Has the risk of nuclear war been rising? Are we approaching "permanent Cuban missile crisis" territory? K. Barrett Bilali of the Bilali's Call Substack discusses his recent essay "Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen.”
Excerpt:
Nuclear War: A Scenario is a nonfiction thriller that details how a nuclear war would unfold – second-by-second – based on current military protocols for nuclear engagement, declassified documents and interviews with top US officials.
The 300-page book by investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen dives into the scenario: a North Korean ICBM with a nuclear warhead is launched towards the US Capitol triggering a US retaliation and the end of the world as we know it. In gripping detail, she breaks down the scenario to the first, second, and third 24-minute segments.
In the lead up to this horrific scenario, Jacobsen makes a shocking revelation from her research.
In December 1960, the US Secretary of Defense and a host of top military officials met in a deep bunker in the Strategic Air Command Center in Omaha, Nebraska. Their plan: the execution of a preemptive strike on the Sino-Soviet Bloc and surrounding countries. Moscow was to be hit with a thermonuclear warhead 4,000 times the power of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“Defense scientists had carefully estimated that 275 million would be killed in the first hour, and that at least 325 million more people would die from radioactive fallout over the next six months or so,” notes Jacobsen.
