russian and even an Israeli expert) that Rosenbaum interviews believe that a retaliatory strike would be unethical; however, they can’t espouse this belief on the record for their countries because if their respective enemies realized that there would no nuclear retaliation, they might be more likely to initiate a nuclear first strike.
  
  All in all this was a highly informative yet rather frightening book. Rosenbaum, though, could really have used a better editor: he tends to ramble and repeat himself, and his prose quite often seems too informal and unpolished, and there are a few rather long sections where one might easily nod off (particularly a reprint of a transcript of an intelligence briefing), and while I have no problem with Rosenbaum expressing his opinions on the issue of nuclear weapons (in fact, I agree with his position: we need to work towards completely eliminating nuclear weapons), he tends to become really rather preachy. Still, despite the problems with Rosenbaum’s style, I still highly recommend this book.
  
  If you think that nuclear weapons are no longer a threat, you are gravely deceived, and Rosenbaum does a great job of presenting the facts that show that our world is probably in even greater danger of suffering a nuclear war now than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
  
• 
  Sheehan

  What a tough book to review, it investigates the paradox of post-Cold War high alert command and control of nuclear weapons in a rapidly changing world that is no longer a dyadic deterrent situation; but a multi-polar, non-state, sometimes martyr-driven, horizontally proliferated array of flash points.
  
  Further, Rosenbaum tries to get to the heart of how you can talk about the reduction of volume of warheads, and/or utility in retaliating without undermining the very deterrent threat of being believed to be willing to use them; and not getting very far in this attempt to discuss the verboten subject.
  
  The outcomes of this investigation are sobering, given the major nuclear power's current posture regarding threats combined with security assurances provided to other nations in our nuclear "umbrella"; almost any small scale use of a nuclear weapon, or preemptive attempt to forestall the development of a nuke (I'm looking at your Israel!) pretty much all spin out of control into larger conflagrations with the majors participating and possibly opening the gates of hell.
  
  One of Rosenbaum's suggestions for mitigating the chaos includes migrating to strictly defensive submarine deterrent (no land/air) to reduce target rich US soil attacks, and hair-trigger command and control at air force and launch silos. An idea he notes has been suggested already by a US Navyman in the 1950's and was scuttled for political reasons within the various branches of the Armed Services.
  
  The examination of the rigidity and lack of human reflection in the launch processes for land based missiles was frightening; all the more so in light of the close call examples of launches aborted at the last minute from false-positive attack readings. It leaves no room for proper deliberation in the decision of how to respond to a holocaust and it's consequences, retaliated or otherwise.
  
  I'd say everyone should read this, but I'm not sure most will want to know what the book has to share. It will make you appreciate the fleeting goodness of the present and the persistent peril, the Sword of Damocles if you will, which is constantly threatening in our modern lives.
• 
  Jose Moa

  There are a lot of books on the climate change,population explosion or other environement crises that put the whole planet on danger,but are few on other global forgotten but greater danger:the nuclear war,a danger that has the power ofwholly exterminate the human race and cause a planet global damage similar to the dinosaur extintion event(nuclear winter).
  
  This book remember us that the end of the cold war has not bring significative changes in the level of danger of a unexpected nuclear war,on the contrary,the danger is greater now in a more chaotic multipolar world with hot spots(Crimea,Ucrania,Baltic Sea,Sout China Sea,Pakistan-india,North Korea,Israel-Iran).The author tells two examples of close calls post cold war:the syrian nuclear reactor destruction by Israel in 2007,the norwegian methereological rocket in 1998 that put in hands of Yeltsin the nuclear briefcase.
  
  But the most strange and dangerous is that after cold war USA and Rusia follow with the launch on warning ICBM policy with the danger of a mistake or a miscalculation in a crise that gives only minutes to reflection,a irresponsable policy.
  
  The author says that so far was only luck that dont have a nuclear war because there was several close calls accidental or not in the nuclear era.
  as zero nuclear world seems improbable he proposes a very wise nuclear deterrence policy based on a few nuclear warheads located in submarines and SLBM launched.The author is pesimistic with regard ofthe probability of a more or less near nuclear war disaster.
  
