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Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety (ALA Notable Books for Adults) Hardcover – September 17, 2013

4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 4,033 ratings

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**The upcoming documentary Command and Control, directed by Robert Kenner, finds its origins in Eric Schlosser's book and continues to explore the little-known history of the management and safety concerns of America's nuclear aresenal.**

The New Yorker

“Excellent... hair-raising
... Command and Control is how nonfiction should be written.” (Louis Menand)

Famed investigative journalist Eric Schlosser digs deep to uncover secrets about the management of America’s nuclear arsenal. A ground-breaking account of accidents, near-misses, extraordinary heroism, and technological breakthroughs,
Command and Control explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: how do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them?  That question has never been resolved--and Schlosser reveals how the combination of human fallibility and technological complexity still poses a grave risk to mankind.  

Written with the vibrancy of a first-rate thriller,
Command and Control interweaves the minute-by-minute story of an accident at a nuclear missile silo in rural Arkansas with a historical narrative that spans more than fifty years.  It depicts the urgent effort by American scientists, policymakers, and military officers to ensure that nuclear weapons can’t be stolen, sabotaged, used without permission, or detonated inadvertently. Schlosser also looks at the Cold War from a new perspective, offering history from the ground up, telling the stories of bomber pilots, missile commanders, maintenance crews, and other ordinary servicemen who risked their lives to avert a nuclear holocaust.  At the heart of the book lies the struggle, amid the rolling hills and small farms of Damascus, Arkansas, to prevent the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States.   

Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with men who designed and routinely handled  nuclear weapons,
Command and Control takes readers into a terrifying but fascinating world that, until now, has been largely hidden from view.  Through the details of a single accident, Schlosser illustrates how an unlikely event can become unavoidable, how small risks can have terrible consequences, and how the most brilliant minds in the nation can only provide us with an illusion of control.  Audacious, gripping, and unforgettable, Command and Control is a tour de force of investigative journalism, an eye-opening look at the dangers of America’s nuclear age.

Time magazine
 “A devastatingly lucid and detailed new history of nuclear weapons in the U.S.... fascinating.” (Lev Grossman)


Financial Times
“So incontrovertibly right and so damnably readable... a work with the multilayered density of an ambitiously conceived novel… Schlosser has done what journalism does at its best."


Los Angeles Times
“Deeply reported, deeply frightening… a techno-thriller of the first order.”
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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Nuclear bombs must be handled with the proper care, yet that is not always the case. Mentioning harrowing mishaps in the history of the American atomic arsenal, Schlosser singles out one for detailed dramatization, the explosion in 1980 of a Titan II missile. Some airmen were killed and injured, but since the warhead didn’t detonate, the safety system appeared to have worked. Color Schlosser skeptical, for, as he recounts this accident, which began with a mundane incident—a dropped tool that punctured the missile—he delves into nuclear weapon designs. Those are influenced by the requirement that the bomb must always detonate when desired and never when not. Citing experts in the technology of nuclear weaponry who have pondered the “never” part of the requirement, Schlosser highlights their worry about an accidental nuclear explosion. Underscored by cases of dropped, burned, and lost bombs, the problem of designing a safe but reliable bomb persists (see also The Bomb, 2009, by weapons engineer Stephen Younger). Well researched, reported, and written, this contribution to the nuclear-weapons literature demonstrates the versatility of Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation (2001). --Gilbert Taylor

Review

***A New York Times Notable Book of 2013***

Time magazine:
 “A
devastatingly lucid and detailed new history of nuclear weapons in the U.S. … fascinating.(Lev Grossman)

Jonathan Franzen, The Guardian:
Schlosser's book reads like a thriller, but it's masterfully even-handed, well researched, and well organised. Either he's a natural genius at integrating massive amounts of complex information, or he worked like a dog to write this book. You wouldn't think the prospect of nuclear apocalypse would make for a reading treat, but in Schlosser's hands it does.”

Associated Press:
“Gripping...
A real-life adventure that’s every bit as fascinating as a Tom Clancy thriller... Schlosser is clearly on top of his game with Command and Control. His stories of nuclear near-misses inspire trepidation, and his description of Cold War political machinations provide hints about the conversations Pentagon officials must be having nowadays when they review the country’s war strategies.”

