76 of 94 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good novel; weak background, December 16, 2000
This review is from: Resurrection Day (Paperback)
One thing that ticks me off about after-the-bomb books is weak research on the effects of nuclear weapons, or on operational plans and capacities. This book suffers from that fault, despite good writing and a nice plot.
Apparently the "Cuban War" of 1962 results in the US getting hit by something on the order of 10-12 Soviet nukes. This is reasonable, if slightly pessimistic. (My own guess would be something on the order of 6 or 7.) The Soviets simply didn't have many delivery systems which could reach North America.
Two things aren't reasonable:
First, after losing 3 or 4 cities and a few military bases, the US is shown as still devastated ten years later, with widespread areas dangerously radioactive and the economy only just recovering from a near-total collapse.
Not!
My father stood in a slit trench 1.8 miles from ground zero during a bomb test in the late 1950's, and he's fine at age 83. Yeah, if you're under the immediate fallout plume from a multimegatonne ground-burst, it's game over. But two weeks later, the same territory is pretty safe; a year later, virtually completely so. Most active isotopes have very short half-lives. There are exceptions (strontium-90, some metal isotopes), but there were scores of above-ground tests, and the increase in the cancer rate nationwide was undetectable without fairly sophisticated statistical analysis.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were reoccupied immediately after the explosions. Generally speaking, ten years after a bomb goes off you can go to ground zero, strip naked, rub the dirt all over your body and eat it with a spoon, and all you'll get is a dirty skin and indigestion.
Hence the US, with a largely undamaged infrastructure, would recover quickly. Germany and Japan did, from far worse damage -- they don't call 1945 "The Year Zero" in Germany for nothing, and the damage in Japan was worse. The firestorms in Tokyo and Dresden killed about as many people as nuclear attacks, and did as much physical damage.
Second, the USSR did have a very dangerous launch capacity in 1962... only it was aimed at Central and Western Europe, and the book shows those areas getting off scot-free.
Not going to happen. Not even remotely possible. The missiles and bombers were set to go and would have launched immediately against European targets when SAC went into action against the USSR. Western Europe was chock-full of USAAF bases, just to start with; and the Soviets planned for a city-busting strategy, as well.
They certainly weren't going to let the _Germans_ come through intact, for Christ's sake!
As the joke went in the 1950's and early 1960's, the Soviet Union's deterrance capacity could be summed up as: "If you Americans attack Holy Mother Russia, we will nuke the hell out of Germany, France and Britain! Just see if we don't!"
Britain, for instance, would have lost at least a dozen major cities -- and given the dense population and restricted area, would have been an absolute charnel house.
The actual result of a nuclear war in 1962 would be:
Moderate damage to the US. Moderate if you didn't happen to be in NYC or Washington, that is.
Total devastation of the USSR.
Very severe damage in Europe.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Haunting scenario, September 8, 2003
This review is from: Resurrection Day (Paperback)
Let's start with the basics: Buy it. Read it. It is a very good story. Here is the why:
In general, what separates the great stories from the avarage ones? Some might say that its the ability of some part of the story to remain with you long after you have finished reading it. In this respect, "Ressurection Day" deserves to be classified as a classic of Alternate History and a great story to boot.
From the beginning, Dubois chooses his fork in time carefully. An all too near to reality scenario where the Cuban Crisis ends in World War III is just the kind of twist to lend this alternate world a heafty dose of credibility. Focusing on JFK has Dubois sending his readers directly into what I would term the "Oliver Stone realm of nostalgia" - the world as it might have been had this or other event not hapenned.
From these basic ingredients, Dubois weaves an intricate tapestry of memories and tragedies, hopes and fears. This is a world full of regret and a palpable sense of sadness, looking back in anger at the shattered American dream. And in it comes Ressurection's main character, Carl Landry, ostensibly trying to solve a murder, but actually hoping to achieve much much more.
Landry's journey through a devastated America is a tour de force of sketches into the avarage person's life after such a cataclysmic event. There are no big heroes to fill the canvas, just a collection of disparate people, nut unlike you and me, trying to make the best out of a horrible situation. The people and the places, the hopes and fears are what you would expect to find in your own neighborhodd, a fact which makes the horros of the war resonate with an uncanny attenuation. I guarantee you that long after you have forgotten any of the characters or the plot, the images of an America that might have been will remain in your mind as a powerful deterrent to a future you will not want happening.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not a Bad Read, But Also Not a Keeper, December 12, 2000
This review is from: Resurrection Day (Paperback)
Resurrection Day was full of promise to be one of the most interesting tales told this year. The premise is fascinating. What if the Cuban Missile Crisis had escalated into all-out war and the United States had been hit with nuclear weapons?
With this premise, Brendan DuBois presents us with a cast of characters that could inhabit the devastated landscape one might find ten years after such a tragedy. Unfortunately, the characters are predictable, more types than individuals, and the plot unfolds according to the formula. The picture DuBois paints is somewhat interesting, but his execution falls far short of the promise.
Carl Landry is the protagonist of this tale. Now a reporter for a censored version of the Boston Globe, he is an ex-veteran, a man who joined the Army in the flush of enthusiasm that accompanied the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. He served in an obscure country called Vietnam and lived to see starvation in California. In Carl's world, American survivors envy rich Canadians and rich Mexicans. He is joined on his search for truth by Sandy Price, British reporter for the Times, the obligatory love interest and temptress who is not completely what she seems on the surface.
Disappointingly, this book offers nothing more than a simple morality play of the good people versus the large and malignant forces of the government. Our hero faces impossible odds, and it is not all that difficult to imagine how things are going to play out in the end.
For readers who do not mind the predictable nature of the story, Resurrection Day does paint an interesting picture of a devastated landscape, of a country that is bowed but not broken. Read for what it is, a mass market paperback, it is not all that bad. Readers who expect something new or different, something at all challenging, are likely to be disappointed.
This is a good book for a long airplane trip or for someone who wants a break from challenging books. It's mildly entertaining, but not at all a keeper.
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