  Another factor,that yet that those that have some age are very aware of the danger of a nuclear war,us lived the european euromissile crise(PershingII,SS-20) and so on,and there were a very strong social pressures against nuclear weapons,the to day generations seems have forgot the problem,there are not antinuclear demostrations and is not a subject of the mass media,as if it were a thing of past;it is a dangerous social policy.
  
  The book gives striking data:that Israel is a nuclear power with a submarine power deterrence of arround 100 warheads,that are 1500 warheads launch on warning in each superpower,5000 for fast use on each and 10000 stockpiled on each,so the MAD policy is yet on use.
  
  A strongly recomended book for those that have forgot the nuclear war risk.
  
  I dare give my personal opinion on nuclear weapons,yet they are impressive achievements of the science and tchnology,specially the Teller,Ulam,Sajarov design,they are the worst example of science use because in my opinion they are criminal,anti laws of war.genocide and crime against humanity artifacts,a sort of curse that had fallen over the humankind.
  
  Also i think that destroy a sovereign state using overhelming conventional war power is a very bad example against proliferation as some countries can think that to be safe they need nuclear deterrence capacity,land or submarine based.
  The nuclear-weapon states do no intend abolish their nuclear weapons.They promised do so when signaled the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1970
• 
  Othón A. León

  An excellent reminder of the ultimate consequence mankind would assume in its (almost) senseless search for power over others and a very good compilation of the times the price was close to be paid, only stopped by other series of fortunate coincidences... Highly recommendable and I guarantee you: once you start it, it's gonna be a very hard thing to do to stop.
• 
  Clay Davis

  I learned things about the nuclear forces of the world. The writer shows too much anti militar feelings. A very bais book.
• 
  Sean

  Fantastic, must read.
  
  Tbd
  Come on, I'm not going to type a review on a kindle. Get real. Seriously. Agile the same thing
• 
  Paul

  Actual rating: 3.0 for content, 2.0 for editing.
  
  Ron Rosenbaum tips his hand very early in this book about the current state of nuclear weapons and the threat that they might still, despite the reduction in tensions between major powers, be used: on page 20 or so, without explanation or clarification, he labels the classic movie On the Beach "nuke porn." Rosenbaum is strongly no-nuke, but who can blame him? His book pretty much explodes the story our betters tell us about the nuclear arsenal: that the missiles and warheads are tightly controlled and impossible to launch without approval from the president himself. It turns out there are any number of ways in which individual missile launch crews and commanders can launch without approval, and indeed many reasons why they might feel they have to (as in an enemy first strike that decapitates national leadership and command & control). Presumably the same applies to other nuclear powers. The rise of smaller nuclear powers (Pakistan, India, Israel, North Korea, potentially Iran) has only increased the possibility that nukes will be used, and Rosenbaum convincingly argues that small nuclear conflicts will likely grow into major power nuclear conflicts.
  
  Rosenbaum exposes a nuclear/military/industrial complex that cannot imagine any fundamental change in our current nuclear weapons or alert status, or the constant development and testing of new nuclear weapons, and describes the service parochialism that forces us to hang onto the obsolete and now-senseless "triad" of nuclear deterrance: land-based bombers, land-based missiles, and mobile ballistic missile submarines, arguing that a more sensible national deterrence would consist entirely of submarines -- which will never happen so long as the Air Force has its say.
  
  Moralists will like the way Rosenbaum keeps coming back to his central question: how can one justify retaliating in kind after a nuclear attack, since we're already dead and our counterattack will only result in the death of additional millions? He finds a few nuclear officials who are willing to entertain the question ... but none who would refuse to turn the launch key if ordered to.
  
  Did you know the Russians actually have a Doomsday Machine? It's called PERIMETR, and its purpose is to launch a nuclear counterattack even if every human being in Russia is instantly killed in a first strike against it. Apparently the US does not have such a capability, and depends on an elaborate system of orders and authentications to launch a counterattack -- a system which, as I previously mentioned, can be easily bypassed by individual launch crews and commanders. Damn.
  