Financial Times:
Command and Control ranks among the most nightmarish books written in recent years; and in that crowded company it bids fair to stand at the summit. It is the more horrific for being so incontrovertibly right and so damnably readable. Page after relentless page, it drives the vision of a world trembling on the edge of a fatal precipice deep into your reluctant mind... a work with the multilayered density of an ambitiously conceived novel… Schlosser has done what journalism does at its best when at full stretch: he has spent time – years – researching, interviewing, understanding and reflecting to give us a piece of work of the deepest import.”

Los Angeles Times:
“Deeply reported, deeply frightening… a techno-thriller of the first order.”

The Guardian:
“The strength of Schlosser's writing derives from his ability to carry a wealth of startling detail
(did you know that security at Titan II missile bases was so lapse you could break into one with just a credit card?) on a confident narrative path.”

San Francisco Chronicle:
"Perilous and gripping… Schlosser skillfully weaves together an engrossing account of both the science and the politics of nuclear weapons safety… The story of the missile silo accident unfolds with the pacing, thrill and techno details of an episode of 24."

The New Yorker:
“An
excellent journalistic investigation of the efforts made since the first atomic bomb was exploded, outside Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, to put some kind of harness on nuclear weaponry. By a miracle of information management, Schlosser has synthesized a huge archive of material, including government reports, scientific papers, and a substantial historical and polemical literature on nukes, and transformed it into a crisp narrative covering more than fifty years of scientific and political change. And he has interwoven that narrative with a hair-raising, minute-by-minute account of an accident at a Titan II missile silo in Arkansas, in 1980, which he renders in the manner of a techno-thriller…Command and Control is how nonfiction should be written.” (Louis Menand)

New York Times Book Review:
Disquieting but riveting… fascinating… Schlosser’s readers (and he deserves a great many) will be struck by how frequently the people he cites attribute the absence of accidental explosions and nuclear war to divine intervention or sheer luck rather than to human wisdom and skill. Whatever was responsible, we will clearly need many more of it in the years to come.”

Mother Jones:
Easily the most unsettling work of nonfiction I've ever read, Schlosser's six-year investigation of America's ‘broken arrows’ (nuclear weapons mishaps) is by and large historical—this stuff is top secret, after all—but the book is beyond relevant. It's critical reading in a nation with thousands of nukes still on hair-trigger alert... Command and Control reads like a character-driven thriller as Schlosser draws on his deep reporting, extensive interviews, and documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act to demonstrate how human error, computer glitches, dilution of authority, poor communications, occasional incompetence, and the routine hoarding of crucial information have nearly brought about our worst nightmare on numerous occasions.”

 
Vanity Fair:
Eric Schlosser detonates a truth bomb in Command and Control, a powerful expose about America’s nuclear weapons.”

Dallas Morning News:
“Eric Schlosser’s
Command and Control is a sobering and frightening yet fascinating account of the unbelievable peril posed by repeatedly mishandled American nuclear weapons….The tale is riveting from start to finish. In the first few chapters, I found myself so repeatedly astounded by Schlosser’s recounting of accidents in the early 1950s, I thought: Certainly, it can’t get any worse than this. But it kept getting worse—so much so that I started folding the corners of each page that contained what seemed like the most egregious examples of nuclear mishaps and horrors. I now have a 632-page book with roughly a quarter of the pages folded over for reference. Command and Control is truly a monumental, Pulitzer-quality work.”

Bloomberg:
“The book alternates between sections describing the accident with sections on the history of nuclear weapons in the U.S.  Schlosser’s excellent eye for detail, which he displayed in his first book,
Fast Food Nation, is also in evidence here....epic pop history."

Publishers Weekly (starred):
"Nail-biting... thrilling... Mixing expert commentary with hair-raising details of a variety of mishaps, [Eric Schlosser] makes the convincing case that our best control systems are no match for human error, bad luck, and ever-increasing technological complexity."

Kirkus Reviews (starred):
"
Vivid and unsettling... An exhaustive, unnerving examination of the illusory safety of atomic arms."

Lee H. Hamilton, former U.S. Representative; Co-Chair, Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future; Director, the Center on Congress at Indiana University:
“The lesson of this powerful and disturbing book is that the world’s nuclear arsenals are not as safe as they should be.  We should take no comfort in our skill and good fortune in preventing a nuclear catastrophe, but urgently extend our maximum effort to assure that a nuclear weapon does not go off by accident, mistake, or miscalculation.”

