Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen - EP 213 

Another great episode! I bought the book on Amazon, sounds like an amazing educational fun joyful read!

Great episode

Just got the book for my free credit, I will listen to it today.

get episode guys

38:51 Random but it’s good that these systems are dated because analogue/ old school computing is way harder to hack remotely. Some systems, not nuclear I just mean in general, are kept antiquated because it’s physically unhackable. The missile silos for example, have non digital launch. Can’t be hacked unless you’re right there messing around with the equipment physically.

You know, I found this book very lacking personally. Both from a practical standpoint - for example never covers air vs ground burst impacts and the difference in effect on the radiation result and dust kickup (critical for nuclear winter) - and from an ideological standpoint. For example she clearly is promoting the idea that “mutually assured destruction” is a myth, but then in her scenario NK immediately is destroyed for launching nukes. She also pretends NK isn’t a rational political actor, but rather a “crazy king” rogue state. Which is not consistent with their history and political situation. They do act rationally. She criticized launch on warning and dead man’s hand, but then shows how command centers are destroyed if a decision is made too late. I could go on. I watched a few of her podcast appearances on it hoping to see some critique or pushback on some of her concepts, but she just kept saying “buy the book” whenever anyone asked anything really about the book so it wasn’t very useful. Personally I do not think it’s “a good thing” that there are less nukes. Because less nukes means countries may believe they are more likely to survive nuclear retaliation, which in turns makes them more likely to use their own nukes. To rephrase, with fewer nukes there is a higher likelyhood someone will use theirs to wipe a country out and then bunker for the retaliation. With more nukes, nobody thinks using their own stockpile is a survivable decision with or without bunkers. She also had a lot of good concepts and points. I wish she was more open in interviews so I could see the bad and good sifted through. I do hope our leadership reads this so they stop talking about missiles into Russia and shooting down Russian bombers and taking back Crimea. Just stop. “Oh they can do whatever they want just because they have nukes!?” Yes. Personally, I live 2h from DC. About 70 miles. I’d probably die of starvation after my preps run out, or the guys in town would kill me while they look for my food