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Command and Control

Eric Schlosser

4.25 · Rating details · 11,951 ratings · 1,390 reviews

Command and Control interweaves the minute-by-minute story of an accident at a missile silo in rural Arkansas, where a single crew struggled to prevent the explosion of the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States, with a historical narrative that spans more than fifty years. It depicts the urgent effort to ensure that nuclear weapons can't be stolen, ...more

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Paperback, 656 pages

Published July 3rd 2014 by Penguin (first published September 17th 2013)

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Lists with This Book

The Feynman Lectures on Physics Vol 3 by Richard P. Feynman

Introduction to Quantum Mechanics by David J. Griffiths

Theoretical Nuclear Physics by John M. Blatt

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

UK/US Nuclear Security for Physicists

14 books — 5 voters

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Aug 25, 2015 Scott rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history

This book is the stuff of nightmares.

You no doubt assume, for your own peace of mind, that the potentially world-ending weapons in the United States' nuclear arsenal have always been carefully controlled, guarded and implanted with the best safeguards available. That they have been obsessively tracked by the military, and subjected to the strictest controls imaginable. That at all times they have been handled with the fear and care that city-vaporizing ordinance is due.

Your assumption is incor This book is the stuff of nightmares.

You no doubt assume, for your own peace of mind, that the potentially world-ending weapons in the United States' nuclear arsenal have always been carefully controlled, guarded and implanted with the best safeguards available. That they have been obsessively tracked by the military, and subjected to the strictest controls imaginable. That at all times they have been handled with the fear and care that city-vaporizing ordinance is due.

Your assumption is incorrect.

Eric Schlosser's Command and Control details many, many incidents of the failure of safety systems and procedures resulting in the near detonation of nuclear weapons. Imagine potentially live thermonuclear weapons falling off trolleys and clattered across the concrete. Aircraft with full bomb loads of nukes catching fire and burning to ash on US airbases. Nuclear bombers crashing and spreading plutonium dust for miles around. Planes taking off with their wiring mixed up, so that setting the onboard bombs to 'safe' actually armed them for detonation. These are the kinds of incidents Schlosser describes, and they are truly terrifying.

Schlosser details the USA's long history with atomic weapons and the many, many accidents which could have devastated vast areas of the US at best, and sparked nuclear armageddon with the USSR at worst. Along the way he explores the ways that many conscientious people have tried to make atomic weapons safer, and the military machine that, as a rule, stymied most of their efforts. The history of the U.S nuclear arsenal is one where appropriate safeguards generally appear to have been installed far too late or sometimes even not at all.

Schlosser writes well, and engagingly, although on occasion I felt he needed to get to the point instead of exhaustively detailing yet another set of participants, their backgrounds, and their home lives, as he does with many of the incidents he introduces.

If you want to find out just how close we have come to ending our civilisation, and how close we still are considering the thousands of nukes still in service, then read this book. It's compelling and terrifying stuff. ...more

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Dec 20, 2018 Maru Kun rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: c-usa, the-past-20thc, the-past-cold-war

A psycopathic narcissist whose past crimes are about to catch up with him is being blackmailed by a foreign dictator.

His friends and allies have turned on him one by one; his family hates him for making them risk jail for him. The rest of the world has its eye off the ball as people start to relax and enjoy the holiday season.

He feels increasingly isolated. In a few short months he may have to face great public humiliation. He will be forced to confront his own inadequacy, haunted by the demons ...more

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Sep 17, 2013 Tom rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I have a fascination with the history of the US atomic weapons program, based not on the macabre destructive power of those weapons, but on the combination of brilliant minds, difficult problems and absolute secrecy. So this book scratches an itch of mine.

Command and Control is a sobering look at the failures of the Atomic Age - accidents, careless errors and bureaucratic mishaps involving devices that could level a city. Some of them came very close. One accident in particular provides the narr I have a fascination with the history of the US atomic weapons program, based not on the macabre destructive power of those weapons, but on the combination of brilliant minds, difficult problems and absolute secrecy. So this book scratches an itch of mine.