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Press; First Edition (September 17, 2013)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 656 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1594202273
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1594202278
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.15 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.65 x 2 x 9.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 4,033 ratings

About the author

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Eric Schlosser
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ERIC SCHLOSSER is the author of The New York Times bestsellers Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness. His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and The Nation.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4,033 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book informative and well-researched. They describe it as a gripping story about the history of nuclear weapons accidents, with an objective and well-organized narrative. The prose is described as good, concise, and clear. Readers appreciate the compelling narrative that covers the entire scope of nuclear weapons.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

501 customers mention "Readability"501 positive0 negative

Customers find the book easy to read and informative. They say it's a good book for former military personnel and provides an excellent refresher course. Many readers consider it an important read and a must-read for Baby Boomers.

"...the Titan disaster and the history is just about perfect and a great author hook (like a guitar riff from an Eric Clapton song)...." Read more

"...nuclear weapons development, but Mr. Schlosser provides an excellent refresher course...." Read more

"...Thus the book is well worth the read even if at times it can be a bit off-putting in style." Read more

"This is a great book, just wanted to get that out of the way first...." Read more

345 customers mention "Enlightened content"318 positive27 negative

Customers find the book informative and engaging. They appreciate the eyewitness accounts and good research. The book contains many facts and details about serious bombings. It is objective and well-referenced, with revelations about nuclear weapons safety. Readers appreciate the thorough research and deep appreciation of the characters involved in history. Overall, they describe it as a compelling and relevant non-fiction read.

"...I appreciated this approach because it informs without preaching a conclusion...." Read more

"...Scrupulously accurate, extremely well footnoted and powerfully told in a fast-paced, highly readable style, "Command and Control" presents two..." Read more

"...The author does an excellent job in developing the issue of who control nuclear weapons, by going over the various ways in which the weapons flowed..." Read more

"...He gives us some politics, some military history, some layman-accessible technical information, insight into how various governments strive to make..." Read more

315 customers mention "Scariness level"239 positive76 negative

Customers find the book a fascinating and frightening account of the US nuclear weapons programs. They appreciate the history of accidents and the development of nuclear weapons. The book opens their eyes to the dangers we face at home with nuclear weapons, and it advocates for fewer and better control of them. It also discusses in detail the development of war plans, civilian and military authorities, and weapon technology.

"...discussions of the political in-fighting and the pros and cons of military control over the weapons...." Read more

"...to make weapons both reliable (will go off when you want them to) and safe (they will not go of when you don't want them to), and a series of case..." Read more

"...It's well written, filled with enough absolute bonkers horror to even make one sympathize with McNamara. Poor poor McNamara......" Read more

"...an objective book, that talks about nuclear weapons safety, the culture of secrecy, what could have happen, what did happen and what nearly happened...." Read more

271 customers mention "Written quality"234 positive37 negative

Customers find the book's writing clear and concise. They appreciate the author's explanation of complex science in a straightforward manner. The narrative is well-researched and informative, providing a compelling story that reads like a techno thriller.

"...not quite true (or shaded the truth) when the rest of the book is so well-written and not full of political drivel...." Read more

"...Scrupulously accurate, extremely well footnoted and powerfully told in a fast-paced, highly readable style, "Command and Control" presents two..." Read more

"...He gives us some politics, some military history, some layman-accessible technical information, insight into how various governments strive to make..." Read more

"This book is about nuclear weapons, and frankly, it's a ride. It's well written, filled with enough absolute bonkers horror to even make one..." Read more

209 customers mention "Story quality"209 positive0 negative

Customers find the book's story compelling and gripping. They say it covers the entire scope of nuclear weapons, providing detailed historical information on nukes and their composition. The Damascus Titan incident is also covered in depth, with personal histories of people involved. Overall, readers praise the book as a comprehensive and detailed account of the subject.

"...The switch between the Titan disaster and the history is just about perfect and a great author hook (like a guitar riff from an Eric Clapton song)...." Read more

"...story, which he relates in exceptional detail and in an almost minute-by-minute chronology...." Read more

"...Overall the book contains some relevant materials that explain a world in the past...." Read more

"...He gives us some politics, some military history, some layman-accessible technical information, insight into how various governments strive to make..." Read more

54 customers mention "Look"49 positive5 negative

Customers find the book engaging and informative. They appreciate its detailed story and lucid writing style. The graphic novel cover and opening cast capture readers' attention. The book provides an insightful look into the evolution of nuclear weapons and their security.