  All in all, this is a sobering book. Some day, some way, someone is going to set off a nuke, and only the most hopeless optimist can hope that spark won't set off a larger nuclear conflagration, potentially even World War III.
  
  I mentioned editing. From beginning to end I encountered verb/tense disagreement, superfluous commas, and just plain awkward phraseology. It's irritating to repeatedly stumble over errors while reading a book that has important things to say. We all make errors when we write, but don't major publishers edit them out? C'mon, Simon & Schuster, do your job!
• 
  Ushan

  Nuclear weapons are a tool of genocide. Come global thermonuclear war, humanity will probably survive, and rebuild the civilization decades or centuries later; future historians will regard the world leaders who ordered to launch the missiles as the greatest villains in history, more evil than Adolf Hitler. The officers responsible for actually turning the launch keys are not sociopaths; Rosenbaum interviews one, and gets the impression that should the launch order come, he will disobey it, as he would rather be court-martialed than burn to death hundreds of thousands of foreigners and invite a like retaliation upon a like number of Americans. This is what happened in 1983; Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov of Soviet Air Defense Forces saw an early warning of incoming American missiles, and dismissed it as a false alarm caused by a computer bug, which indeed it was; if he hadn't, it is possible that World War III would have started. However, the officer did not plainly state it, for if the world gets a clue that American launch officers are not sociopaths, the whole logic of nuclear deterrence will break down. An American President who wants to, say, pass a health care reform bill or a consumer finance reform bill will face opposition from the Congress and from the Supreme Court. Yet he can start a nuclear war without such opposition. As the Watergate scandal unrolled, Richard Nixon took to drink; during the Yom Kippur war, he was too drunk to answer the phone from British Prime Minister Edward Heath. He once told several Congressmen, "I can go into my office and pick up the telephone and in twenty-five minutes seventy million people will be dead." In 1973, a US Air Force major undergoing training for a Minuteman launch officer asked, "How can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?" The major was dismissed from the Air Force and took up the job of a truck driver; his question remains unanswered. Since then, the paradoxes of mutual assured destruction between the United States and Russia have been replicated in South Asia between Pakistan and India, and soon will be replicated in the Middle East between Israel and Iran. When in 2007, Israeli jets destroyed a North Korean-built nuclear facility in Syria, a highly placed source in the British government told The Spectator, "If people had known how close we came to World War Three that day there'd have been mass panic." In addition to an insane president, the order could now come from a computer virus that has infiltrated the launch order system the way Stuxnet has infiltrated the Iranian nuclear enrichment plant. Rosenbaum does not see any way out of these paradoxes other than the abolition of nuclear weapons.
• 
  Don

  People who get freaked out too much by these topics: avoid this book. Having the background story about that Nuke possibly pointed in your direction is not very good night-time reading material. And if possible mental problems that do or could arise upon reading 'How The End Begins' is beyond both my (as a reviewer) and the Author's control. So, read at own risk.
  
  Well researched. Well written. Brings a reminder to the reader that these weapons are still out there. Too many. And with each passing year the odds of a Nuclear bomb exploding somewhere on Earth becomes greater and greater. It is said there is enough to blanket the world ten times over.
  
  Since the two bombings in Japan over half a century ago, we as a people have been very, very lucky it has not yet happened again elsewhere on our planet due to mistake, first strike, or to retaliate.
  
  When will it be? When is it going to happen? Who will it be to cast the first stone? What will be the cause that sparked it? Will religion be the cause? Terrorist? Our own Government quelling Public Gatherings in expendable cities and blaming it on the fore-mentioned Terrorists?
  
  This book was not written as a quick way to get people to panic. It was not made to cause the reader any worry. That panic and worry is brought on by one's own thoughts while the material in the book is produced for reference and to make your brain absorb some previously unknown facts and that is all they simply are: facts.
  
