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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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“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.
- Print length656 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateAugust 26, 2014
- Dimensions5.5 x 1.3 x 8.4 inches
- ISBN-109780143125785
- ISBN-13978-0143125785
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“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
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Day or night, winter or spring, the silo always felt the same. It was eerily quiet, and mercury vapor lights on the walls bathed the missile in a bright white glow. When you opened the door on a lower level and stepped into the launch duct, the Titan II loomed above you like an immense black-tipped silver bullet, loaded in a concrete gun barrel, primed, cocked, ready to go, and pointed at the sky
The missile was designed to launch within a minute and hit a target as far as six thousand miles away. In order to do that, the Titan II relied upon a pair of liquid propellants—a rocket fuel and an oxidizer—that were “hypergolic.” The moment they came into contact with each other, they’d instantly and forcefully ignite. The missile had two stages, and inside both of them, an oxidizer tank rested on top of a fuel tank, with pipes leading down to an engine. Stage 1, which extended about seventy feet upward from the bottom of the missile, contained about 85,000 pounds of fuel and 163,000 pounds of oxidizer. Stage 2, the upper section where the warhead sat, was smaller and held about one fourth of those amounts. If the missile were launched, fuel and oxidizer would flow through the stage 1 pipes, mix inside the combustion chambers of the engine, catch on fire, emit hot gases, and send almost half a million pounds of thrust through the supersonic convergent-divergent nozzles beneath it. Within a few minutes, the Titan II would be fifty miles off the ground.
The two propellants were extremely efficient—and extremely dangerous. The fuel, Aerozine-50, could spontaneously ignite when it came into contact with everyday things like wool, rags, or rust. As a liquid, Aerozine-50 was clear and colorless. As a vapor, it reacted with the water and the oxygen in the air and became a whitish cloud with a fishy smell. This fuel vapor could be explosive in proportions as low as 2 percent. Inhaling it could cause breathing difficulties, a reduced heart rate, vomiting, convulsions, tremors, and death. The fuel was also highly carcinogenic and easily absorbed through the skin.
The missile’s oxidizer, nitrogen tetroxide, was even more hazardous. Under federal law, it was classified as a “Poison A,” the most deadly category of man-made chemicals. In its liquid form, the oxidizer was a translucent, yellowy brown. Although not as flammable as the fuel, it could spontaneously ignite if it touched leather, paper, cloth, or wood. And its boiling point was only 70 degrees Fahrenheit. At temperatures any higher, the liquid oxidizer boiled into a reddish brown vapor that smelled like ammonia. Contact with water turned the vapor into a corrosive acid that could react with the moisture in a person’s eyes or skin and cause severe burns. When inhaled, the oxidizer could destroy tissue in the upper respiratory system and the lungs. The damage might not be felt immediately. Six to twelve hours after being inhaled, the stuff could suddenly cause headaches, dizziness, difficulty breathing, pneumonia, and pulmonary edema leading to death.pPowell and Plumb were missile repairmen. They belonged to Propellant Transfer System (PTS) Team A of the 308th Strategic Missile Wing, headquarters was about an hour or so away at Little Rock Air Force Base.
They’d been called to the site that day because a warning light had signaled that pressure was low in the stage 2 oxidizer tank. If the pressure fell too low, the oxidizer wouldn’t flow smoothly to the engine. A “low light” could mean a serious problem—a rupture, a leak. But it was far more likely that a slight change in temperature had lowered the pressure inside the tank.
Air-conditioning units in the silo were supposed to keep the missile cooled to about 60 degrees. If Powell and Plum didn’t find any leaks, they’d simply unscrew the cap on the oxidizer tank and add more nitrogen gas. The nitrogen maintained a steady pressure on the liquid inside, pushing downward. It was a simple, mundane task, like putting air in your tires before long drive.
Powell had served on a PTS team for almost three years and knew the hazards of the Titan II. During his first visit to a launch complex, an oxidizer leak created a toxic cloud that shut down operations for three days. He was twenty-one years old, a proud “hillbilly” from rural Kentucky who loved the job and planned to reenlist at the end of the year.
Plumb had been with the 308th for just nine months. He wasn’t qualified to do this sort of missile maintenance or to handle these propellants. Accompanying Powell and watching everything that Powell did was considered Plumb’s “OJT,” his on-the-job training. Plumb was nineteen, raised in suburban Detroit.