"...Well worth you time and effort, you will be amazed and scared. Recommended." Read more

"...workings of the site and the missile, but you also get a wonderful color and feel for what the people who were involved with the incident were..." Read more

"...Plus you'll look cool at your next cocktail party when you tell your friends about the differences between an implosion atom bomb and a tritium-..." Read more

"...and Control is a remarkable piece of work, and it will scare the heck out of you, although Eric Schlosser really has the material for not one but at..." Read more

65 customers mention "Pacing"33 positive32 negative

Customers have different views on the pacing of the book. Some find it fast-paced and engaging, with an authoritative narrative that never lags. Others feel the book jumps around in time too much and can be difficult to follow at times, especially with so many names.

"...Scrupulously accurate, extremely well footnoted and powerfully told in a fast-paced, highly readable style, "Command and Control" presents two..." Read more

"...It is dark. It is scary and real people died. Its a miracle millions more didn't...." Read more

"...However, this book jumps around in time from incidents, to background, to politics, to personal histories of people involved...." Read more

"...He jumps around in time far too much and I got lost...." Read more

41 customers mention "Narrative length"7 positive34 negative

Customers find the narrative disjointed and lacking cohesion. They find the stories unclearly separated, with elements not distinguishable between them. The book's history is described as boring and repetitive, which is common in current affairs non-fiction.

"...Damascus incident was, I thought, the best part, but it is broken up into so many pieces by intervening historical pieces that keeping the narrative..." Read more

"...narrative through the book of the Titan in Arkansas was so broken up by the short stories from many other events that I would forget the details of..." Read more

"...both minor and hugely significant facts and components of stories are not distinguished from one another, and much of the book reads like he is just..." Read more

"...Like most reviews have mentioned the book is essentially two different stories. Yes, one establishes the background and cause of the other...." Read more

Wonderfully Disturbing Read
5 out of 5 stars
Wonderfully Disturbing Read
This book is a great read in the same way that smoking PCP is a great high. It's terrifying, exhilarating and leaves you dumbfounded by the dichotomy of brilliance and madness inherent to the human condition. It might put your ass in prison too. Oh wait, that's just PCP.All joking aside, this book is staggeringly well researched, and wonderfully entertaining at the same time. It gives you a deep and impactful appreciation of the characters involved in the history of the American nuclear arsenal, as well as the visionary... Uh, vision that these people had. I found the stories of Curtis LeMay and Robert McNamara especially poignant, especially their decline and fall in the years post-Vietnam. It's through the lens of history that we can view these once maligned characters as brilliant, sad and complicated as the very weapons of mass destruction that their lives centered around.Eric Schlosser does a wonderful job of punctuating the solemnity and science of nuclear development with the developing story of the Damascus Incident, which has all the suspense of the very best season of your favorite thriller TV show. If I had any criticisms at all, it's that the research can at times get bogged down in pedantic detail, but these instances are few and far between, and very quickly ramps up the action at every turn in between.This isn't Anne of Green Gables. You won't sleep better after you read this, but it is profound reading, and absolutely worth the price of admission. Plus you'll look cool at your next cocktail party when you tell your friends about the differences between an implosion atom bomb and a tritium-deuterium ICBM.Just get it!
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2015
    I picked up this book after reading David Hoffman's book The Dead Hand about the end of the Cold War between Russia and the US.

    I had read Schlosser before as his title Fast Food Nation was another great and again scary read. Well, this book IS a great read but also certainly more scary.

    Essentially this book uses a horrible incident in Arkansas involving a Titan II missile silo fire while discussing nuclear history from World War II onwards.

    The narrative is excellent. The book (or paperback I read) is lengthy, but I would read through this so quickly that I would pick up the book and think I couldn't possibly be through so many pages. This means it's a good read. It is. Though some of the personalities mentioned I was familiar with, I learned a lot. There have been many incidents involving nukes, though certainly many more in the '50's and '60's then now. It would appear that this is a function partially of less need and less involvement - until just 20 years ago the Strategic Air Command (SAC) had planes armed and ready to strike 24/7. Also, technology has evolved significantly reducing the danger (somewhat).

    The author does a terrific job and is fair. He is neither Cassandra deploring technology or nuclear policy, nor a silver-tounged Nestor informing us that nukes are wonderful and should be whenever possible. I appreciated this approach because it informs without preaching a conclusion.