Command and Control is a sobering look at the failures of the Atomic Age - accidents, careless errors and bureaucratic mishaps involving devices that could level a city. Some of them came very close. One accident in particular provides the narrative framework: The Damascus Incident. In a missile silo near Damascus, AR in 1980, a technician working on a Titan II missile dropped the attachment on his wrench, initiating a sequence of events that ultimately resulted in the missile exploding and ejecting its live nuclear warhead from the silo.

The Titan II is the largest rocket ever constructed by the US and was carrying the most powerful warhead available - a nine megaton bomb with the output of a dozen Hiroshimas. The accident happened only an hour's drive from Little Rock, AR, where governor Bill Clinton and Vice President Walter Mondale were preparing for the Democratic National Convention. If the warhead had gone critical it would have dramatically changed the course of history.

But The Damascus Incident is only the tip of the ice-berg, as Schlosser documents thoroughly. Hair-raising close calls have been par for the course from the beginning of the nuclear weapons program on to the present day. While there have been many avoidable accidents, the fact of the matter is that when you have thousands of nuclear weapons and you move some of them around every day, accidents will happen. It's not a matter of 'if', but 'when'.

The sobering take-away of this book is that during the Cold War our own nuclear weapons were a greater threat to us than the Soviets' ever were.

In addition to documenting this comedy of atomic errors, Schlosser explores the development of the US government's 'command and control' program, the network of protocols and policies which governed who could use nuclear weapons, when, and how. This bit is every bit as hair-raising as the parade of accidents, as we learn that again and again Air Force commanders embraced strategies of nuclear annihilation which would have undoubtedly plunged the world into nuclear winter if they were ever executed.

Surprisingly, Schlosser mostly steers clear of politics. Readers who aren't Air Force generals will likely find themselves nodding along with him whatever their political background. He makes a convincing case that nuclear weapons are extraordinarily dangerous, to our enemies and and to us, and we should have as few of them as possible.

This is a very dense book, perhaps longer than it should have been. As a journalist Schlosser is eager to paint detailed pictures of the major players and the times they live in, but he does so to the point of exhaustion. Dozens of men were involved in the Damascus Incident and its aftermath, and Schlosser treats us to extensive biographies of Every. Single. One.

He also goes into more detail than is probably meaningful regarding cultural history. Do we really care about what Bob Dylan was up to while a nuclear warhead was on the verge of going critical? Schlosser repeatedly tries the reader's patience by stretching out the story of what happened in Damascus, AR with sidebars and extraneous detail. It's a riveting story. Just tell it already!

That said, this is a fascinating book and worth reading. It's not a comforting one, though. The stories of the many brushes we've had with nuclear annihilation is enough to give even the most hardy reader some sleepless nights. ...more

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Jan 09, 2014 Rob Adey rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This is a book about the many, many times the world has come *this close* to nuclear armageddon and somehow, Eric Schlosser has managed to make it a really boring one.

It's crushed by the weight of its own research - I'm all for underground silos, but I don't need to know what colour all the walls are painted.

Human interest is injected via tiny, CV-like biogs. Those of the accident victims end with the age of their wife and the number of kids they had - presumably there's a formula you can use to ...more

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Jan 31, 2017 Lata rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: x2017-sff-tbr-cleanup, x2017-read

3-3.5 stars.
What to say? Mostly, I'm dumbstruck that the US and USSR didn't accidentally blow up the planet using nuclear weapons during the Cold War. The author describes:

-Several accidents and sometimes deaths of air crews or maintenance personnel when handling nuclear weapons during testing or transport, over a 40-ish year period;
-The culture of the Strategic Air Group (SAC) that didn't appreciate the lack of safety in the weapons' designs and actively fought against implementing changes to d ...more

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Oct 10, 2013 Kay rated it liked it · review of another edition

This book was an interesting but ultimately slightly boring look into America's nuclear weapons and how close they are to destroying all of us. Ben really highly recommended this book, so perhaps my expectations were too high, but I did find the technical descriptions to go on (and on) just a little too long. And though Schlosser is often talking about life-and-death scenarios, his descriptions are often bloodless, erring on the side of being technically perfect but then ultimately losing a sens ...more

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Nov 14, 2013 Jim Leckband rated it really liked it · review of another edition

As a lapsed physicist I still retain some notions that I learned along the way. One of them is that nature tries its hardest to smooth over any huge discontinuities - i.e if there is something totally out of whack with its surroundings, then the surroundings will find one way or another to bring it back. Some call this the Second Law of Thermodynamics if you wanna get technical.

