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| Author | Eric Schlosser |
| Publisher | Penguin Books |
| Publication date | September 17, 2013 |
| Print length | 640 pages |
| Customer Reviews | 4.6⭐ / 4,033 ratings |
| Great on Kindle | ✅ |
The Oscar-shortlisted documentary Command and Control, directed by Robert Kenner, finds its origins in Eric Schlosser's book and continues to explore the little-known history of the management and safety concerns of America's nuclear aresenal.
"A devastatingly lucid and detailed new history of nuclear weapons in the U.S. Fascinating." —Lev Grossman,TIME Magazine
"Perilous and gripping . . . Schlosser skillfully weaves together an engrossing account of both the science and the politics of nuclear weapons safety." —San Francisco Chronicle
A myth-shattering exposé of America's nuclear weapons
Famed investigative journalist Eric Schlosser digs deep to uncover secrets about the management of America's nuclear arsenal. A groundbreaking account of accidents, near misses, extraordinary heroism, and technological breakthroughs,
Command and Control explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: How do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them? That question has never been resolved—and Schlosser reveals how the combination of human fallibility and technological complexity still poses a grave risk to mankind. While the harms of global warming increasingly dominate the news, the equally dangerous yet more immediate threat of nuclear weapons has been largely forgotten.
Written with the vibrancy of a first-rate thriller,
Command and Control interweaves the minute-by-minute story of an accident at a nuclear missile silo in rural Arkansas with a historical narrative that spans more than fifty years. It depicts the urgent effort by American scientists, policy makers, and military officers to ensure that nuclear weapons can't be stolen, sabotaged, used without permission, or detonated inadvertently. Schlosser also looks at the Cold War from a new perspective, offering history from the ground up, telling the stories of bomber pilots, missile commanders, maintenance crews, and other ordinary servicemen who risked their lives to avert a nuclear holocaust. At the heart of the book lies the struggle, amid the rolling hills and small farms of Damascus, Arkansas, to prevent the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States.
Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with people who designed and routinely handled nuclear weapons,
Command and Control takes readers into a terrifying but fascinating world that, until now, has been largely hidden from view. Through the details of a single accident, Schlosser illustrates how an unlikely event can become unavoidable, how small risks can have terrible consequences, and how the most brilliant minds in the nation can only provide us with an illusion of control. Audacious, gripping, and unforgettable,
Command and Control is a tour de force of investigative journalism, an eye-opening look at the dangers of America's nuclear age.
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10 Comments
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Nuclear weapons can't be detonated by accident. It's not a miracle it's science and engineering.
I read this book about 6 years ago, when the saber rattling with NK was happening, and it was terrifying.
I'm convinced there's a temporal agency in the future that keeps coming back to save our asses. But that's another book I'm sure.
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I read this book about 6 years ago, when the saber rattling with NK was happening, and it was terrifying.
Nuclear weapons are designed to fail. Initiating a nuclear explosion requires a specific series of actions and a specific order of explosions to create the criticality to detonate. Blowing up an unarmed nuclear missile cannot cause a nuclear explosion. They're designed to fail in exactly this kind of scenario. I'll have to read Schlossers argument as to why he thinks Damascus was at risk of a nuclear explosion.
Blowing up a bunch of nuclear material (dirty bomb) is definitely something that can happen but this isn't traditionally what's referred to as a nuclear explosion.
Blowing up a bunch of nuclear material (dirty bomb) is definitely something that can happen but this isn't traditionally what's referred to as a nuclear explosion.
The book never claims Damascus would have exploded. It's about the lax safety culture, the push for development over safety, and the general view by the government during the cold war that an accidental detonation on US soil was preferable to not being able to ensure MAD. Also, a lot of coverage about how our interception system was a sham.