This is how nuclear war would begin - in terrifying detail

[Xolodno]

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/nuclear-war-begin-terrifying-detail-060000413.html

What would happen if a nuclear power station in California were hit by a nuclear weapon launched by North Korea? Many people within a nine-mile radius would be vaporised or burnt to death, and the reactor would melt down, causing a lethal rain of radioactive uranium shards. And, in this imagined chain of events, that’s just the beginning. Another missile heads towards Washington DC. Images of a mushroom cloud cause panic on social media. Then again, as the Pulitzer-finalist journalist Annie Jacobsen observes in this book, the destruction of the Californian plant would also have the effect of permanently taking the social network formerly known as Twitter offline. So it’s not all bad news.

Nuclear War: A Scenario is a breathless, minute-by-minute description of one way in which, thanks to apparent North Korean paranoia, a global thermonuclear war could suddenly erupt. It’s based on hundreds of interviews with many retired security officials and more-or-less declassified information in the public domain. What it captures brilliantly is the emotional chaos into which leaders would be plunged in such a situation: Jacobsen paints a disturbingly persuasive picture of a panicking, dithering American president, given only a few minutes to decide whether to retaliate by nuking Pyongyang before the first incoming missile even hits – in other words, to obey the “Launch on Warning” doctrine current in the US – while being shouted at by an entourage that ranges from the ­cautious to the insanely hawkish. These are scenes straight out of Dr Strangelove.

Jacobsen’s book also details the mad logic of escalating retaliation that takes hold, and the large contri­bu­tion to disaster made by ­unreli­able technology. American missile-defence simply doesn’t work half the time. The president orders a massive strike on North Korea (before another Korean nuke hits Washington DC and downs his fleeing helicopter), but the trajectory of those nukes will take them over Russia to hit the target. The Russ­ian missile-alert system is err­atic and they think there are twice as many coming towards them over the Arctic Circle. They demand to speak to the president on the phone, but the president is nowhere to be found. (He’s bleeding in a forest.)

North Korea then detonates a nuke in space above the US, causing a massive electromagnetic pulse that destroys the electricity grid, and all infrastructure goes down. Finally, out of injured pride – having received no call back – the Russians launch their own nukes before the American ones pass them on their way to Pyongyang. Less than an hour after the first explosion at the Californian power plant, Russian bombs destroy the capitals of Eur­ope; 14 minutes later, 1,000 Russ­ian missiles strike targets in America. Half a billion people die. Nuclear winter looms. Soon, no food will grow in the northern hemisphere.