The book opens with an Author's Note in which Jacobsen emphasizes four key points. First, the U.S. government has spent trillions of dollars since the early 1950s preparing for nuclear war and ensuring continuity of government during such conflicts. Second, while the book's scenario is fictional, it is constructed from facts gathered through interviews with experts and declassified government documents. Third, she chose to assume Washington D.C. would be struck by a one-megaton bomb because a "Bolt out of the Blue" attack represents what American defense officials fear most. Finally, following U.S. retaliation, a general nuclear war would necessarily ensue and end to human civilization, or as former
STRATCOM Commander General
Robert Kehler observed: "The world could end in the next couple of hours."
Prologue The prologue introduces the immediate consequences of the hypothetical scenario developed in the book. In the milliseconds following the detonation of a one-megaton
thermonuclear weapon above
the Pentagon, temperatures reach 180 million degrees Fahrenheit, instantly carbonizing its 27,000 employees. "Ground zero is zeroed." The destruction then radiates outward. At one mile,
Arlington National Cemetery and surrounding infrastructure are obliterated. At 2.5 miles, the clothes of 35,000 baseball fans at
Nationals Park catch fire; they suffer third-degree burns, but
MedStar Washington Hospital Center has only ten burn beds. One million people die within 90 seconds. The second stage begins when mega-fires ignite as gas lines rupture and chemical factories explode. Survivors shuffle through radioactive wasteland with ruptured lungs. No electricity, water, or first responders remain. Yet while the public remains unaware of these horrifying details, the
United States government has rehearsed
World War III scenarios for 65 years—conflicts that would kill over two billion people worldwide. To address this disconnect, Jacobsen takes readers back to a secret 1960 meeting at
U.S. Strategic Command.
Part I - The buildup (or, how we got here) December 1960: a secret, mass extermination plan A classified meeting at
U.S. Strategic Command headquarters at
Offutt Air Force Base gathers Secretary of Defense
Thomas S. Gates Jr., his deputy
James H. Douglas Jr., Deputy Director of Defense Research and Engineering
John H. Rubel, the Joint Chiefs of Staff—Commander of U.S. Strategic Air Command General
Thomas S. Power, Army Chief General
George Decker, Navy Chief Admiral
Arleigh Burke, Air Force Commander General
Thomas D. White, and Marine Corps Commandant General
David M. Shoup—and numerous other top-ranking military officials. Its purpose, as documented in participant John Rubel's 2008 memoir, was to finalize a secret plan for waging nuclear war against the
Soviet Union. This "mass extermination" plan would have resulted in 500 million deaths across the USSR, with
B-52 bombers dropping 40 megatons of thermonuclear bombs on
Moscow alone—equivalent to 4,000
Hiroshimas. File:Thomas_S._Power.JPG|General
Thomas S. Power, Commander of U.S. Strategic Air Command, who supported the 1960 nuclear war plan File:GenDMShoup_USMC.jpg|General
David M. Shoup, Marine Corps Commandant, the only military leader to dissent from the mass extermination plan File:RubelLife19561001a.png|
John H. Rubel, Deputy Director of Defense Research and Engineering, who documented the December 1960 meeting
August 6, 1945: two Hiroshima victims speak To express the human meaning of this comparison, Jacobsen recounts the experiences of two survivors of the
atomic bombing of Hiroshima, which instantly killed 80,000 people. Thirteen-year-old
Setsuko Thurlow, who was 1.1 miles from ground zero when the 15-kiloton
Little Boy bomb detonated 1,900 feet above the city, witnessed victims with missing skin and body parts, and Dr.
Michihiko Hachiya, whose clothes were blown off, was left naked and bleeding. The U.S. military classified their stories, as well as those of countless other victims, as intellectual property to maintain strategic advantages in understanding nuclear weapons effects.
1946-1960: The buildup The December 1960 meeting at STRATCOM was a milestone in the nuclear arms race that had started after World War II.