Although an oxidizer low light wasn’t unusual, Air Force technical orders required that both men wear Category I protective gear when the silo to investigate it. “Going Category I” meant getting into a Rocket Fuel Handler’s Clothing Outfit (RFHCO)—an airtight, liquidproof, vaporproof, fire-resistant combination of gear designed to protect them from the oxidizer and the fuel. The men called it a “ref-co.” A RFHCO looked like a space suit from an early-1960s science fiction movie. It had a white detachable bubble helmet with a voice-actuated radio and a transparent Plexiglas face screen. The suit was off white, with a long zipper extending from the top of the left shoulder, across the torso, to the right knee. You stepped into the RFHCO and wore long johns underneath it. The black vinyl gloves and boots weren’t attached, so the RFHCO had roll-down cuffs at the wrists and the ankles to maintain a tight seal. The suit weighed about twenty-two pounds. The RFHCO backpack weighed an additional thirty-five and carried about an hour’s worth of air. The outfit was heavy and cumbersome. It could be hot, sticky, and uncomfortable, especially when worn outside the air-conditioned silo. But it could also save your life.
The stage 2 oxidizer pressure cap was about two thirds of the way up the missile. In order to reach it, Powell and Plumb had to walk across a retractable steel platform that extended from the silo wall. The tall, hollow cylinder in which the Titan II stood was enclosed by another concrete cylinder with nine interior levels, housing equipment. Level 1 was near the top of the missile; level 9 about twenty feet beneath the missile. The steel work platforms folded down from the walls hydraulically. Each one had a stiff rubber edge to prevent the Titan II from getting scratched, while keeping the gap between the platform and the missile as narrow as possible.
The airmen entered the launch duct at level 2. Far above their heads was a concrete silo door. It was supposed to protect the missile from the wind and the rain and the effects of a nuclear weapon detonating nearby. The door weighed 740 tons. Far below the men, beneath the Titan II, a concrete flame deflector shaped like a W was installed to guide the hot gases downward at launch, then upward through exhaust vents and out of the silo. The missile stood on a thrust mount, a steel ring at level 7 that weighed about 26,000 pounds. The thrust mount was attached to the walls by large springs, so that the Titan II could ride out a nuclear attack, bounce instead of break, and then take off.
In addition to the W-53 warhead and a few hundred thousand pounds of propellants, many other things in the silo could detonate. devices were used after ignition to free the missile from the thrust mount, separate stage 2 from stage 1, release the nose cone. The missile also housed numerous small rocket engines with flammable solid fuel to adjust the pitch and the roll of the warhead midflight. The Titan II launch complex had been carefully designed to minimize the risk of having so many flammables and explosives within it. Fire detectors, fire suppression systems, toxic vapor detectors, and decontamination showers were scattered throughout the nine levels of the silo. These safety devices were bolstered by strict safety rules. Whenever a PTS team member put on a RFHCO, he had to be accompanied by someone else in a RFHCO, with two other people waiting as backup, ready to put on their suits. Every Category I task had to be performed according to a standardized checklist, which the team chief usually read aloud over the radio communications network. There was one way to do everything—and only one way. Technical Order 21M-LGM25C-2-12, Figure 2-18, told Powell and Plumb exactly what to do as they stood on the platform near the missile. “Step four,” the PTS team chief said over the radio. “Remove airborne disconnect pressure cap.” “Roger,” Powell replied. “Caution. When complying with step four, do not exceed one hundred sixty foot-pounds of torque. Overtorquing may result in damage to the missile skin.” “Roger.” As Powell used a socket wrench to unscrew the pressure cap, the socket fell off. It struck the platform and bounced. Powell grabbed for it but missed. Plumb watched the nine-pound socket slip through the narrow gap between the platform and the missile, fall about seventy feet, hit the thrust mount, and then ricochet off the Titan II. It seemed to happen in slow motion. A moment later, fuel sprayed from a hole in the missile like water from a garden hose. “Oh man,” Plumb thought. “This is not good.”
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
- Best Sellers Rank: #58,376 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #17 in Military Policy (Books)
- #34 in Nuclear Weapons & Warfare History (Books)
- #396 in American Military History
- Customer Reviews:
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.
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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.
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.
Top reviews from other countries
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.
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.
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











