Command And Control—A Stark Reminder of the Cold War’s Dangers

Quick question: how many nuclear weapons would you guess the Unites States has today?

I grew up in Knoxville, TN, right next-door to Oak Ridge—the original Atomic City that was the top-secret home to the Manhattan Project during World War II. Some of my earlier memories are visiting Y12, the American Museum of Science and Energy, and other historic nuclear-related sites. I’ve seen countless museum films on nuclear explosions, knew the differences between the two bombs dropped on Japan, and could have drawn a sketch of the guts of an atomic bomb far before I’d entered high school. I’ve read military history books for fun all my life, especially when they’re about espionage, nuclear weapons, and machinery.

And yet somehow, I would have guessed that maybe, at most, the US had a few hundred nuclear weapons, and would have absolutely trusted that they’re securely under the control of the president’s nuclear football.

Turns out, I was wrong. Dead wrong. According to Eric Schlosser’s book Command And Control, the US currently has 4,650 nuclear weapons, an absolutely staggering number when one considers the destructive power of just one atomic bomb. And yet, that number is far, far less than the US had during the Cold War, not to mention the countless thousands of nuclear weapons possessed by the USSR.

And my feelings of safety about the US’ nuclear devices? Those were equally incorrect. Nuclear bombs have been accidentally dropped in the Appalachians and Iceland, burned to a pile of slag on runways, and killed scores of soldiers—during peacetime, at that. There have been so many accidents with nuclear weapons, the document Schlosser obtained about them from the armed forces ran 245 pages long.

Command And Control is perhaps the most fascinating and hair-easing nonfiction book I’ve read, as it weaves the stories of accidents and issues with America’s nuclear stockpile with the detailed account of how a Titan II missile with a nuclear warhead actually exploded in Arkansas after a technician dropped a socket during routine service. To get a taste of the book, take a minute and read the excerpts from it that have already been reprinted in a number of magazines:

• The New Yorker: Nukes of Hazzard
• The New Yorker: The Truths of “Dr. Strangelove”
• Mother Jones: A Sneak Peek at Eric Schlosser's Terrifying New Book on Nuclear Weapons

Scary stuff. As the book quoted General George Lee Butler, “we escaped the cold war without a nuclear holocaust by some combination of skill, luck and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion.” And so we did.

And yet, here we stand on what some are calling the brink of a new Cold War, as Russia has annexed Crimea. There’s sanctions, accusations, and standoff between the West and Russia, and rightly so. Surely some will call for increased weapons spending, perhaps with new missiles in Europe to keep the Russians at bay. Perhaps that sounds sensible if you’re wanting to stave off WWIII.

So go re-read those links above, or dig into Command And Control itself. That’s the madness of arms races simply for the sake of one-upmanship.

Command And Control was published just before protests in Ukraine took over our newspaper front pages, and far before Russia seemed like it was trying to put the USSR back together. And yet, as I read it this past week, it felt like quite the timely reminder that weapons of mass destruction are just as likely to kill us as they are to protect us.

I don’t know the solutions to the world’s problems, or how to get countries to behave sensibly. But I do know this: nuclear weapons are far more scary than you’ve ever dared to imagine, enough so that simply hearing the plans the US had for using them against the USSR made both Carter and Reagan call for a reduction of nuclear arms and better ways to bring peace. And that was without knowing that the USSR had essentially a doomsday device in place that would automatically rain nuclear bombs on the US if it was attacked by a nuke.

There’s a place to right the wrongs in the world, but I do not believe we’ll ever right them by having enough weapons to destroy the world over and again. That just doesn’t seem sensible.

Thoughts? @reply me on Twitter.