Los Alamos National Laboratory, which built the two bombs dropped on Japan, would have shut down had it not been for the Navy's 1946
Operation Crossroads. While the U.S. had only one atomic bomb left at war's end, by mid-1946 it possessed nine, growing to 170 by 1949—a number considered sufficient to destroy the Soviet Union. The arms race accelerated after the USSR detonated its first atomic bomb in 1949 using blueprints stolen by
Klaus Fuchs. American production surged from 170 to 299 weapons by the end of 1950. The development of thermonuclear weapons marked another escalation: in 1952, the U.S. exploded the 10.4-megaton
Ivy Mike test, the first "Super" bomb, which completely obliterated
Elugelab island in the
Pacific Ocean. Mass production accelerated further, reaching thirteen per day in 1959. By 1960, the U.S. had 18,638 nuclear bombs, 110 times more than the 170 warheads sufficient to obliterate the USSR. Why? One word was invoked to justify this buildup: deterrence.
December 1960: the birth of SIOP Such mass production created complexities since each military branch operated independently with its own nuclear weapons, delivery systems, and target lists. The creation of the
Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) in December 1960 unified these into a coordinated strategy calling for a preemptive strike on the USSR. That such a plan would kill 275 million people in the first hour and an additional 325 million within six months—half of whom would not even be in the Soviet Union, including 300 million Chinese civilians—did not seem to bother the generals who met at STRATCOM. On the next day, they all thanked the officers who had worked on the plan—except Marine Corps Commandant
David M. Shoup, who dissented, stating that "any plan that murders 300 million Chinese when it might not even be their war is not a good plan. That is not the American way." His objection was met with stunned silence. Decades later, Rubel compared the December 1960 meeting to the Nazi
Wannsee Conference of January 1942, where the
Final Solution was planned.
Present day: from SIOP to OPLAN The SIOP evolved and changed its name to
Operations Plan (OPLAN). The current one is OPLAN 8010-12, which consists of four plans directed against Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. The United States stockpile of nuclear warheads went down from an all-time high of 31,255 in 1967 to about 5,000 nuclear weapons in 2024, with 1,770 ready for launch; Russia possesses similar numbers. Despite
Ronald Reagan and
Mikhail Gorbachev's 1985 joint declaration that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought," these mass extermination plans remain active.
Part II - The first 24 minutes First minute: North Korea launches ICBM at US At 3:03 PM
EDT on March 30, a rocket fires in
North Korea. Within four-tenths of a second, the U.S.
Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) satellites detect the ignition and begin sending data streams to the
Aerospace Data Facility of the
National Reconnaissance Office in
Colorado, where the dimension of the rocket's plume is analyzed. Within five seconds, NRO concludes North Korea has launched a
Hwasong-17 ICBM with a 1-megaton thermonuclear warhead. Three command centers are immediately informed:
the Pentagon's
National Military Command Center,
NORAD headquarters at
Cheyenne Mountain Complex, and
U.S. Strategic Command headquarters at
Offutt Air Force Base. The ICBM's trajectory proves alarming—it is not heading for space or the
Sea of Japan as in previous North Korean tests. After fifteen seconds,
Space Delta 4, the missile-warning unit at
Buckley Space Force Base, concludes the ICBM is heading to the
Continental United States. Fifteen seconds later, the worst fears are confirmed: the ICBM is heading toward the
East coast. This development is puzzling: launching one ICBM makes no strategic sense, because a single nuclear warhead alone cannot decapitate the U.S., and the attacking country will itself be decapitated by the U.S. nuclear response. However, any U.S. retaliation requires a secondary confirmation, which will only be provided in eight minutes by the
Long Range Discrimination Radar at
Clear Space Force Station in
Alaska.
1–4 minutes: President informed of nuclear attack At STRATCOM, three critical countdown clocks begin: Red Impact (time to impact), Blue Impact (time for retaliation decision), and Safe Escape (time for leadership evacuation). The STRATCOM Commander focuses on getting the Blue Impact clock ticking. NORAD's commander informs the
Secretary of Defense and the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the attack. The Secretary of Defense has 30 seconds to prepare his words for the
President, knowing that once secondary confirmation arrives, the
Launch on Warning policy will kick in. He calls the President at the White House and delivers the devastating news: three minutes and 30 seconds earlier, North Korea launched a nuclear missile at the U.S. The President is confused by the unprecedented situation, as he is the only person in the chain of command who has not rehearsed what will happen next. He learns he has no more than six minutes to decide if and how the U.S. will retaliate. Suddenly,
Secret Service agents burst into action, forcibly removing the President to the
White House Situation Room for protection.
