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Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety Paperback – Illustrated, August 26, 2014

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The Oscar-shortlisted documentary Command and Control, directed by Robert Kenner, finds its origins in Eric Schlosser's book and continues to explore the little-known history of the management and safety concerns of America's nuclear aresenal.

“A devastatingly lucid and detailed new history of nuclear weapons in the U.S. Fascinating.” —
Lev Grossman, TIME Magazine

“Perilous and gripping . . . Schlosser skillfully weaves together an engrossing account of both the science and the politics of nuclear weapons safety.” —San Francisco Chronicle

A myth-shattering exposé of America’s nuclear weapons

Famed investigative journalist Eric Schlosser digs deep to uncover secrets about the management of America’s nuclear arsenal. A groundbreaking account of accidents, near misses, extraordinary heroism, and technological breakthroughs,
Command and Control explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: How do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them? That question has never been resolved—and Schlosser reveals how the combination of human fallibility and technological complexity still poses a grave risk to mankind. While the harms of global warming increasingly dominate the news, the equally dangerous yet more immediate threat of nuclear weapons has been largely forgotten.

Written with the vibrancy of a first-rate thriller,
Command and Control interweaves the minute-by-minute story of an accident at a nuclear missile silo in rural Arkansas with a historical narrative that spans more than fifty years. It depicts the urgent effort by American scientists, policy makers, and military officers to ensure that nuclear weapons can’t be stolen, sabotaged, used without permission, or detonated inadvertently. Schlosser also looks at the Cold War from a new perspective, offering history from the ground up, telling the stories of bomber pilots, missile commanders, maintenance crews, and other ordinary servicemen who risked their lives to avert a nuclear holocaust. At the heart of the book lies the struggle, amid the rolling hills and small farms of Damascus, Arkansas, to prevent the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States.

Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with people who designed and routinely handled nuclear weapons,
Command and Control takes readers into a terrifying but fascinating world that, until now, has been largely hidden from view. Through the details of a single accident, Schlosser illustrates how an unlikely event can become unavoidable, how small risks can have terrible consequences, and how the most brilliant minds in the nation can only provide us with an illusion of control. Audacious, gripping, and unforgettable, Command and Control is a tour de force of investigative journalism, an eye-opening look at the dangers of America’s nuclear age.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Deeply reported, deeply frightening . . . a techno-thriller of the first order.” Los Angeles Times

“An excellent journalistic investigation of the efforts made since the first atomic bomb was exploded, outside Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, to put some kind of harness on nuclear weaponry. By a miracle of information management, Schlosser has synthesized a huge archive of material, including government reports, scientific papers, and a substantial historical and polemical literature on nukes, and transformed it into a crisp narrative covering more than fifty years of scientific and political change. And he has interwoven that narrative with a hair-raising, minute-by-minute account of an accident at a Titan II missile silo in Arkansas, in 1980, which he renders in the manner of a techno-thriller . . .
Command and Control is how nonfiction should be written.” —Louis Menand, The New Yorker

“A devastatingly lucid and detailed new history of nuclear weapons in the U.S. . . . fascinating.” —
Lev Grossman, TIME Magazine

Command and Control ranks among the most nightmarish books written in recent years; and in that crowded company it bids fair to stand at the summit. It is the more horrific for being so incontrovertibly right and so damnably readable. Page after relentless page, it drives the vision of a world trembling on the edge of a fatal precipice deep into your reluctant mind... a work with the multilayered density of an ambitiously conceived novel . . . Schlosser has done what journalism does at its best when at full stretch: he has spent time—years—researching, interviewing, understanding and reflecting to give us a piece of work of the deepest import.”
Financial Times

“The strength of Schlosser's writing derives from his ability to carry a wealth of startling detail (did you know that security at Titan II missile bases was so lapse you could break into one with just a credit card?) on a confident narrative path.”
The Guardian

“Perilous and gripping . . . Schlosser skillfully weaves together an engrossing account of both the science and the politics of nuclear weapons safety . . . The story of the missile silo accident unfolds with the pacing, thrill and techno details of an episode of
24.” San Francisco Chronicle

“Disquieting but riveting . . . fascinating . . . Schlosser’s readers (and he deserves a great many) will be struck by how frequently the people he cites attribute the absence of accidental explosions and nuclear war to divine intervention or sheer luck rather than to human wisdom and skill. Whatever was responsible, we will clearly need many more of it in the years to come.” —
New York Times Book Review

