"Coomand and Control" by Eric Schlosser

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J Blatz

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I just finished this and it scared the hell out of me how many times the US has been endangered by nuclear-armed idiocy (our own govt's oopsie-daisey approach).

Great book IMO.

And now I'd like to send it to the first person who PM's me. No charge. USA only.

I have too many books already.

Next up, more heavy weight depth psychology.
 
It is indeed an interesting read!

The person who first told me about it (my dad) was a Nav of BUFFS and worked with several of the weapons discussed in the book.

-Kevin
 
And if youw ant to be scared by the directing 'brains' rather than mere weaponry, the scary disregard of the military industrial complex and its architects then read 'The Closed World, which is heavy going at times but very worrying to read as you come to realise tyat supposedly intelligent, clever peoplef the ruling class seem to lack a large helping of common sense and street smarts.

Check out also 'War and Peace in the Nuclear Age' its a bit out of date now as it stops at the Reagan era and SDI but its also illuminating to see how often the West was completely wrong footed and wrong headed ithroigh most of the cold war and how nuclear weapons races lead to destabilisation rather than deterrence.

I also had one called Secret Britain, which was more reassuring as our plans called for not muxh more than free tea and digestive biscuits for the survivorsf armageddon.....Beitish reserve, lase faire attitude coupled with the sure knowlledge that even an annihlating nuclear attack would still look ok after a hot cup of tea :)
 
I just finished this and it scared the hell out of me how many times the US has been endangered by nuclear-armed idiocy (our own govt's oopsie-daisey approach).

Great book IMO.

And now I'd like to send it to the first person who PM's me. No charge. USA only.

I have too many books already.

Next up, more heavy weight depth psychology.
I reserved and received the audio book version of this from my local library, but never got around to listening to it. I wanted to hear if it had any more detail on the various US nuclear weapon accidents which I've already read extensively about.

I own this phenomenal book, the best nuclear weapons technical reference available other than the author's expensive CD set "The Swords of Armageddon":

Us Nuclear Weapons - the Secret History

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0517567407/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

I bought it for only $24.95 years ago before the author passed away and the price skyrocketed.

I'm now waiting for an inter-library loan of this to see if I want to buy it:

Atom Bombs: The Top Secret Inside Story of Little Boy and Fat Man

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0006S2AJ0/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

That author did to a lesser extent what Hanson did, researching declassified documents and interviewed the designers, but just for the first two devices.
 
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And if youw ant to be scared by the directing 'brains' rather than mere weaponry, the scary disregard of the military industrial complex and its architects then read 'The Closed World, which is heavy going at times but very worrying to read as you come to realise tyat supposedly intelligent, clever peoplef the ruling class seem to lack a large helping of common sense and street smarts.

I'll have to check that out:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262550288/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

Especially because it's from MIT Press who also did this outstanding book I own about the tremendous amount of computing advances owed to military research:

From Whirlwind to MITRE: The R&D Story of The SAGE Air Defense Computer

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262182017/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

Check out also 'War and Peace in the Nuclear Age' its a bit out of date now as it stops at the Reagan era and SDI but its also illuminating to see how often the West was completely wrong footed and wrong headed ithroigh most of the cold war and how nuclear weapons races lead to destabilisation rather than deterrence.
Nuclear weapons races were destabilizing, but human nature being what it is and always has been, were the entirely predictable result once the nuclear weapon was developed. Based upon historical data, we'd probably have had at least one more world war by now if it hadn't been for MAD. The main destabilization within the nuclear race was and is from MIRVs which give a first strike advantage to anyone with them. Because of the inherent, insurmountable flaws of rocket-based ABM systems, countermeasures will always be vastly cheaper to implement than counter-countermeasures. Only rapid fire directed energy weapons can act as an effective shield against large attacks and SDI gave the industry a taste of how very, very difficult that was and is. Every time I see bragging from the DoD about some new laser weapon test shown on YouTube, I point out the obvious flaws and easy countermeasures. We still aren't even remotely close to a directed energy ABM shield, the only thing that has even a chance of being effective against a large attack.

We, luckily, survived the early stages of nuclear weaponry and now I believe that the world is so economically intertwined that any nuclear exchange between major players is far less likely than in the past. All of this Ukraine stuff is merely posturing and, BTW, the result of the US (aka "NATO") rapidly pushing NATO membership to the Russian border. There are certainly no angels on either side of this issue, as usual, but how would we like it if the Warsaw Pact still existed and they grew to include Mexico... and Cuba. Cuban Missile Crisis?

BTW, I'm not saying I like the nuclear arms race which, by the way, the US led for decades before the USSR caught up, but it was predictable and anyone who doesn't believe that far too many of "those in charge" are brilliant at nothing more than rising up the career ladder via political means is a fool.
 
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Winston - you will like 'The Closed World' as it also covers the development of IT and digital computing for military applications. Lots of stuff came out of SAGE - light pens, the trackball,compilers, the modem, algorithmic languages and raft of other stuff if I recall the book correctly - its been about 20 years since I read it.
 
Winston - you will like 'The Closed World' as it also covers the development of IT and digital computing for military applications. Lots of stuff came out of SAGE - light pens, the trackball,compilers, the modem, algorithmic languages and raft of other stuff if I recall the book correctly - its been about 20 years since I read it.
I'll definitely have to check that out. Just ordered a used but "like new" copy of "Command and Control" before coming here.
 
My comment is that that the risk of yield of the Titan missile incident is way over stated. That said, 9MT would have spoiled everyone's day.

John
 
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