4–9 minutes: US missile defense fails completely Four minutes and 15 seconds after launch, the boost phase of the North Korean ICBM is over: 500 miles above Earth, it enters its mid-course phase and, without a heat signature, becomes much harder to track. The
Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system—interceptor missiles—despite having only 44 missiles with a 55% success rate, prepares to engage. The
Sea-based X-band Radar in the
North Pacific Ocean guides them as the first missile is launched, traveling at 20,000 miles per hour toward the ICBM and its five decoys. When the first interceptor fails to destroy the ICBM, three additional missiles are launched in rapid succession, but all fail. Simultaneously, the Long Range Discrimination Radar provides secondary confirmation of the incoming threat. The moment of decision has arrived: the President must now implement Launch on Warning.
10–12 minutes: President wrestles with retaliation decision The President is moved to the
Presidential Emergency Operations Center, a more hardened facility than the command center beneath the
West Wing. The military aide—who stays within arm's length of the President 24/7/365—opens the "
Football"—the nuclear briefcase containing the "Black Book" with America's nuclear retaliation options. The President, overwhelmed by the situation, asks the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, "Tell me what to do", but the Chairman can only advise. The nuclear options before the President draw from the
United States nuclear triad: 400 land-based ICBMs, 66 strategic bombers, and 14 nuclear submarines. Military leaders "jam" the President to authorize immediate retaliation while the Secretary of Defense advocates for restraint, urging communication with
Moscow and
Beijing to prevent global escalation. After the President orders all U.S. forces to move to
DEFCON 1, he focuses his attention on the Black Book's option Charlie, as advised by the Chairman. He learns it would wipe out North Korea, kill up to four million Chinese, and put at risk the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea. He hesitates. He questions. Pressed by time and pressured by the military, he reaches for the "
Biscuit"—the card containing the nuclear launch "gold codes"—when suddenly ten armed Secret Service agents from the
CAT team on the President's detail enter and forcibly remove him from the room, prioritizing his safety over his nuclear authority.
12–15 minutes: US prepares retaliation At
Andersen Air Force Base in
Guam, two stealth
B-2 bombers begin preparations for takeoff, loaded with
B61-12 thermonuclear gravity bombs—the one decision the President managed to make before being whisked away by the CAT team. Meanwhile,
FEMA's chief is helicoptered to safety to implement continuity of operations plans, focusing on government survival rather than civilian protection. Now understanding that Washington D.C. is the target and the whole cabinet is about to be decapitated, the Secretary of Defense, sixth in the presidential line of succession, and the
Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs evacuate via
Osprey to the secure
Raven Rock bunker.
16–18 minutes: Second North Korean missile detected The STRATCOM Commander, frustrated that the CAT Team whisked the President away before he could provide the launch codes, receives devastating news: SBIRS satellites detect a second nuclear warhead, this time a
submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) 350 miles off
California. Two missiles confirm this is no accident: deterrence has failed, and America is under a coordinated nuclear attack. Despite the escalating crisis, the President still has not provided nuclear launch codes, as he is moved by Secret Service aboard
Marine One.
19–24 minutes: Diablo Canyon struck, US retaliates , California, United States of America on 9 February 2023. The second missile's target becomes clear: it will strike the
Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California in three minutes. The plant operates two 1,000+ megawatt water reactors and could have been protected by
AEGIS or
THAAD interceptors, but both systems have been deployed overseas. The North Korean
KN23 missile detonates directly over the facility, creating both a nuclear fireball and triggering a catastrophic meltdown of the reactor cores. Meanwhile, ground-based radar at
Cavalier Space Force Station in
North Dakota provides final confirmation of the original ICBM's target: either the White House or the Pentagon. Finally, the President—now airborne in Marine One and having learned of the Diablo Canyon strike—authorizes a massive nuclear counterstrike against 82 North Korean targets with fifty
Minuteman III ICBMs from a
Missile Alert Facility in Wyoming and eight
Trident SLBMs, each carrying four nuclear warheads. A
Russian spy stationed down the road immediately calls Moscow to report that American ICBMs have been launched.
