Achi news desk-
In an increasingly uncertain world, the specter of nuclear conflict remains a frightening possibility. The outbreak of such a war would unleash unimaginable chaos and destruction on a global scale. The global situation is arguably the most dangerous since the Cuban missile crisis, with the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and conflicts brewing in other parts of the world. Against this background, Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen has alarmingly outlined in her book ‘Nuclear War: A Scenario‘ what will happen if a nuclear war starts today.
“For decades, people were under the assumption that the nuclear threat ended when the Berlin Wall came down. Nuclear weapons and the whole nomenclature around them have been so rare that they have been kept as a subject for those in the know,” Ms Jacobsen told The guardian.
Her book is based on interviews with presidential advisers, cabinet members, nuclear weapons engineers and countless experts, and newly declassified documents.
The book presents a scenario for nuclear war, set in the present. He takes Robert Oppenheimer’s famous quote from the Bhagavad Gita – “Now I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds” – to its logical conclusion by providing a moment-by-second, minute-by-minute and hour-by-hour analysis of the nuclear war scenario.
The nightmare scenario talks about North Korea launching a surprise missile attack against the United States, leading Washington to respond with a salvo of 50 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), according to Forbes.
This would lead to chaos, mass deaths and hysteria, the book says.
The portrayal of Armageddon is made more impactful by images of people turning to ashes, birds falling from the sky and survivors dying in pain from acute radiation sickness. And those who manage to survive all that receive the consolation prize of the dramatic climate change known as nuclear winter.
The trigger, according to Ms Jacobsen’s book, is miscommunication, an unforeseen technological malfunction, according to Forbes. She has not named any of the key players (presidents, dictators, spies, generals and radar technicians).
“My jaw dropped so much from what I learned, which was not classified but had just been removed or rather sanitized from the public discourse. I found myself constantly surprised by the insanity of what I learned, along with the fact that it was all there for the public to know,” the author said. The guardian.
The outlet said the number of nuclear weapons has dropped from 70,000 to just over 12,000, but this number is also enough to reduce the Earth to a radioactive wasteland.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Kashmir Monitor staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
