Summary

A nuclear war erupts. Every second matters. The worst case scenario occurs: millions dead, civilization collapses, the Earth becomes a dark, dead world. Annie Jacobsen explains how it happens, minute by minute.

Why I liked this book

As a fan of Jacobsen's work, I was elated when I discovered she was releasing a book on nuclear war. Nuclear war oddly fascinates me. Perhaps it's macabre interest, but I love learning every facet from it. In this book, somewhat similar to To Hell and Back: The Last Train From Hiroshima, Jacobsen details a fictional scenario where nuclear war erupts due to an out-of-the-blue attack from North Korea. From the first second of launch to the millennia after the brief war is long over, Jacobsen takes you on a fact-driven ride of how such a war would likely play out.

‍

My biggest take away from this read was not the devastation and death the war would bring, but that the world would effectively end in just a few hours. That's all it would take. We have developed our nuclear capabilities to be so responsive that, should a nuclear bomb drop at lunch, hundreds of millions would be dead by dinner.

‍

Get a copy