Part III - The next 24 minutes 24–26 minutes: California is nuked A rancher near Diablo Canyon Power Plant films the 300-kiloton mushroom cloud rising from the devastated facility. Within a minute, the unprecedented volume of posts overwhelms social media platforms—
X crashes permanently and never returns online. The bomb not only destroys the two 1,100-megawatt reactors but also shatters 2,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel, sending radioactive debris into the atmosphere. The contamination spreads across a vast area from
California to
Nevada, creating an uninhabitable zone of unprecedented scale.
26–27 minutes: Russia is triggered The nuclear crisis takes on a global dimension as two pieces of news propagate simultaneously in Russia. Night watch personnel at the
National Defense Management Center in
Moscow monitor social media streams and immediately inform Russian military leadership about the nuclear strikes on the California nuclear power plant. Simultaneously, Russia's
Tundra early warning satellites detect the U.S. Minuteman III ICBMs launched in retaliation against North Korea. However, Tundra has a history of mistaking cloud formations for incoming ICBMs.
27–32 minutes: Critical decisions under pressure Pressures mount on three fronts: • On the strategic front - The President, aboard Marine One attempting to escape the forthcoming nuclear explosion, is under mounting pressure from the STRATCOM Commander. He finally yields by authorizing the "universal unlock code," a fail-safe mechanism that allows the STRATCOM Commander to launch nuclear weapons independently if the President is killed or becomes incapacitated. • On the diplomatic front - The Secretary of Defense, flying in an Osprey toward Raven Rock, must establish communication with Moscow to inform them that the American ICBMs that were just fired will traverse Russian airspace but are intended to strike North Korea. This is because the Minutemen ICBMs lack sufficient range to fly directly to North Korea. • On the military front - All military personnel at the Pentagon's National Military Command Center wait through the final critical 120 seconds of the North Korean ICBM's flight path toward Washington, D.C., hoping, however faintly, that the missile could still fail before reaching its target. Meanwhile, intelligence assessments reveal the broader threat posed by North Korea's arsenal: the regime possesses 50 nuclear weapons plus 5,000 tons of chemical weapons. While
THAAD missile defense systems protect South Korea, they would be overwhelmed if North Korea were to launch hundreds of missiles simultaneously.
32 minutes, 30 seconds: Washington is nuked Recognizing that Marine One remains too close to the anticipated blast zone and that its electronics would be fried by the electromagnetic pulse from the nuclear detonation over Washington, the President and the military aide carrying the Football make a desperate tandem parachute jump with the Secret Service Counter Assault Team. Thirty seconds later, the one-megaton thermonuclear weapon detonates above the Pentagon. The blast generates temperatures of 180 million degrees Fahrenheit and creates a pressure wave that destroys everything within a three-mile radius. Within Ring 1—a nine-mile diameter circle—fires ignite, buildings collapse, and materials melt. Between one and two million people die within the first ten seconds.
33 minutes: Russia misinterprets satellite data Tundra satellites stream their data to
Serpukhov-15, Russia's western command center for incoming ICBM launch data. In stark contrast to Colonel
Stanislav Petrov who in 1983 classified as a false alarm the incoming satellite warnings of five American ICBMs, the current Russian commander at Serpukhov-15 trusts the faulty reports from Tundra indicating hundreds of American ICBMs fired at Russia and immediately reports the threat to Moscow.
34–36 minutes: Nuclear devastation spreads In California, tens of thousands of people attempt to evacuate the Diablo Canyon area simultaneously, creating deadly traffic jams as people flee the radioactive zone. On the East Coast,
CNN's news anchors report unconfirmed nuclear strikes on California and Washington, D.C. and broadcast FEMA's emergency warning: "US UNDER NUCLEAR ATTACK. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL." The STRATCOM Commander aboard the
Doomsday Plane over
Nebraska watches live satellite imagery of Washington D.C.'s devastation while awaiting word from the President and Vice President. Ring 1 is completely devastated—100% fatality and total obliteration. Ring 2, extending to a 15-mile diameter, experiences energy release 15 to 50 times greater than that of the nuclear weapon itself, with 300-mile-per-hour winds sucking everything upward into the firestorm.