    Quibbles?: Well, early in the book the author discusses Curtis LeMay by discussing Jimmy Stewart. Great. But he says Ronald Reagan and John Wayne avoided active duty during World War II. However, having just read a excellent biography on Wayne, I thought that he didn't manage to avoid service, this wasn't Vietnam. In Wayne's case he tried to go, but he was 34 and not in perfect health and was a 3 level recruit - not so good. Early in 1942, the military had very high standards and Wayne didn't meet them along with MANY others (also LBJ pulled many strings at 42 just to get a uniform on. Heck, people served - Wayne made films that were pretty valuable, Reagan made training films you can watch on yourtuber that were also importnat - not everyone had to be Audie Murphy). As to Reagan, he had joined a Army unit involving horses in 1937 (this is why he was a fantastic horseman in his personal life), but after Dec 7, he also tried to go active and was designated 3 level and then assigned to a film training unit. This IS a minor quibble, but it suggested something that was not quite true (or shaded the truth) when the rest of the book is so well-written and not full of political drivel. The book makes the point; this is very dangerous stuff and we have avoided disaster many times with the evidence still buried at sea and on land!

    Overall?: I blew through this book because it is really well done. The switch between the Titan disaster and the history is just about perfect and a great author hook (like a guitar riff from an Eric Clapton song). Well worth you time and effort, you will be amazed and scared. Recommended.
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2014
    Eric Schlosser's "Command and Control" is a GREAT book. Every American--nay, every citizen of any country who is concerned about the hole we've dug ourselves with our unending pursuit of ever-more-powerful means of mass destruction--should read it. It's one of the most well written, compelling and important books I've read in years.

    Scrupulously accurate, extremely well footnoted and powerfully told in a fast-paced, highly readable style, "Command and Control" presents two stories in interleaved narratives, which basically flip back-and-forth in alternate sections. One narrative tells the history of America's development of nuclear weapons and the means to deploy and control them, and, perhaps more importantly, to assure none of them could detonate accidentally. The other narrative is the story of the accident in Titan II ICBM silo 374-7, near Damascus, Arkansas, on September 18, 1980, when a worker dropped a socket that punctured the missile's first-stage fuel tank and resulted, eventually, in a huge (but non-nuclear) explosion.

    I already knew quite a bit about nuclear weapons development, but Mr. Schlosser provides an excellent refresher course. Readers unfamiliar with that history should find those parts of his book very informative and technically fascinating. I knew little about the Damascus "Broken Arrow," though, and, thanks to his use of copious reference sources and exclusive interviews, I have no doubt that Mr. Schlosser totally nails that story, which he relates in exceptional detail and in an almost minute-by-minute chronology.

    We normally think of "command and control" in the big-picture sense. For example, how do we know for sure whether the nation is under attack, and how do we mobilize military forces in an appropriate response if it is. Perhaps the ultimate "command and control" icon is the "football" (actually an innocuous briefcase) that accompanies the President of the United States everywhere, and that contains the means to command (and, hopefully, to control) the nation's nuclear forces in the event of an attack. But there's another, small-scale aspect of command and control that becomes clear in Mr. Schlosser's book. It is that aspect that should frighten everyone with the mental capacity to think beyond the next minute.

    The response to the Damascus accident illustrated that there was very little meaningful command and control even at the lowest levels of the military and civilian organizations that were trying to deal with the crisis. For example, people who really needed to talk to each other couldn't because their radio systems used different frequencies or weren't compatible. Tools that were supposed to be stored in certain locations weren't there. A key door that should have opened didn't because someone secured an interlocked door in the wrong position. Protective suits had rips and would not seal properly. Critical valves did not operate because they had corroded. The entire disaster response, as Mr. Schlosser documents in chilling detail, was a textbook example of Murphy's Law at its most perverse.

    Consider the nuclear reactor meltdowns at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima Dai Ichi as other examples of what Murphy's Law, combined with inevitable human errors, can wreak, and every thinking person should be very concerned about what surprises our technology may hold for us in the future. "Command and Control" shows what happened in a situation involving America's most powerful thermonuclear weapon that had never happened before. How many other technological Armageddons await, undetected and unplanned-for, in the world, and how many of them will stop short of utter disaster, as did the Damascus accident, only by dumb luck? Are we willing to trust the future of life on this planet to luck? Read "Command and Control" and think about it.
    3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • Carlos Alberto Ferreira
    5.0 out of 5 stars Revealing!
    Reviewed in Brazil on June 10, 2023
    The book provides a frightening glimpse of how close to the abyss we all have got during the Cold War.
  • AMOD DEO
    5.0 out of 5 stars A must read.
    Reviewed in India on January 13, 2019
    Lovely book with great research by the author and every character and story has come out totally credible. Makes you shudder on what treacherous and slippery ground we all walk.
  • Stephen Ross
    5.0 out of 5 stars 5 Stars is not enough!
    Reviewed in Canada on December 4, 2016
    This is a masterful exposition of the history of the development of the US nuclear weapons program - particularly concerned with safety (or, more to the point, the lack thereof). It is an amazingly captivating read, interleaving the story of a particular accident with the history of the entire program. I could not help but share what I was learning with colleagues - at least one of whom has started reading the book as well. Reading the book it feels like a miracle that we are still actually here - there were so many close calls where chance alone was between us and disaster.

