It took me awhile to get into this book but after I did I was hooked.  At first I really didn’t know what was going on.  By page 26 I was definitely interested and after page 63 I was going to finish asap. This was different.  It’s about what will happen if we find ourselves in a World War III – a nuclear war. 

Nuclear War: A Scenario
by Annie Jacobsen 
2024 / 376 pages
Read by the author 11h
Rating –  8.75 

Note that this is  “a scenario” and it’s nonfiction with appropriate sources noted along with extra information. The include many interviews and various kinds of papers.  It seems to be very thorough as far as I know.  

Page – 109
“An immediate consequence of a nuclear strike [would be] that democracy would be completely gone and military rule would take place.” Perry believes that if military rule is ever imposed on today’s America, “it would be almost impossible to undo military rule” in the United States.”

Page-145 
“Historian Lynn Eden… explains ‘Because the early fireball would be so hot, it would expand rapidly. By the time the fireball approached its maximum size it would be more than a mile in diameter.’ A mile-wide nuclear fireball is enough to entirely destroy the 750-acre Diablo Canyon facility. And because roughly half that diameter area includes ocean, the entire nuclear power plant has now cratered into the sea. Everything inside the fireball is obliterated.”

At first I though she really, really wanted to scare us with her research and her written word and, because she is also the narrator, her slow. breathy terrified voice.  There are lists of names and paragraphs of what computer scenarios show based on the math of predictions.  There’s lots of suspense-increasing repetition.  By the time I got to Chapter 3 I was exhausted and thought I might just skip the rest. It seemed to be all hype and no substance, a horror tale of “mass extermination.” 

 I WAS WRONG!!!!  By the time I got a few chapters into Part II,  maybe page 60?, I realized this was something different. 

I’d bought the Kindle version to go with the Audible and I was disappointed there was no “whisper-link,” but it turned out okay because this is what I did prior to the linked versions.  I used the Kindle to see spellings and photos and sources and so on.  There’s also an Index and an Acknowledgements.

After a Prologue and some history (Build-Up), the author gets to The Top Secret Plan Then the narrative starts a chronological telling starting in North Koreas and jumping from place to place all over the world. We are privy to discussion, preparations, the events and the aftermath, all in relation to the bombs . And then there are 9 History Lessons scattered throughout as 1 to 7 page insets. It’s a wild ride and a very good, informative read.