36–38 minutes: US fires SLBMs In an undisclosed location, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the 155 submariners of the
USS Nebraska are intensely focused on preparing to unleash more destructive power than all of the bombs dropped during World War II. After the first Trident SLBM is fired, another seven follow at fifteen-second intervals. Each missile carries four 455-kiloton nuclear warheads, which will reach North Korea in 14 minutes. Defensively, military installations worldwide implement
FPCON Delta measures—the highest threat level— the
FAA issues
SCATANA orders to ground all civilian aircraft, and U.S. borders close completely as the nation prepares for a potential broader conflict.
38–39 minutes: US-Russia communication falls apart The Secretary of Defense, temporarily blinded by the nuclear flash, loses all communication with the President. With the Vice President and the four cabinet members before him in the line of presidential succession presumed dead, he could be sworn in as President. But a more strategic issue is now pressing: Russia. The
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff finally manages to contact his Russian counterpart and informs him that America has been attacked. The Russian general's response is ominous: "Your President should have called us by now," before hanging up abruptly. At
NATO headquarters in
Brussels,
Article 5 of the
North Atlantic Treaty is invoked. The United States maintains 100 nuclear weapons at six NATO bases across
Belgium, the
Netherlands,
Germany,
Italy (two bases), and
Turkey. However, launch orders must come directly from the American President, so NATO forces wait for authorization that may never come. Simultaneously, Russia observes NATO bases preparing for potential nuclear airstrikes and activates the
Kazbek nuclear command system. Russian forces prepare their arsenal and await the Russian President's orders.
40 minutes, 30 seconds: North Korea fires a second ICBM The U.S. has fired a total of 82 nuclear weapons at North Korea to "restore deterrence"—a brutal retaliation that will kill millions of civilians in clear violation of international war protocols, but deemed necessary to decapitate an opaque regime. Before being hit by this assault, North Korea launches a second Hwasong-17 ICBM from an underground facility at Hoejung-ni. SBIRS satellites detect the launch immediately, which analysts believe is likely aimed at either Cheyenne Mountain or Offutt Air Force Base. Civil society is in despair as media relay contradictory emergency advice from FEMA. In Diablo Canyon, complete panic ensues as power grids fail, cellular networks collapse, emergency sirens wail, mega-fires rage, concrete debris and dead seagulls fall from the contaminated sky, and people vomit uncontrollably.
41 minutes: Russia overestimates incoming US SLBMs High above the
Pacific Ocean, the eight Trident missiles travel at 13,600 miles per hour toward
Pyongyang and deploy hundreds of decoy warheads. Tundra satellites misperceive these as additional incoming SLBMs. Russian radar operators at the Komsomolsk command center report this "new barrage" of nuclear weapons approaching from the south, further escalating Russian fears of a coordinated American first strike.
41–42 minutes: US chain of command disrupted Aboard the American Doomsday Plane, a grim discovery unfolds: the military aide carrying the Football is found dead, and there's no sign of the President. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is confirmed dead in the Pentagon strike. The Vice-Chairman wants the Secretary of Defense sworn in as acting President, while STRATCOM demands immediate authorization to counter the incoming second North Korean ICBM. Miraculously, the President survived the parachute jump despite being hit by the shockwave but suffers severe injuries including a fractured arm and a fractured leg. Stranded near
Little Seneca Lake in
Maryland with no communication, he depends entirely on
quick reaction forces to locate him before he bleeds out, but they never do. Thirty miles southeast, the Potomac is clogged with blinded animals that escaped the
National Zoo and humans who jumped in out of despair.
43–45 minutes: Russia launches massive counterstrike In his underground bunker in
Siberia, the Russian President has six minutes to make a decision that will determine the fate of civilization. Feeling insulted that the American President never called to explain the situation, and convinced by his paranoid advisors that the United States is attempting to decapitate Russian leadership, he orders a massive counterstrike with "the mother lode." Russia launches its most devastating weapons: 312
RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missiles, each loaded with up to ten 500-kiloton warheads. The total arsenal of 1,090 nuclear warheads is fired simultaneously at targets across the United States. Within seconds of the Russian launch, the
Aerospace Data Facility in
Colorado detects the massive ICBM barrage. The United States faces complete defenselessness against such a large scale attack.