And this notion is what kept popping up in my head while I was reading this incredible book. Here we have machines of i ...more

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Sep 20, 2013 Jeff rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: война

I thought I knew a lot about nuclear weapons and the how the Cold War worked, strategies, delivery systems, and crises. But this book really shows how disorganized it all was, from the interagency infighting to the inherent conflict between weapons that are safe from accidental or malicious use and weapons that will go off (if needed). We take it for granted that nuclear weapons are designed not to go off if dropped or burned (when planes crash while carrying bombs), but they had to be designed ...more

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Jun 03, 2017 Lauren rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: long-reads, cloud-library, technology, audiobooks, us-history

Just how close has the world come to nuclear armgeddon? and how many times?

Schlosser can help if you have ever wondered this question. He spares no detail. It's an exhaustive history, with emphasis on the exhaustive. Schlosser's work is impeccably researched - swaths of history, from Trinity through the Cold War, the nuclear armament, the political dance, the Bay of Pigs, Chelyabinsk, Reagan's Star Wars, etc etc etc - spliced with the details leading up to the incident at the Air Force facility ...more

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Dec 01, 2021 saïd rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2_nonfiction

I entirely forgot I owned this book until recently, but wow, it's a great book. Not really surprising if you know anything about the US military, though—like most militaries, the majority of them are under 40. If I remember correctly, the average age of an enlisted service member is mid-20s, and the average age of a commanding officer is mid-30s. So when you give almost absolute world-destroying power to a bunch of idiot kids who have no way of adequately preparing to handle nuclear weapons, wha ...more

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Oct 18, 2013 Laura rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Wow. Really? Oh my God. Holy shit! Those were a few of the many exclamations that came from me as I read this book. And my poor husband had to endure listening to me read passages from this book as he was trying to fall asleep. I grew up during the cold war and had nuclear nightmares from the '60's through the mid-80's. At some point I convinced myself that the world was safer and that I didn't need to worry about nuclear war anymore. This book has convinced me otherwise. It has also convinced m ...more

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Jun 24, 2014 Scott Rhee rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: politics, warfare, science, history

Eric Schlosser, who exposed the fast food industry for the totally unsafe and unhealthy obesity-causing multi-billion dollar lobbying group that it is in his book "Fast Food Nation", turns his sights on the frightening issue of nuclear weapons and our country's nuclear arsenal in "Command and Control", the title of which is meant to be ironic, as any sense that we have of a command and control over these weapons is strictly an illusion. It has been a blend of the thankless dedication and hard wo Eric Schlosser, who exposed the fast food industry for the totally unsafe and unhealthy obesity-causing multi-billion dollar lobbying group that it is in his book "Fast Food Nation", turns his sights on the frightening issue of nuclear weapons and our country's nuclear arsenal in "Command and Control", the title of which is meant to be ironic, as any sense that we have of a command and control over these weapons is strictly an illusion. It has been a blend of the thankless dedication and hard work of a few good men, blind luck, and divine intervention that we have not blown ourselves to kingdom come in the past 70 years since we learned to harness atomic power. Don't fall into the argument, either, that the apparent lack of nuclear accidents in that time demonstrates that we must have a pretty good handle on these things. There have actually been plenty of accidents, many of which have never---until Schlosser got a hold of the documents---been released to the general public until now.

At the center of the book is a real life suspense thriller. On the evening of September 18, 1980 at a missile silo in the middle of farmland just north of the small Arkansas town of Damascus, two members of a maintenance crew for the Titan II nuclear missile were working on the missile when one of the men accidentally dropped a socket---something which happened quite frequently during routine maintenance, normally without incident---which hit the fuselage on the way down in just the right spot, accidentally nicking the fuel line. The silo began filling with poisonous smoke.

Thus begins an edge-of-the-seat race against time, involving dozens of brave men---some of whom died that day and some of whom survived---whose names would never make it into history books or on plaques. Indeed, some of the men would actually be blamed by the military for causing the accident in the first place. Schlosser, in writing this book, sets the record straight.

