Nuclear War: A Scenario

Nuclear War: A Scenario is a 2024 book by Annie Jacobsen. It is a work of investigative journalism into the American national security apparatus about nuclear weapons. To illustrate how it works, Jacobsen imagines a hypothetical (but realistic) scenario in which North Korea launches a nuclear weapon against the United States, forcing governmental decision-makers to execute a series of protocols and make decisions while the fate of human civilization is hanging in the balance. With thorough detail about the workings of bureaucracy and the physical effects of a nuclear explosion, Jacobsen’s narrative reveals both the senselessness of a nuclear war and its nightmarish human costs. The book has primarily earned strong reviews for its vividness, comprehensiveness, and plausibility, although some reviewers found it overly alarmist and lacking plausibility due to the absence of a political context for its precipitating event. The book has nonetheless made a strong impact on public discourse at a time when fears of nuclear war are higher than in many decades. The acclaimed science fiction director Denis Villeneuve (Arrival, Dune) is optioning the book for a film adaptation.

This guide references the Dutton 2024 hardcover edition of the source text.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide include descriptions of graphic violence, war, and the effects of a nuclear attack.

Summary

The book begins with a horrifyingly detailed, hypothetical account of a nuclear attack on the Pentagon that immediately destroys the heart of Washington, DC and turns a stretch of miles beyond into a radioactive tinderbox. Within minutes, millions are dead or dying, and the complete breakdown of public infrastructure will make it all but impossible for any aid to reach the survivors. Jacobsen then pivots from this dreadful, hypothetical scene to the historical conditions that made it possible. She identifies a secret meeting in December 1960 that instituted a plan for the absolute destruction of the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons.

She traces how this plan evolved in part from the post-World War II armed forces’ desire for relevance and a belief that deterring a potential attack from an adversary was best ensured through the certainty of instant and devastating retaliation. This premise then became a self-fulfilling prophecy ordaining the construction of tens of thousands of bombs, far beyond any plausible need for security, all to make deterrence more credible.

Jacobsen highlights that deterrence presumes a reasonable calculation of cost and benefit, which is instantly tossed aside when the Supreme Leader of North Korea decides to shoot an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) at the United States in full knowledge of the apocalyptic consequences. The launching of the missile sets off a mad scramble across multiple government agencies, some of whom have trained daily for this eventuality, and others who are utterly baffled. Unfortunately, the latter includes the president, the one person with ultimate authority to make decisions regarding the use of nuclear weapons, and who can remember little from his post-inauguration briefings on what that responsibility entails.

America’s paltry missile defense batteries fail to intercept the missile, as North Korea launches another submarine-based missile that destroys a California power plant and ushers in an environmental catastrophe beyond description. The US retaliates, but it cannot do so without its own missiles flying over Russia, which panics and interprets those missiles as targeted at itself. The Russian president, long harboring paranoid views of the West, decides for an all-out nuclear assault, after which North Korea launches an electromagnetic pulse that takes down the country’s electrical grid. Nuclear fire consumes much of the world, leading to near-universal radiation poison, environmental catastrophe, and the collapse of anything resembling civilized life. At the end of the book, it is unclear if humanity can survive.