Annie Jacobsen describes the operational chain-reaction that would be caused by a North Korean nuclear attack on Washington D.C.. In her scenario a nuclear war between North Korea, the US, Russia, and Europe would be underway within one hour of noticing the North Korean ICBM on the early detection satellite (She doesn’t mention China’s reaction). The dust blown into the atmosphere after a nuclear exchange with ~2000 nuclear warheads would cause the global temperature to drop significantly. This combined with limited access to fresh water, crops, and livestock will make most places on the globe uninhabitable for thousands of years.

Her minute-by-minute account of the operational protocols explains why the equilibrium of nuclear deterrence is unstable and spirals out of control once perturbed by one irrational actor. In this scenario, a revengeful and jealous North Korean leader.

The problem is that once the deterrence paradigm is broken, all actors follow policies developed during the Cold War ( Launch on Warning   ) that compel them to retaliate within minutes. Moreover, the decisions are made by Heads of State that are not prepared for the situation and before the full extent of the attack and its intent are known. Jacobsen adds insufficient communication between US and Russia and inaccurate Russian satellite intel as compounding factors to her scenario.

The book contains short explainer sections on why it’s near impossible to defend against ballistic missiles, how the Nuclear triad works, and the dangers of a satellite-launched EMP strike.

The book is a fascinating read, but it gave me nightmares. The current accepted status quo of mutual self destruction appears like an example of a nonlinear system resting in an unstable equilibrium from Steven Strogatz’s book   . The other aphorism that came to my mind was

“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

Carl Sagan

Only because deterrence has worked so far doesn’t mean it will work over long periods of time with changing (possibly irrational) players. It only has a track record of 80 years.