“Easily the most unsettling work of nonfiction I've ever read, Schlosser's six-year investigation of America's ‘broken arrows’ (nuclear weapons mishaps) is by and large historical—this stuff is top secret, after all—but the book is beyond relevant. It's critical reading in a nation with thousands of nukes still on hair-trigger alert . . .
Command and Control reads like a character-driven thriller as Schlosser draws on his deep reporting, extensive interviews, and documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act to demonstrate how human error, computer glitches, dilution of authority, poor communications, occasional incompetence, and the routine hoarding of crucial information have nearly brought about our worst nightmare on numerous occasions.” —Mother Jones

“Eric Schlosser detonates a truth bomb in
Command and Control, a powerful expose about America’s nuclear weapons.” —Vanity Fair

“Nail-biting . . . thrilling . . . Mixing expert commentary with hair-raising details of a variety of mishaps, [Eric Schlosser] makes the convincing case that our best control systems are no match for human error, bad luck, and ever-increasing technological complexity.” —
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Vivid and unsettling . . . An exhaustive, unnerving examination of the illusory safety of atomic arms.” —
Kirkus (starred review)

“The lesson of this powerful and disturbing book is that the world’s nuclear arsenals are not as safe as they should be. We should take no comfort in our skill and good fortune in preventing a nuclear catastrophe, but urgently extend our maximum effort to assure that a nuclear weapon does not go off by accident, mistake, or miscalculation.” —
Lee H. Hamilton, former U.S. Representative; Co-Chair, Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future; Director, the Center on Congress at Indiana University

About the Author

Eric Schlosser is the author of The New York Times bestsellers Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness. His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and The Nation.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0143125788
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books; Reprint edition (August 26, 2014)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 656 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780143125785
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0143125785
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.15 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.3 x 8.4 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 out of 5 stars 3,968

About the author

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Eric Schlosser
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ERIC SCHLOSSER is the author of The New York Times bestsellers Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness. His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and The Nation.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
3,968 global ratings
Wonderfully Disturbing Read
5 Stars
Wonderfully Disturbing Read
This book is a great read in the same way that smoking PCP is a great high. It's terrifying, exhilarating and leaves you dumbfounded by the dichotomy of brilliance and madness inherent to the human condition. It might put your ass in prison too. Oh wait, that's just PCP.All joking aside, this book is staggeringly well researched, and wonderfully entertaining at the same time. It gives you a deep and impactful appreciation of the characters involved in the history of the American nuclear arsenal, as well as the visionary... Uh, vision that these people had. I found the stories of Curtis LeMay and Robert McNamara especially poignant, especially their decline and fall in the years post-Vietnam. It's through the lens of history that we can view these once maligned characters as brilliant, sad and complicated as the very weapons of mass destruction that their lives centered around.Eric Schlosser does a wonderful job of punctuating the solemnity and science of nuclear development with the developing story of the Damascus Incident, which has all the suspense of the very best season of your favorite thriller TV show. If I had any criticisms at all, it's that the research can at times get bogged down in pedantic detail, but these instances are few and far between, and very quickly ramps up the action at every turn in between.This isn't Anne of Green Gables. You won't sleep better after you read this, but it is profound reading, and absolutely worth the price of admission. Plus you'll look cool at your next cocktail party when you tell your friends about the differences between an implosion atom bomb and a tritium-deuterium ICBM.Just get it!
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Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2014
Eric Schlosser's "Command and Control" is a GREAT book. Every American--nay, every citizen of any country who is concerned about the hole we've dug ourselves with our unending pursuit of ever-more-powerful means of mass destruction--should read it. It's one of the most well written, compelling and important books I've read in years.

Scrupulously accurate, extremely well footnoted and powerfully told in a fast-paced, highly readable style, "Command and Control" presents two stories in interleaved narratives, which basically flip back-and-forth in alternate sections. One narrative tells the history of America's development of nuclear weapons and the means to deploy and control them, and, perhaps more importantly, to assure none of them could detonate accidentally. The other narrative is the story of the accident in Titan II ICBM silo 374-7, near Damascus, Arkansas, on September 18, 1980, when a worker dropped a socket that punctured the missile's first-stage fuel tank and resulted, eventually, in a huge (but non-nuclear) explosion.

