Despite the warnings from history we never seem to earn and we are only happy when we are playing with fire. Annie Jacobsen then spins a scenario to draw the reader into a plausible sequence of events, albeit „unlikely“ whereby a nuclear armed minor state (spoiler alert – North Korea) launches an attack on the United States of America .. twice, an ICBM and a submarine launched one. The response (because there may well be a third) is to obliterate North Korea, but because of technology defects on the Russia monitoring satellites they believe (falsely?) that this is an attack on Mother Russia and immediately fall into the „dead-man’s hand“ counter-strike mentality because they cannot talk to the US President (because he is „unavailable“). The Kremlin-Washington hotline goes very cold. What China would do in response to it meanwhile soaking up radioactivity by the mega-Currie is not deliberated, or India or Pakistan. The decapitation effect of not getting the President of the United States out of Washington in time is though. This is a curious thought experiment of things not going to plan. 

I have friends who are sceptical as to the plausibility of the scenario, stating that sixties-to-nineties technologies have been modernised (despite what detractors say of all things Russian) and the kind of mistakes Annie says could happen just don’t add up. I do hope so. There is much that does not add up in the real world, but that is my worry. I read it (or rather listened to it) and had that morbid fascination of ‚good when finished‘. It did feel that Dr Strangelove had undergone a year 2000+ makeover, but highlighted that command elements of the Superpowers are (or could be) stuck in the 1970s.