    After reading the book I started reading the notes: There is another entire book hidden in just reading the notes! These also ended up sending me back to re-read parts of the book.

    After finishing this book I read 15 Minutes. These two books make a very interesting pair, covering similar territory but with completely different styles and depth. I am very happy to have read both but Command and Control is a masterpiece of careful research, well documented, and absolutely captivating.
  • Stefano F.
    5.0 out of 5 stars Un resoconto dettagliato ed avvincente sullo sviluppo degli armamenti nucleari statunitensi
    Reviewed in Italy on February 7, 2016
    Inizio con alcune note "di servizio" per un lettore italiano: il libro è scritto in un inglese semplice e scorrevole e si legge facilmente; l'unica difficoltà è tenere a mente i nomi di tutte le persone citate, ma per questo viene in aiuto lo specchietto riassuntivo all'inizio nelle pagine iniziali.
    Questo libro, usando come filo conduttore ed esempio principale un incidente avvenuto con un missile Titan II (che per poco non ha fatto detonare una testata termonucleare in mezzo agli Stati Uniti), descrive la storia dello sviluppo delle armi nucleari statunitensi, dai primi test fino agli ultimi trattati di riduzione degli armamenti; particolare attenzione viene rivolta ad alcuni significativi incidenti occorsi e alle resistenze dei militari alle misure di prevenzione di tali episodi. Il tutto è narrato come se si trattasse di un racconto, quasi un thriller. Il calce al testo è presente anche una ricca bibliografia suddivisa per tematiche per chi volesse approfondire ulteriormente alcuni aspetti delle vicende narrate.
  • Marius Goppelt
    5.0 out of 5 stars Der Stoff aus dem Alpträume sind
    Reviewed in Germany on January 4, 2015
    Dies ist ein erschreckendes Buch. Der prosaische Stil hilft dabei, ein bisschen Distanz zum Inhalt zu schaffen. Es geht dabei vorwiegend nicht um den nuklearen Krieg, sondern vor allem um den Umgang mit Nuklearwaffen in Friedenszeiten. Runter vom politischen Klima bis hin zu den Personen die direkt damit umgehen, wird aufgeschlüsselt welche Risikofaktoren es bei Nuklearwaffen gibt, welche Sicherheitsmaßnahmen greifen und welche nicht. Dies wird größtenteils nüchtern und sachlich vorgelegt, und mit unzähligen Quellen belegt.
    Der Autor schwingt dabei nicht mit dem moralischen Zeigefinger, er verurteilt niemanden, und geringschätzt auch nicht die Arbeit des Militärs. Wenn er über Fehler redet, dann mit dem größtmöglichen Respekt.

    Unter der Oberfläche befindet sich aber mehr als nur ein Appell gegen den Bau von Atomwaffen.
    Dies ist auch ein Buch über Unfälle, über die Grenzen des menschlich machbaren, was an der Grenze der menschlichen Wahrnehmung passiert, die Kosten und Limitierungen von Sicherheit, und wie man mit schwer beherrschbaren Situationen umgeht. Die Nuklearwaffe dient da nur als Extrembeispiel, für einen Unfall der schlicht nicht passieren darf.

    Ich habe das Buch verschlungen. Die Rahmengeschichte liest sich wie ein Thriller. Man braucht kein Fachwissen um dem Inhalt zu folgen, aber die Informationsdichte ist mitunter gewaltig. Und es ist ein Stück weit Zeitgeschichte, über eine Epoche die heute fremd und unwirklich scheint.
    Ich habe auch beruflich daraus ein bisschen mitgenommen, denn hier und da finden sich so einige Tipps wie man Sicherheit und Robustheit verbessern kann - oder was eben nur scheinbar Sicherheit erzeugt.

    Kurzum: tolles Buch!