Customer Reviews

The Fate of the Earth

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book attempts to conceptualize the idea of a full scale nuclear exchange between the cold war superpowers, since the idea itself is now "unthinkable". To explore this lack of understanding the author first explains in detail the immediate and long lasting effects of full scale nuclear war. Then, he comments on the situation, making a bid for sanity in an insane situation. The author believes that self-destruction and even planetary destruction "is not something that we will pose one day in the future... it is here now" (182). Schell believes that only a fundamental change in the belief system of the people of the entire planet can erase the danger currently hanging over the world; no amount of arms limitation or reduction will end the threat of total annihilation.

Schell takes the most compelling subject imaginable -- the very real possiblity of nuclear annihilation -- and puts it into gripping, passionate prose. Anyone with a concern for the human race should read Schell's account of the effect of nuclear weapons on nature and civilization. And anyone afraid of being humbled or disturbed needs Schell's reality check all the more.

I first became aware of the work of Jonathan Schell through his two excellent books of reportage on the Vietnam War, entitled The Village of Ben Suc (A Vintage Book, V-431) and The Military Half: An Account of Destruction in Quang Ngai and Quang Tin Schell utilizes a most effective technique to convey the horror of war: a very flat affect, in the style of Joe Web's "Just the facts, mam..." He manages to capture the rationales of those who do the killing, and after 40 years, I recall, and even quote his descriptions of helicopter pilots who felt they had skills and techniques to differentiate "hard-core VC" from "innocent peasants" as they flew over, at 200 mph. Of the lakes of ink that have been spilled attempting to capture the experience of the Vietnam War, these two books will always remain in my top ten. Sadly, I note that my reviews at Amazon are the only ones posted on either book.

"In the Fate of the Earth," as the title suggests, Schell goes global. No longer is he addressing a dirty little war half way around the world, fought by a slender percentage of the American population, and viewed by the vast majority on their TV sets, over dinner. The war that Schell fears, a nuclear holocaust, is one that would come crashing into everyone's living room, TV or no. The book was written in the Cold War period, 1982, when the Soviet Union and the United States had thousands of nuclear armed missiles pointed at each other. The military doctrine of the time went by the suitable acronym, MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction.) The rationale, as it were, assumed the "players" were rational, and would never "push the button" since they would know it meant their own death as well.

Alamogordo, New Mexico is in the first sentence in Schell's book, and I live roughly half-way between nearby Trinity site, where the first atomic bomb was detonated, and Los Alamos, NM, where man's mind "created it," with a primary tool being mathematics, and the black board. Schell's first chapter is entitled "A Republic of Insects and Grass," suitable, since that is about all that would be left if the button was pressed. In his flat, scholarly style, without real histrionics, he describes what the world would look like if the holocaust came to pass. Not for the "fun read" crowd for sure. Regrettably, this possible outcome is considered all too infrequently. Fittingly, Schell quotes Kafka: "There is infinite hope, but not for us."

In his second chapter Schell moves deep into eschatology. Not only is all mankind wiped out, but "they can't get up when the film stops, and try again." Mankind, and its achievements on earth are gone forever, beyond recall. Schell does pose the arguments against a heightened concern, due to no second acts (p. 117), and then proceeds to critique them. To me, it is only so much "icing on the cake." I'm still in the school that if everyone is killed, that alone should be reason enough, and to devote a third of the book to more philosophical musings about the eternal emptiness is, well, redundant.

Schell presents a strong polemic against nuclear weapons, as well as a call for action. He concludes with: "...as I trust and believe, we will awaken to the truth of our peril, a truth as great as life itself, and, like a person who has swallowed a lethal poison but shakes off his stupor at the last moment and vomits the poison up, we will break through the layers of our denials, put aside our fainthearted excuses, and rise up to cleanse the earth of nuclear weapons."

Thirty years on, and his trust might be shaken. It hasn't happened. The Soviet Union has collapsed, which lessens the possibilities of the Big Holocaust, but on the other hand, there has been a proliferation of nuclear weapons, expanding the possibilities for a World War I beginning, in which a smaller country uses its weapons first, and a tit-for-tat "chain reaction" occurs, involving all the major powers. I see where Schell continues to try to focus our attention on the problem of extinction via nuclear weapons in a recent book entitled The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger (American Empire Project). Bravo for his efforts in fighting "the good fight." Though this book can be a bit redundant, perhaps it needs to be, because there is no real action yet that would justify Schell's "trust." 5-stars.

The plot summary for this book has already been explained by other reviewers, so I won't bother with that here. This book was required for a seminar I took in college about nuclear proliferation. Despite several presentations by professors studying nuclear proliferation, this book produced the most conversation (and an intelligent one, at that) surrounding the topic.

While a great read, this book is rather depressing. It paints a rather bleak picture about humanity and outlines how simple it would be for humanity to be annihilated. I knocked off one star not for this reason, but simply because the book was not mind-blowing - it was great, but not fantastic.

To anyone wondering why it would take 230-plus pages to explain why a nuclear holocaust would be harmful: I honestly wonder this book was written as a hoax. Take, for example, this passage, found on p. 172 of my copy:

"In a nuclear holocaust great enough to extinguish the species, every person on earth would die [yes, by definition]; but in addition to that, and distinct from it, is the fact that the unborn generation would be prevented from ever existing. However, precisely because the unborn are not born, they cannot experience their plight, and its meaning has to be sought among the living, who share a common world with the unborn as well as with the dead, and who find that if they turn their backs on the unborn, and deny them life, then their own lives become progressively more twisted, empty, and despairing."

This, my friends, is hogwash. It is also representative of the entire book. Rather than encountering the results of any kind of research, you will only find this sort of "analysis" throughout. That this work was published at all is a testament to the temper of that period in American history and to the Emperor's New Clothes phenomenon: no one wants to be the first to declare that the book, written on such a vital topic, is actually just a steaming pile of cr#p. I applaud the relatively unknown Schell (he was a contributing editor to the New Yorker) for pulling this one off, but that doesn't increase the value of the book itself.

Don't let your curiosity get the better of you here. This book is simply awful.