I already knew quite a bit about nuclear weapons development, but Mr. Schlosser provides an excellent refresher course. Readers unfamiliar with that history should find those parts of his book very informative and technically fascinating. I knew little about the Damascus "Broken Arrow," though, and, thanks to his use of copious reference sources and exclusive interviews, I have no doubt that Mr. Schlosser totally nails that story, which he relates in exceptional detail and in an almost minute-by-minute chronology.

We normally think of "command and control" in the big-picture sense. For example, how do we know for sure whether the nation is under attack, and how do we mobilize military forces in an appropriate response if it is. Perhaps the ultimate "command and control" icon is the "football" (actually an innocuous briefcase) that accompanies the President of the United States everywhere, and that contains the means to command (and, hopefully, to control) the nation's nuclear forces in the event of an attack. But there's another, small-scale aspect of command and control that becomes clear in Mr. Schlosser's book. It is that aspect that should frighten everyone with the mental capacity to think beyond the next minute.

The response to the Damascus accident illustrated that there was very little meaningful command and control even at the lowest levels of the military and civilian organizations that were trying to deal with the crisis. For example, people who really needed to talk to each other couldn't because their radio systems used different frequencies or weren't compatible. Tools that were supposed to be stored in certain locations weren't there. A key door that should have opened didn't because someone secured an interlocked door in the wrong position. Protective suits had rips and would not seal properly. Critical valves did not operate because they had corroded. The entire disaster response, as Mr. Schlosser documents in chilling detail, was a textbook example of Murphy's Law at its most perverse.

Consider the nuclear reactor meltdowns at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima Dai Ichi as other examples of what Murphy's Law, combined with inevitable human errors, can wreak, and every thinking person should be very concerned about what surprises our technology may hold for us in the future. "Command and Control" shows what happened in a situation involving America's most powerful thermonuclear weapon that had never happened before. How many other technological Armageddons await, undetected and unplanned-for, in the world, and how many of them will stop short of utter disaster, as did the Damascus accident, only by dumb luck? Are we willing to trust the future of life on this planet to luck? Read "Command and Control" and think about it.
Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2013
Command and Control addresses an interesting and still vitally important topic. Namely, it examines nuclear weapons control and safety. We all too often fail to remember that the prime job of the Secretary of Energy is not electric cars but management and oversight of the nuclear weapons development and distribution. This book presents a diorama of many of the events surrounding the deployment and control of such weapons.

However, as many other reviewers had noted, the style of the book can be very frustrating at times. The author uses the Damascus incident as an ongoing connector to other historical tale recounting the development of nuclear weapons control and the mistakes that have occurred over the decades. After a while this approach becomes not only distracting but an annoyance. For example the author will take the Damascus Incident, an incident when the maintenance on a liquid fuel Titan II resulted in a damaged fuel tank by a Tech who was apparently not following protocol, and then ultimately exploding, as a metaphor for each of the Chapters which are interspersed. Thus one is supposed to be drawn to see mistakes in the small and mistakes in the large. Nice idea but it just does not seem to work. In addition we are led through the lives of each of the players in the Damascus incident and at time this is less than a lucid presentation and often more confusing. One often asks why this detail is necessary. On the one hand the approach does lend context, on the other hand it may just be too much context.

Now, I will discuss the text in toto. If one can work around the style, the book tells a compelling tale. It begins at the beginning, Los Alamos, and then proceeds to detail the many developments in the evolution of nuclear weapons. There are excellent discussions of the political in-fighting and the pros and cons of military control over the weapons. LeMay plays a key role during this early period as well he should. LeMay was a pivotal player whose world view of war was massive total destruction. LeMay viewed war as a total destruction of the enemy, as he had done in Europe and in the Pacific. Lemay in a sense was the driving force for military use and deployment.

The author does an excellent job in developing the issue of who control nuclear weapons, by going over the various ways in which the weapons flowed into military hands. The design and building of the weapons was done under AEC and then DoE aegis with the support of such places as Sandia Labs in Albuquerque. Sandia was managed by AT&T under a Government contract and was a massive facility adjacent to Kirkland AFB which itself was adjacent to the airport at Albuquerque. Sandia developed various weapons and weapon security systems. Tests of the weapons were often done by DoE or its predecessor the AEC. The author integrates these efforts into the text. It would have been interesting to have developed the significant interplay between DoE and DOD as weapons systems evolved.

The author interweaves many other near miss events into the text in a chronological basis between the evolving tale of the Damascus event. Such near misses as the explosion of a B-52 over North Carolina and the loss of 2 H bombs over Span and but a few.