  Since the creation of Atomic weapons, mankind has become more it's own worse foe. Doomsday was in the works the day you were born. Doctor Strangelove anyone?
  
  Iran? Israel? North Korea? Pakistan? India? China? Russia? United Kingdom? USA? France?
  
  Don't worry. Be happy. Live for the moment.
• 
  Mark

  .One of the most thought provoking non fictional works on nuclear warfare that I have ever read. Not to be read lightly or quickly due to the "solemnity" of the author's questions and discussions. A book which almost forces the reader to read a few pages or at most a chapter, evaluate the sources found within the notes section, and ponder. Up front, the reason the book does not gain five stars is that the notes section is inconveniently placed at the back of the book and the notes are not tied to a specific passage resulting in a continual search for the relevant note to back up a troubling passage such as President Nixon was drunk during the Yom Kippur War and left nuclear command and control up to other senior members of his administration. I disagree with some of the other reviewers that the author is anti-military and while a proponent of Global Zero, he offers cogent reasons why while a worthwhile goal, it is unlikely to occur and therefore does not come across as a "nut" but a well thought out interlocutor. And who can agree with the very real necessity of thinking about such topics as: is a nuclear retaliatory strike moral, is a nuclear first strike moral ( the reader should be fascinated and surprised at the discussion) and my personal favorite, is an order from a man directing a nuclear launch to be considered valid - can this order directing the deaths of potentially millions of people really be considered a sane order? A fascinating book...a tad bit dated since it does not take into account the actions of 2012 and 2013 that have evolved since President Obama's Prague Speech.
• 
  Nick

  There is a single core question which underlies the principle of mutually assured destruction, the idea that first use of nuclear weapons is futile, because it will inevitably result in devastating retaliation. That question is "if faced with evidence of an incoming first strike, would those responsible for triggering the retaliatory strike really launch their missiles and all but guarantee nuclear Armageddon?" It's hard to imagine a more nihilistic act, and yet it was the willingness of both the US and USSR to believe in the inevitability of the second strike which is credited with preventing the Cold War from going nuclear. The thing is though, you don't want to think too hard about that question. Because thinking about it implies that you might not shoot back, and if the enemy thinks you might not shoot back, they might be more likely to shoot first.
  
  Ron Rosenbaum explores the 'logic' of nuclear war, and how even a minor confrontation in some key regions of the world could light the fuse on World War III. He gets a bit too poetic for my tastes much of the time, and he takes a very one-sided view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which he views as one potential source of nuclear doomsday. It was still a fascinating and sobering read.
• 
  Phil Overeem

  This is required reading for anyone who thinks nuclear war is deterred into a non-issue. Rosenbaum (as he usually does with whatever subject's obsessing him) creates a clear and detailed picture of the current state of nuclear armament, the people in control of its use and their philosophies, and the nightmarishly plausible scenarios that could make tomorrow gone forever. Philosophically dogged and NOT unfunny--but serious as a heart attack, too.
• 
  Beorn

  A more interesting prospect than it turned out to be. Far from the apocalyptic nightmare or incendiary warning from history, this reads like a rather aloof bitter diatribe against putting idiots in charge of big weapons.
  Written from a calculably American POV, though only distinguishable from the constant reference to 'OUR west coast' and OUR nuclear umbrella', this turned out to be far more tedious than it appeared.
  Don't bother.
• 
  Akira Watts

  Intriguing premise, and quite terrifying. The strongest sections involve the inherent flaws in nuclear weapons command and control, as well as the morality of deterence.
  
  The problem is Rosenbaum's prose is irritating, he gets derailed by a lengthy digression on Israel, and the book itself has been outpaced by history.
• 
  Steve

  "Scary and thought provoking."
• 
  Steve Morris

  Written largely from the USAs perspective, the book starts well with much to be learned from the early chapters.
  
  It does descend a little into personal views the more the book progresses.
• 
  David

  Very sobbering. How have we gotten so far without blowing ourselves up.