Interspersed throughout the book is a detailed and fascinating history, from the early days when atomic power was merely in its theoretical phase, to the days of Los Alamos and Robert Oppenheimer's deadly creation, to its uses in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the nuclear bomb tests and arms race of the '50s Cold War to attempts at disarmament in the '70s and '80s to the horrifying reality of today's War on Terror.

As Schlosser illustrates throughout the book and ultimately points out in his epilogue, the creation and build-up of our nuclear arsenal has created a monster so powerful and grand as to potentially be unstoppable. Blaming young men for accidents like Damascus is not only irrelevant but completely misplaced: "The instinct to blame the people at the bottom not only protected those at the top, it also obscured an underlying truth. The fallibility of human beings guarantees that no technological system will ever be infallible. (p. 461)" ...more

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Sep 07, 2014 Todd N rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audio

How many ways are there to mishandle a nuclear weapon? Turns out about a million: Drop them from planes, crash them in planes, catch them on fire, put them in planes and catch them on fire, leave them on top of missiles about to explode, park them at a NATO ally with an unstable government and one lone soldier armed with a revolver guarding them, forget to take warheads off the missiles and fly them across the USA, have random criticality accidents in the nuclear lab, just to name a few...

And ho ...more

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Feb 28, 2014 Scott rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

One of the main takeaways from Eric Schlosser's riveting, smart, packed-with-crazy-facts-and-stories portrait of the atomic/nuclear era, mostly in America but obviously also including the Soviets, NATO, India, Pakistan, China, et al, is this: we were fucking lucky as hell to get out the Cold War alive. That no atomic then nuclear then thermonuclear warhead denoted by mistake in its home silo / submarine / airplane / airbase; that none were launched by accident on either side, provoking massive r One of the main takeaways from Eric Schlosser's riveting, smart, packed-with-crazy-facts-and-stories portrait of the atomic/nuclear era, mostly in America but obviously also including the Soviets, NATO, India, Pakistan, China, et al, is this: we were fucking lucky as hell to get out the Cold War alive. That no atomic then nuclear then thermonuclear warhead denoted by mistake in its home silo / submarine / airplane / airbase; that none were launched by accident on either side, provoking massive retaliation; that none were launched on purpose, because of a "false-positive" reading of incoming missiles... it's not really because the "safing" technology was so perfect (though it did work, through plane crashes and raging fires and idiotic human mistakes), nor that the command and control (read: communication and leadership) system was so intelligent and fluid (it totally wasn't), but really, it's just a fluke we're not all dead right now. Like when you drop your phone, and most of the time it's completely fine, *phew*, and other times it shatters? Like that. Which means the next time it "drops", who knows?

Anyway, this book is fantastic, with Schlosser alternating between a detailed chronological history (though always lively... he has the storyteller's knack for finding just the right detail, and knowing when to move on) from the Second World War to today, with a play-by-play retelling of the most terrifying near-miss on American soil, the non-nuclear explosion at a Titan II silo in Damascus, South Carolina that "only" killed a few servicemen. The mishaps and miscommunication and often incredibly stupid and reckless behavior throughout the Cold War would be almost amusing except for those thousands, millions, literally billions of lives that were at stake. The Damascus incident, too, is harrowing but also somewhat slapsticky in the Air Force command's response, which, when things looked really bad and that the warhead might blow, was basically: ruuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!! And if you really want to get angry about the whole thing, consider that so much of the insane nuclear buildup was fueled, as Schlosser makes clear, not by strategic necessity, but rather by inter-service rivalries between the Navy (mostly on submarines), the Air Force (bombers and missiles) and even the Army (who wanted tactical battlefield weapons... like that would ever be a good idea). Everyone demanded, not just a piece of the nuclear arsenal pie, but a full pie for themselves, and the defense industry and politicians were only too happy to get rich off the ludicrous proliferation. No one was ever interested in maintaining or upgrading their older systems either (the Titan II was a relic); they all needed anything and everything that was shiny and new as well.