The author does a reasonable job in describing the safety procedures employed but it would possibly have been more enlightening to have some first-hand descriptions. Many "fail-safe" procedures had been developed but as the author states each time an improvement to a fail-safe was done it potentially impeded the effectiveness of the weapon.

There are several areas, in my opinion, which the author has missed or touched lightly upon and should have been included or expanded upon:

1. Soviet Nuclear Weapons: On almost a one to one basis the Soviets matched the US for weapons of vast killing power. The Soviets often played games of chicken with US SAC forces and this would frequently be at the risk of deployment of weapons, especially tactical weapons. In addition the use of the nuclear submarine fleet and the games played there also presented dramatic threats. It would have been useful to have had this interplay discussed somewhat. The classic Triad of aircraft, submarines and missiles would also have been useful to draw together. Understanding Soviet capability and control would have made an excellent counterpoint.

2. Tactical Weapons and Special Weapons Depots: Tactical weapons were always considered just a step above a large non-nuclear weapon, and early on not w real nuclear weapon. The author does discuss the Davy Crockett weapons but in reality there were hundreds of Special Weapons Depots, SWD, across the globe which contained these types of weapons. The SWDs were reasonably well guarded but their very number often gave one concern not just because of what they contained but often because one could not reasonably expect to get the best personnel at this many locations. They also were DOD controlled and thus were subject to the change of staff which raised the risk of failure to follow protocols. Thus the proliferation of Tactical weapons, 1KT ranges, were in reality a serious byproduct of the enthusiasm early on for nuclear solutions.

3. Other National Weapons Controls: The British, French, Chinese, Israelis, Pakistanis, Indians, and South Africans as well as North Korea and Iran all have dabbled in nuclear weapons and many have collections in their arsenals.

4. Nuclear Weapons Treaties: There were many discussions between the US, UK and Soviets from time to time. They typically dealt with testing and proliferation. I spent the latest 70s as an advisor to ACDA and the CTBT during the Carter Administration and dealt with the Soviets firsthand. I also had the opportunity to spend many trips to Sandia and other facilities. Neither side trusted the other, yet side conversations between the parties were about children and grandchildren. Thus, although both sides were prepared for ultimate destruction, both sides also had a view of the humanity of the others. The author discusses Professor Pipe's works at that time, and I knew Pipes well, and as a refugee from Poland Pipes knew firsthand the Soviets. Thus somehow there had to be a convergence of interests. MAD and Reagan's efforts, in my opinion, on pushing what "could happen" did eventually get the sides to stand down, somewhat. The author discusses this issue but it could have been more fully developed.

5. Strategists: The influence of Herman Kahn and thinks like him also has an overpowering role to play. Kahn is recognized as the promoter of the MAD or Mutually Assured Destruction strategy. Namely if both sides are rational and both sides have so much excess nuclear capabilities then no side would rationally start a first strike. Kahn started out at Rand and ended at the Manhattan Institute but it would have been useful to integrate these efforts a bit more including the many such efforts at Rand.

6. Technological Elements: The WWMCCS discussion was lightly approached and in a sense it could have been a section unto itself. The whole concept of command, control, communications and intelligence came out in this period. However these were massively complex systems with detailed methods and procedures and whose very structure could very well have overburdened any rational response capability. The author's example of the Burroughs computers is but one simple example of grand technological ideas and ideals supported by antiquated technical implementations.

Overall the book contains some relevant materials that explain a world in the past. The current environment, however, with proliferation of such weapons, dramatically changes the landscape. For example, would the US try a MAD strategy on a rouge state nuclear capable nation the effect may be de minimis. Thus how would one address such factors? Here the past may only be partly prologue to the future. Thus the book is well worth the read even if at times it can be a bit off-putting in style.
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Top reviews from other countries

