Nuclear War: A Scenario Is a Disaster Porn Thriller
Nuclear War: A Scenario, by Annie Jacobsen, Dutton, 400 pages, $30
The end of the world takes less than two hours in Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario. It begins one spring day when a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) erupts from a mobile launcher in North Korea. Before it hits the Pentagon, a North Korean submarine in the Pacific fires a second nuclear salvo at California. Neither missile is intercepted. Within 40 minutes of the first launch, millions of Americans are dead on both coasts.
The U.S. retaliates by firing a barrage of missiles from underground installations in the Mountain West and from submarines in the Pacific. Russia, aware that the United States has been attacked but unable to communicate with the U.S. president, mistakes the launch of the American ICBMs for an attack on Moscow and fires its nuclear weapons at the U.S. and its NATO allies, which then retaliate against Russia.
North Korea finishes the play by detonating a nuclear bomb attached to a satellite over North America, generating a series of electromagnetic pulses that destroy the United States’ three main electrical grids and plunge the country back into the early 19th century.
The entire scenario—a word Jacobsen uses frequently, first clinically and then almost as a merciful reminder that the events in her book are entirely speculative—lasts roughly as long as an episode of Jack Ryan, for which Jacobsen has been both a consultant and a writer.
In this span, hundreds of millions of people die instantly. Hundreds of millions more begin to die from radiation poisoning and third-degree burns, then starvation, dehydration, and exposure. The war ends up killing 2 billion in total. Numerous monuments, buildings, and works of art across five continents are destroyed in finger-snap intervals. The Vatican is rubble; the pope is ash. The Louvre, St. Basil’s Cathedral, the Empire State Building, Hollywood, and Buckingham Palace explode and shatter like movie props.
In case her readers are not sufficiently disturbed by the rapid immiseration of the human race, Jacobsen informs us on page 212 that animals will also suffer in a nuclear war. At the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., four miles north of ground zero, “Asian elephants, western lowland gorillas, and Sumatran tigers writhe and bellow in their cages and their pens. Most have charred skin hanging off their bodies, their hair on fire.”
After this very short, very awful conflict, nothing works and no place is safe. Most of the water is radiated, and dead bodies are everywhere. The sun disappears behind a cloud of particulate matter that hangs between the Earth and the rest of the solar system, plunging the planet into a short but devastating ice age. When the sun returns, it does so absent most of the ozone layer, maki
Article from Reason.com
The Reason Magazine website is a go-to destination for libertarians seeking cogent analysis, investigative reporting, and thought-provoking commentary. Championing the principles of individual freedom, limited government, and free markets, the site offers a diverse range of articles, videos, and podcasts that challenge conventional wisdom and advocate for libertarian solutions. Whether you’re interested in politics, culture, or technology, Reason provides a unique lens that prioritizes liberty and rational discourse. It’s an essential resource for those who value critical thinking and nuanced debate in the pursuit of a freer society.