Eric Schlosser: If We Don't Slash Our Nukes, "a Major City Is Going to Be Destroyed"

[jakeXT]

The term "wake-up call" is a tired cliché, but it is appropriate in the case of Command and Control, the frightening new exposé of America's nuclear weapons mishaps by Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser. (Click here to read an excerpt and my detailed review.) In short, Schlosser delivers a book full of revelations that left me agape. While we still worry in the abstract about Iran and North Korea and Pakistan, it's easy to forget that we still have thousands of our own ungodly devices on hair-trigger alert at this very moment. And even if we never drop or launch another nuke on purpose, these weapons are, in Schlosser's words, "the most dangerous machines ever invented. And like every machine, sometimes they go wrong."

That's what the book is about. Through hard-fought documents and deep digging and extensive interviews, Schlosser reveals how close we've come, on numerous occasions, to a domestic nuclear detonation or an accidental war in which there are only losers. Command and Control will leave many readers with a deep unease about America's ability to handle our nukes safely. Schlosser's hope is that this unease will beget a long-neglected debate about "why we have them and when we use them and how many we need." But his book is no screed. Schlosser delivers an engrossing page-turner. Would that it were fiction.

Mother Jones: The safety of America's nuclear arsenal is far cry from fast food. What got you interested in this topic?

Eric Schlosser: I spent some time with the Air Force before Fast Food Nation came out. I was interested in the future of warfare in space: space weapons, particle-beam weapons, lasers, directed-energy devices. A lot of the people who were involved in it had started their careers as missile-crew officers. As I spent time with them, I became more interested in their stories from the Cold War about nuclear weapons than I did in the future of warfare in space.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/09/interview-eric-schlosser-command-control-nuclear-weapons-accidents

[dipsydoodle]

1. Equally important would be that in the event of an own goal

the US didn't simply blame some convenient external force.

[jakeXT]

2. Accident or not, will always be part of the question.

ES: There were two major false alarms during the Carter administration. One of them occurred when a training tape was accidentally put into the computer at NORAD that was supposed to warn us of a Soviet attack. It was a very realistic simulation of a Soviet attack, and so that created a great deal of concern until it was realized that it was a false alarm. Not that long afterward, during the tense period after the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, there was a computer error at NORAD that basically said that more than 1,000 missiles were on their way.

[GeorgeGist]

4. What is an "own goal" in this context?

[dipsydoodle]

5. Scoring against yourself.

.

[sulphurdunn]

3. The nuclear weapons

people are like the nuclear power folks. Any criticism is dismissed as hysterical. Failures are brushed off as minor and reactions to them as exaggerated.