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Carlos Alberto Ferreira
5.0 out of 5 stars Revealing!
Reviewed in Brazil on June 10, 2023
The book provides a frightening glimpse of how close to the abyss we all have got during the Cold War.
roox
5.0 out of 5 stars Keep calm and carry on
Reviewed in Germany on May 7, 2023
Habe das Buch in zwei Tagen gelesen.
Wer der Meinung ist, es gehe im 21. Jahrhundert keine Gefahr mehr von Atomwaffen aus, der lese dieses Buch.
Es ist einigen glücklichen Zufällen geschuldet, dass wir noch da sind.
AMOD DEO
5.0 out of 5 stars A must read.
Reviewed in India on January 13, 2019
Lovely book with great research by the author and every character and story has come out totally credible. Makes you shudder on what treacherous and slippery ground we all walk.
2 people found this helpful
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Stefano F.
5.0 out of 5 stars Un resoconto dettagliato ed avvincente sullo sviluppo degli armamenti nucleari statunitensi
Reviewed in Italy on February 7, 2016
Inizio con alcune note "di servizio" per un lettore italiano: il libro è scritto in un inglese semplice e scorrevole e si legge facilmente; l'unica difficoltà è tenere a mente i nomi di tutte le persone citate, ma per questo viene in aiuto lo specchietto riassuntivo all'inizio nelle pagine iniziali.
Questo libro, usando come filo conduttore ed esempio principale un incidente avvenuto con un missile Titan II (che per poco non ha fatto detonare una testata termonucleare in mezzo agli Stati Uniti), descrive la storia dello sviluppo delle armi nucleari statunitensi, dai primi test fino agli ultimi trattati di riduzione degli armamenti; particolare attenzione viene rivolta ad alcuni significativi incidenti occorsi e alle resistenze dei militari alle misure di prevenzione di tali episodi. Il tutto è narrato come se si trattasse di un racconto, quasi un thriller. Il calce al testo è presente anche una ricca bibliografia suddivisa per tematiche per chi volesse approfondire ulteriormente alcuni aspetti delle vicende narrate.
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Barry Francis
5.0 out of 5 stars Fail - Not So Safe
Reviewed in Canada on November 24, 2013
Command and Control
By Eric Schlosser

Nuclear weapons are the most dangerous technology ever invented. Anything less than 100% control of these weapons, anything less than perfect safety and security is unacceptable.

Unfortunately, the command and control of America's nuclear weapons has been far from 100% perfect, as investigative journalist Eric Schlosser points out in his latest book Command and Control. Schlosser is the author of the best-selling exposé Fast Food Nation, published in 2001.

In addition to presenting an historic account of nuclear weapons development from the Manhattan project to the end of the Cold War, Schlosser provides chapter and verse on a hair-raising series of accidental mishaps that could have resulted in a nuclear detonations, and conceivably even led to an unintentional nuclear war. In typical government fashion, most of these accidents and close calls have been kept from the public.

Examples include a shocking incident in March 1958, in Mars Bluff South Carolina which saw an atom bomb fall from the sky into the backyard of Walter Gregg as he and his young son built shelves in his shed and his little girls played outside. Fortunately, the bomb's fissile core had been removed but, although the family survived, the bomb's explosives blew the Gregg house to bits. Other notable examples cited by the author include crashes of nuclear armed bombers and the accidental release of nuclear bombs over land and sea.

Such accidents are known as "broken arrows" and there have been dozens of them in the US and around the world. Some of the nukes involved have never been recovered. That none have ever resulted in a nuclear explosion is attributable more to luck and possibly divine intervention, than good planning.

The book is well researched and the author goes into minute detail about weapons design, delivery systems, triggering devices, safety systems and the vulnerabilities of each. Threaded throughout Schlosser's narrative is the compelling story of a 1980 incident at Titan II launch silo 374-7 in Damaskus, Arkansas - an event that resulted in the preparation of a 1,000 page accident report by the Eighth Air Force Missile Investigation Board. The Titan II was America's largest-ever IBM, standing 103 ft tall, with a nine-megaton thermo-nuclear warhead, "primed, cocked, and ready to go".

The accident was caused when a technician accidentally dropped a socket down the missile silo which pierced one of the rocket's lower fuel tanks, leading to the release of toxic vapors and the threat of the rocket collapsing on itself. A series of missteps leads to the rocket's explosion, sending its nuclear warhead 200 feet in the air, killing a serviceman and seriously injuring several others. Miraculously, the nuclear warhead did not go off, otherwise half of Arkansas might have been obliterated. The description of the gallant efforts to save the missile and its launch site read like a Tom Clancy thriller.

Schlosser's book makes the point that none of the 70,000 nuclear weapons built by the US since 1945 has ever detonated accidentally, partly due to the country's technological sophistication and good luck. But he also points out that "Other countries, with less hard-earned experience, may not be as fortunate." Let's hope he's wrong on that point.

Barry Francis
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