Nuclear War: A Scenario

Nuclear War: A Scenario is a 2024 nonfiction book by American journalist Annie Jacobsen. It outlines a timeline of a hypothetical first strike against the continental United States by North Korea.

Content
The book covers standard American military protocol in the event of a nuclear first strike against the United States. It particularly highlights launch on warning as a dangerous and potentially catastrophic policy of nuclear armed nations, and concludes that any nuclear conflict has the potential to end in near-total human extinction.

The book first discusses the Single Integrated Operational Plan, from a witness account by John H. Rubel, who detailed that in 1960, American military officials planned for a potential preemptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union which would kill at least 600 million people, around half of whom would be from the Soviet Union's neighboring countries; Rubel said that America's top military officials lauded the plan, with only General David M. Shoup dissenting.

The book then shows a minute-by-minute breakdown from multiple perspectives of a scenario in 2024 where nuclear world war erupts. In minute 0, North Korea unleashes a surprise attack, launching a Hwasong-17 ICBM with a 1-megaton thermonuclear warhead at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. America immediately detects the threat, but has no system to eliminate the North Korean ICBM during its boost phase when satellites still can detect it. America's long-range missile defenses consist of 44 interceptor missiles, of which 4 are fired from California at the Hwasong, but all miss in minute 9. The American president's evacuation delays the American nuclear response. By minute 16, North Korea launches a Pukguksong-1 SBLM with a thermonuclear warhead from 350 miles from California, but America's short-range missile defenses (Aegis and THAAD) were deployed too far from America to interfere. By minute 23, the North Korean SBLM successfully strikes the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in California, causing a nuclear meltdown. In minute 24, America initiates a nuclear attack on North Korea after the American president's approval, but due to a lack of travelling range, the American Minuteman III ICBMs must fly over Russia to reach North Korea.

The North Korean ICBM obliterates Washington D.C. in minute 33, stranding and incapacitating the American president while he is being evacuated. Within the next 10 minutes, Russia's flawed Tundra satellite system overestimates America's 50 Minuteman ICBMs and 8 Trident SBLMs to number in the hundreds, enough to devastate Russia. Having not heard from the American president and aware of America's past lies during wartime, the paranoid Russian president believes that America has launched against Russia. By minute 45, the Russian president orders an all-out attack on America and perceived hostile countries in NATO and Europe; in minute 50, America detects the impending Russian attack and launches its own all-out nuclear attack on 975 targets in Russia. From minute 52, North Korea is struck by 82 American nuclear warheads. At minute 55, North Korea detonates a nuclear warhead in a satellite orbiting 300 miles above America, generating a electromagnetic pulse that cripples America's power grids, microprocessors and SCADA systems. At minute 57, Russian SBLMs destroy America's nuclear warfighting facilities and overwhelm the nuclear bunker at Raven Rock Mountain Complex, killing the nearby American president. At minute 58, European countries including Belgium, England, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Turkey, and Ukraine are struck by Russian nuclear warheads. By minute 92 of the conflict, America was struck by around 1,000 more Russian nuclear warheads.

The nuclear conflict causes fires in the Northern Hemisphere that trigger nuclear winter, preventing agriculture and killing plants, upending food chains. Small animals thrive, while larger animals are nearly wiped out. Humanity experiences widespread famine, with few exceptions including the southernmost countries of Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and parts of Paraguay. Nuclear fallout causes radiation poisoning. After months, as nuclear winter ends, the ozone layer, damaged by nuclear war, fails to shield life from the Sun's ultraviolet rays, forcing humanity to live underground, while insects and plagues from thawing corpses spread aboveground. The Earth itself takes 24,000 years to recover from nuclear war, while humanity's fate is unmentioned. The author concludes that the “enemy” was no country or group, but nuclear weapons.

Adaptation
In April 2024, it was announced that production studio Legendary Entertainment purchased the rights to adapt the book into a film, with Canadian director Denis Villeneuve set to direct.

Publication history

 * 2024 (Hardcover, eBook, audiobook):

Reception
The book has been well received by the public with the book holding a 4.54 out of 5 rating on Goodreads, and 4.6 out of 5 on Amazon.

Barry Gewen, in the New York Times, said of Nuclear War: A Scenario that "Jacobsen, the author of “The Pentagon’s Brain,” has done her homework. She has spent more than a decade interviewing dozens of experts while mastering the voluminous literature on the subject, some of it declassified only in recent years." However, he does raise a question, stating that "If she favors abolishing nuclear weapons altogether, she owes it to her readers to say so, and then explain how it could be done. How do we get from here to there?"

Interviewing Jacobsen herself, Kathy Gilsinan of Politico writes that "Nuclear war would be bad. Everyone knows this. Most people would probably rather not think through the specifics. But Annie Jacobsen, an author of seven books on sensitive national security topics, wants you to know exactly how bad it would be."

In a more mixed case, Steven Poole of The Telegraph praises the book for its factual basis and research, but criticizes the prose as being "overblown", remarking that "In terms of style, Nuclear War appears to have been written for those who find the novels of Dan Brown too sophisticated. Pulp-thrillerish one-sentence paragraphs abound." However, he concludes on a positive note, appraising it as "a more accessible and deeper compendium of the unsettling facts about nuclear history, planning, and devastation[...]".

In contrast, Peter Huessy of Global Security Review has an almost entirely negative appraisal of the work, remarking that "Although there are additional areas where Jacobsen incorporates inaccurate information into her scenario, the point is clear. Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario would be far more accurately titled, Nuclear War: A Novel or Nuclear War: Disarmament Propaganda".