This Terrifying Book Is a Must-Read for Every World Leader
This Terrifying Book Is a Must-Read for Every World LeaderNuclear war is a topic few care to think about. We sometimes call it unthinkable. But we need to think carefully, and to talk—particularly with high-ranking foreign officials whose motives we may have reason to distrust, just as they distrust ours—about how we can collectively avoid launching a weapon that would end our civilization. Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen’s timely new book, Nuclear War: A Scenario, is a lightning-fast read intended to put the nuclear threat squarely back on everyone’s radar. Her narrative thread, as the title suggests, is a fact-based (though thankfully fictional) scenario that shows how a nuclear launch can escalate into World War III at dizzying speed. Jacobsen tees up her cinematic approach with chapters describing how we got here, including a discussion of America’s Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) for General Nuclear War—which was devised in the…