Nuclear War

Annie Jacobsen is a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist and the <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author of <i>Area 51 Operation Paperclip Surprise Kill Vanish </i>and others. Her books have been translated into nine languages. She also writes and produces TV including Tom Clancy's <i>Jack Ryan</i>. A graduate of Princeton University she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their two sons. <b>Read this book from page one. It will blow your mind.</b> <b>Sobering and brilliantly researched.</b> <p><b>We could have an uninhabitable earth in a century. It could take 26 minutes and 40 seconds.<br><br>An edge-of-your-seat non-fiction thriller for readers of <i>American Prometheus </i>by Kai Bird or <i>Chernobyl </i>by Serhii Plokhy.</b><br><br>The first rule of nuclear war is that there are no rules.<br><br>Up to now no one outside of official circles has known exactly what would happen if a rogue state launched a nuclear missile at the Pentagon. Second by second and minute by minute these are the real-life protocols that choreograph the end of civilisation as we know it.<br><br>If a single nuclear missile is launched it provokes two dozen in return. Frantic calls over secure lines work to confirm the worst as armoured helicopters are scrambled outside. Decisions over hundreds of millions of lives need to be made within six minutes based on partial information knowing that once launched nothing is capable of halting the destruction.<br><br>Because the plans for General Nuclear War are among the most classified secrets held by the United States government this book takes the reader up to the razor’s edge of what can legally be known. Based on dozens of new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons created the response plans and been responsible for the decisions that will be made this is the only account of what a nuclear exchange would look like.<br><br><i>Nuclear War </i>is at once a compulsive non-fiction thriller and a powerful argument that we must rid ourselves of these world-ending weapons for ever.</p>