Cheyenne Mountain Complex,
Offutt Air Force Base, and
Site R will soon be wiped out. However, before these command centers are destroyed, American forces prepare their own "mother lode" counterstrike.
Part IV - The next (and final) 24 minutes 48 minutes: US leadership collapses At Site R, the Secretary of Defense is sworn in as acting President following the assumed deaths of the President, the Vice President and the next five officials in the presidential line of succession. Meanwhile, the STRATCOM Commander aboard the Doomsday Plane awaits launch orders with just six minutes remaining to make the most consequential decision in human history.
48 minutes, 10 seconds: Russia fires 192 SLBMs at the US The Russian response proves devastating and immediate. From the Arctic Ocean, two
K-114 Tula submarines and one
Borei-class submarine launch 192 100-kiloton nuclear warheads at the United States in just 80 seconds, firing at five-second intervals. Simultaneously, two additional Russian submarines in the Atlantic Ocean target NATO installations across Europe.
49 to 51 minutes: US fires its entire nuclear arsenal at Russia After all the deterrence theories have completely failed, with only five minutes remaining, the STRATCOM Commander, now in possession of the universal launch codes authorized earlier by the former President, is ready to launch America's entire remaining nuclear arsenal. This is the final opportunity to "use them or lose them" since all U.S. silo-based ICBMs and command centers will soon be obliterated by incoming Russian weapons. However, the Secretary of Defense, recently sworn in as acting President despite knowing that they only have minutes to live, is constitutionally deciding on retaliation. He experiences a profound crisis of conscience, questioning why hundreds of millions of innocent people must die. Ultimately, he relents and orders the most extreme nuclear option: targeting 975 sites across Russia. The STRATCOM Commander relays an order he would have given regardless. The retaliation involves 350 ICBMs, B-52 bombers, and 10 submarines at sea, all coordinated to annihilate Russia. Across NATO airbases, pilots race to their aircraft for what they know are suicide missions. The flight plan calls for jets to fly 200 feet above ground to avoid radar detection, drop their nuclear payloads, and crash when they run out of fuel.
52–55 minutes: North Korea unleashes an electrical Armageddon on the US The American Trident SLBM warheads reach their targets first. Twelve
W88 455-kiloton warheads detonate over Pyongyang's three million residents, twenty destroy North Korea's nuclear facilities while fifty additional ICBMs follow, creating a complete holocaust across the Korean peninsula. Meanwhile, the North Korean leader retreats to a bunker 1,900 feet underground, preparing two final assaults. The first is to cover South Korea with 10,000 artillery shells and 240mm rockets loaded with chemical agents target
Osan Air Base,
Camp Humphreys, and
Seoul. The
THAAD missile defense systems are quickly overwhelmed and fail completely. Up to 2.5 million people die from the chemical weapons attack. The second attack is also revenge. Having been ridiculed years ago by a photo published in Western media showing the Korean peninsula at night, the South beaming in light, the North plunged in darkness, North Korea's leader is now ready to send the U.S. back to its own dark ages by unleashing an
electromagnetic pulse (EMP) over its territory. For decades, the
U.S. EMP Commission warned about the dangers of nuclear electromagnetic pulse attacks. In 2017, it deemed North Korea's "nuclear EMP attack" an "existential threat" to American civilization. Despite these warnings, nothing was done to prepare. Therefore, the U.S. Space Command at
Redstone Arsenal in
Alabama can only watch as a North Korean
Super-EMP satellite maneuvers into position 300 miles above the United States and detonates. The electromagnetic pulse creates three cascading shockwaves that surge through
SCADA systems controlling America's entire electrical infrastructure. Cars, airplanes, dams, valves, and countless other electronic systems simultaneously fail. The United States, the world's most technologically advanced nation, is brought to its knees by this single space-based explosion.
