# Nuclear War: A Scenario

Nuclear War: A Scenario is a 2024 non-fiction book by American journalist Annie Jacobsen. It outlines a timeline of a hypothetical first strike against the continental United States by North Korea.
In the book, the war begins with North Korea first launching a surprise ICBM towards Washington, D.C., shortly followed by a second surprise nuclear missile launched from a North Korean submarine towards the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power plant in California. The United States tries but fails to stop both warheads. Both missiles hit their respective targets, the United States then decides to retaliate against North Korea, but in order to counterattack quickly enough, the United States nuclear arsenal needs to fly over the North Pole and therefore over Russian airspace. At the time of sending missiles over Russian airspace, Russia is not yet a target. The United States desperately tries to contact Russian leadership to notify them that the end target is North Korea, not Russia, but is unable to properly make contact and warn Russia before the American ICBMs are flying over Russia. Russia interprets ICBMs flying over their airspace as an attack on Russia and decides to launch over 900 nuclear warheads of its own towards targets in the United States. The United States sees these Russian missiles on scanners and then decides to launch the rest of the American warhead stockpile at Russia, along with NATO allies launching all of their nuclear weapons at mostly Russian targets as well, therefore effectively killing hundreds of millions of people in a matter of hours.

## 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 the United States' 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. The United States immediately detect the threat, but has no system to eliminate the North Korean ICBM during its boost phase when satellites still can detect it. US' 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 SLBM with a thermonuclear warhead from 350 miles from California, but the United States' short-range missile defenses (Aegis and THAAD) were deployed too far from it to interfere. By minute 23, the North Korean SLBM successfully strikes the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in California, causing a nuclear meltdown. In minute 24, the US 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 US' 50 Minuteman ICBMs and 8 Trident SLBMs to number in the hundreds, enough to devastate Russia. Having not heard from the American president and aware of the United States' past lies during wartime, the paranoid Russian president believes that the US has launched against Russia. By minute 45, the Russian president orders an all-out attack on it and perceived hostile countries in NATO and Europe; in minute 50, the US detect 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 the United States, generating an electromagnetic pulse that cripples its power grids, microprocessors and SCADA systems. At minute 57, Russian SLBMs destroy the American nuclear warfighting facilities and overwhelm the nuclear bunker at Raven Rock Mountain Complex, killing the nearby American president. At minute 58, European countries including Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom are struck by Russian nuclear warheads. By minute 92 of the conflict, the United States were struck by around 1,000 more Russian nuclear warheads. By this time, hundreds of millions of people have been killed. The nuclear war ends less than two hours after it began, leaving most of the Northern Hemisphere decimated and uninhabitable.
The nuclear conflict causes fires 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.

### Conclusions

Jacobsen has said "You would want to have a commander-in-chief who is of sound mind, who is fully in control of his mental capacity, who is not volatile, who is not subject to anger. These are significant character qualities that should be thought about when people vote for president, for the simple reason that the president has sole authority to launch 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): Nuclear War: A Scenario. Dutton. 26 March 2024. ISBN 978-0593476093.

## Reception

According to Book Marks, the book received a "mixed" consensus, based on four critic reviews: one "positive" and three "mixed".
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."
Mike Riggs writing for Reason magazine wrote that the book is a "disaster porn thriller".
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".