This book by Jonathan Schell presents a stark prediction of the nuclear apocalypse. I found the writing style to be too grandiose, but kept slugging away to consider the author’s point of view. As an example of it being grandiose, the cover tells us, “Schell has taken upon himself the task of speaking for man, and acting for man; and it can be hoped that what he has written here will lead the way for many.” More to the point of the content, “Schell describes, within the limits of what is dependably and unarguably known to science, a full-scaled nuclear holocaust.” He writes as if he needs to convince readers that nuclear war would be bad. The book was written in 1982 when multiple books were written predicting the end of civilization. I recommend this one as being a good example of that genre.

The first section of the book is titled “A Republic of Insects and Grass,” which describes what would survive a nuclear holocaust. Note there is no indication any humans would survive. The book begins with irrefutable facts about the number of nuclear weapons and megatonnage that have been built since the first nuclear detonation at Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945. The book then gives a brief primer of the horrible effects of a nuclear exchange. President Dwight Eisenhower recognized the risks in a 1956 letter that said, “…one day both sides have to ‘meet at the conference table with the understanding that the era of armaments has ended, and the human race must conform its actions to this truth or die.” There are many examples of political figures making statements that reinforce or confirm that comment. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in 1974, “…the accumulation of nuclear arms had to be constrained if mankind is not to destroy itself.” President Jimmy Carter said in his farewell address that after a nuclear holocaust, “…the survivors, if any, would live in despair amid the poisoned ruins of a civilization that had committed suicide.” (Those were surprising words for a President who authorized more nuclear weapons programs than any other President.) Continue reading →

I’ve heard many arguments about the morality of nuclear weapons, and I decided to read this book that presents a Christian viewpoint. The book (published in 1982) opens with the statement that, “Nuclear War has emerged as the chief moral issue of our time.” The author states that he is a social scientist, but he “…wrote this primarily as a Christian pacifist…I simply plead for God’s children to come halfway from wherever they are and at least agree on nuclear pacifism.” I appreciated the upfront declaration of where the author stands.

There is a question about why the author thinks this time is crucial, since it was more than three decades from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to when the book was published. He answers that the huge increases in stockpiles of nuclear weapons and deliverable weapons with the Multiple Independently-Targetable Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) had changed everything. The Soviets were soon also “MIRVing” their missiles. The MIRVs allowed the targets for U.S. missiles to increase to 1650 cities and military targets from the previous 550 targets without adding more missiles. Perhaps even more troubling to the author was that the missiles had become much more accurate. The U.S. missiles were said to be able to hit a target within 300 feet, which would equate to a bull’s eye with a nuclear weapon. That increased accuracy, the author believed, might lure one side into making a first strike with the hope of wiping out the others silos and missiles. Such a first strike could therefore overcome the restraint imposed by Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). “The U.S. policy of a counterforce or first-strike option gradually emerged over several years and was confirmed by Presidential Directive 59 issued by President Carter in August 1980.” Instead of MAD, planners began to talk about “…fighting small or limited nuclear wars.” Vice-President George H.W. Bush “…said a nuclear war could be fought and won.” Continue reading →

This book, edited by Anthony Cave Brown, is startling. The U.S. military had determined in the mid to late 1940s that the only way the United States and its allies could combat an expected massive Soviet military assault in Europe as the Cold War progressed was with a full-scale nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Some military planners believed that the attack should be “preemptive or preventive,” and that the bombers carrying nuclear weapons should be unleashed on Soviet cities and military installations before the Soviets launched what U.S. military planners believed to be the inevitable World War III. Dropshot was prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff led by General Omar Bradley in 1949 with the authority and knowledge of President Harry Truman. The plan listed the date for the outbreak of World War III as January 1, 1957, although that date was arbitrarily selected for planning purposes. The 330 page book is not written for any other purpose but to describe the complex plans to prepare the United States for Armageddon. It educates but does not entertain.

The Editor writes in the Prologue, “Dropshot was promulgated in three volumes of green-colored paper late in 1949. It became public property in 1977 through the United States’ Freedom of Information Act and may now be purchased at the National Archives for fifteen cents a page. This incongruous fact belittles its importance, for at the time nothing could have been more secret.” The editor continues, “Was it folly to make Dropshot public? I have thought extensively about this point, and I am bound to conclude it was folly to release this document. It should have been burned, buried, or preserved in some secret vault, for it cannot endear America to Russia. As will be seen, not only was Dropshot the blueprint for the atomization of Russia, but it provided for occupation by American armies of that vast continent.”“Why, therefore, was Dropshot made public? The Joint Chiefs were not required by law to declassify it?…The question, therefore, becomes a tantalizing one in which several conjectures are possible. The first is that there was no point in keeping it a secret because the Russians already knew about it. This is conceivable; Dropshot was hatched at a time of considerable Soviet intelligence activity…Stalin frequently in 1948 did refer to American war plans, and his representative at the United Nation, Andrei Vishinsky, did allege that America was planning atomic war against Russia over Berlin.” “Is it possible Dropshot was some gigantic blind, that it was created to hide some other relevant plan?” Continue reading →