Nonfiction horror

I do not read horror fiction. However, I have just read a horrifying nonfiction book. It’s Nuclear War: A Scenario, by Annie Jacobsen. It’s the scariest thing I’ve ever read

 Her premise is that North Korea launches an unprovoked attack on two U.S. sites: first, the Pentagon, and minutes later, the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in central California.

 Defensive missiles fired at the ICBM launched from North Korea miss their target. The missile fired from a North Korean submarine is too close to intercept. Missiles fired at North Korea in response must pass over Russia to get there. The Russians think they are being attacked and respond in kind. The American president, sidelined by overzealous protectors, is unable to intervene.

Within little more than an hour, almost all life on Earth is obliterated, and our world is plunged into a new ice age that will last thousands of years.

In a tense narrative of fewer than 300 pages, Jacobsen relates how the MAD doctrine of mutually assured destruction fails to prevent catastrophe, and elaborate systems created to assure safety are easily defeated.

Gripping from the start, it’s not an easy read. Some unnecessarily mind-numbing detail aside, Jacobsen wastes few words. The result is unthinkable – and yet, it is all too thinkable. The question is how we prevent it.

Jacobsen suggests that nuclear weapons are now the chief enemy of all humankind. But with psychopaths like Vladimir Putin of Russia and Kim Jong Un of North Korea in power, it seems unlikely that humans will unite against a common enemy when we can find so many other smaller enemies to battle.