57–59 minutes: Russia destroys the US The massive barrage of Russian warheads obliterates every military installation across the United States. Site R's destruction touches off a massive firestorm that kills and carbonizes the actual President, who was still stranded near Seneca Lake. Only the Doomsday Plane and scattered
Trident submarines at sea remain operational. The same Russian barrage simultaneously destroys NATO bases across Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Turkey, but extends beyond the alliance to include the United Kingdom, France, and other European nations. The nuclear exchange has become truly global. The last of the
E6-B Doomsday Fleet, deploys its five-mile long antennae and uses its
AN/FRC-117 low-frequency radio system to transmit humanity's final nuclear launch orders to the surviving Trident submarines. The last submarine-launched ballistic missiles fire from the depths of the ocean. As Jacobsen notes: "Everyone loses. Everyone."
1 hour 12 minutes: nuclear apocalypse After the 192 Russian SLBMs and two North Korean nuclear weapons (a third failed to detonate) hit the US, another 1,000 Russian warheads strike it over 22 minutes, completing the nuclear apocalypse: 1,000 mile-wide fireballs are followed by 1,000 walls of compressed air that bulldoze to dust 1,000 U.S. cities, before 1,000 100 square mile-large mega-fires reduce to ash the rest of the country. Hundreds of millions of people die in North America and Europe. The first atomic bomb exploded on
July 16, 1945 at the Alamogordo Bombing Range, at a site named
Jornada del Muerto, The Journey of the Dead Man.
Nikita Khrushchev ominously described the end of this nuclear journey as the time when "the survivors will envy the dead."
Part V - The next 24 months and beyond (or, where we are headed after a nuclear exchange) The nuclear conflict creates 1,000 rings of fire, each with a radius of 100 to 200 miles, that inject 150 million metric tons of soot into the
troposphere. This reduces the Sun's warming rays by 80% and causes a global temperature drop of 27 °F (15 °C) on average, triggering a 45% fall in rainfall and a
nuclear winter lasting 15 years. As a result, agriculture collapses, and major breadbaskets like South Dakota and Ukraine freeze year-round. This leads to widespread famine for mankind, with survival only being possible in Southern Hemisphere countries like Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina and Brazil. The conflict also causes
radiation poisoning from
nuclear fallout. When the nuclear winter finally ends, the
ozone layer, which has been heavily damaged by the war, has lost up to 65% of its shielding power. This leaves life on Earth largely unprotected from the Sun's ultraviolet rays, forcing humanity to live in underground shelters while diseases and insects from thawing corpses spread aboveground. Like the
Chicxulub asteroid event 66 million years ago, the nuclear winter would likely kill off large-bodied animals, while tiny-bodied species like insects or rodents surviving. It is not made clear what happens to the human race after 24,000 years, but the question raised is, what traces of humanity could our descendants, if any, find? Will they wonder, as we do today about
Göbekli Tepe, what catastrophe fell upon us? With all our knowledge gone, will future myths keep a memory that the enemy was not "another" nation but nuclear weapons?
History Lessons The book features nine short historical vignettes focusing on
deterrence, the
ICBM,
launch on warning,
ICBM launch systems, the
President's Football,
nuclear-armed submarines,
the Proud Prophet war game,
radiation sickness and "Apes on a Treadmill." In the 'history lesson' on the President's Football, Jacobsen claims the
Los Alamos National Laboratory declassified its origin story for her book. She accessed a paper on the subject written by
Harold Agnew and Glen McDuff, whom she also interviewed. In December 1959, Agnew visited a NATO base in Europe with officials from the
Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. Observing
MK 7 gravity bombs mounted on
Republic F-84F jets, he was alarmed to find them guarded by "this single G.I. surrounded by a large number of foreign troops on foreign territory with thousands of Soviet troops just miles away." Concerned that anyone could arm the bomb, Agnew asked Don Cotter of
Sandia Laboratories to develop an electronic “lock” on its firing circuit. The prototype gained support from nearly all military officials, except General
Alfred Starbird, who doubted the practicality of a pilot obtaining an unlock code from the U.S. President. Further the U.S. military started questioning why MK 7s should be treated differently from other nuclear weapons.
President Kennedy used the introduction of the first
Single Integrated Operational Plan to mandate that all nuclear weapons must require presidential authorization. This led to the development of the emergency satchel—later known as the President’s Football- and of the
Permissive Action Links. ==Themes and style==