Of course, the story isn't over. Because although Schlosser makes a case that that the world is safer place today after the dissolution of the USSR (and, so, the end of the Cold War), and the massive reduction in total warheads that followed, and the introduction of more safety features and command and control routines, he also reminds us that many of these newer nuclear players are likely going through the same bumblings that "we" went through. Stay tuned, and, I guess, fingers crossed... ...more

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Oct 31, 2013 Neil Fox rated it liked it · review of another edition

Eric Schlosser's " Fast food Nation" was a hilarious and scary expose of the McDonald's fast food culture in the U.S.; Command and Control is a similarly impressive feat of investigative journalism, although here the subject matter is not so light-heartedly amusing and is infinitely more terrifying than tales of unhealthy burgers produced in unsustainable conditions served up by exploited sweat-shop workers to an army of the obese. For here the topic is nuclear weapons, offering a look at someth Eric Schlosser's " Fast food Nation" was a hilarious and scary expose of the McDonald's fast food culture in the U.S.; Command and Control is a similarly impressive feat of investigative journalism, although here the subject matter is not so light-heartedly amusing and is infinitely more terrifying than tales of unhealthy burgers produced in unsustainable conditions served up by exploited sweat-shop workers to an army of the obese. For here the topic is nuclear weapons, offering a look at something we'd rather not, but should in fact, know about - what has gone wrong, what could go wrong, and how close we've actually been annihilating the planet through our handling of these frightening and insane weapons.

Told from bottom-up accounts of missile crews, technicians and ordinary maintenance personnel rather than from the lofty vantage point of the high level diplomacy or security policy around nuclear weapons, Schlosser's work uncovers the trickiness and risk of dealing with such dangerous weapons where you have a combination of human fallibility and unimaginable technological complexity coming into play.

The centerpiece of the story is the so-called Damascus incident, a little-known near miss at a missile launch site in rural Arkansas in the early 80's which, had it ended differently, could, like numerous similar mishaps like it, have triggered a sequence of events that could have blown us all to Kingdom come and back multiple times over. The unfolding of the Damascus incident occupies the central narrative of the book, pausing for interspersed chapters covering the wider political and defense policy context from the dawn of the Atomic age with the Manhattan project through the airborne based attack systems of the 1950''s to the coming of the game-changing Intercontinental ballistic missile and tactical nuclear weapons capability of the 1960's, and ultimately the so-called Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine at the height of the Cold War.

Nuclear holocaust, the bogeyman which stalked the nightmares of our parents or those of us old enough to have lived through the Cold War, has largely been replaced in the contemporary gallery of fears by concerns about terrorism, militant Islam, Global warming , the economy or whether or not the WiFi is working; but this book serves as a reminder that these weapons are still there and could still advance the extinction of our planet and species to the here-and-now. Reading this chronology of mishaps and near misses in the U.S. Nuclear program without, as Schlosser himself points out, knowing anything about similar going's on from the Russian side, makes one wonder if the real reason the United States doesn't want Iran to attain nuclear capability isn't the fear that it will attack Israel or its other perceived enemies, but more whether some bungling mistake in the handling of the technology will set off an irreversible and uncontrollable chain of catastrophic events. Nuclear weapons have to be Mankind's most evil invention, our creative genius turned to pure insanity, and nuclear holocaust, despite our other preoccupations, is still very much the sum of all fears.

...more

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Jun 15, 2014 Nicholas rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

::BEGIN REVIEW:: THIS IS AN EMERGENCY ACTION MESSAGE FROM COMMAND. YOU ARE HEREBY ORDERED TO READ THIS BOOK WITH ALL DELIBERATE SPEED. IF YOU ARE ABLE TO SLEEP THE NIGHT AFTER YOU FINISH IT, YOU WILL HAVE FAILED TO FULLY COMPREHEND ITS IMPLICATIONS. IN SUCH CASE, REPEAT READING UNTIL PROPERLY TERRIFIED. AMERICA HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO THE BRINK OF NUCLEAR DISASTER TIME AND AGAIN DUE TO AN INSUFFICIENT APPRECIATION OF THE DANGER POSED BY A LARGE, INSECURE AND UNSAFE NUCLEAR ARSENAL. WE MUST NEVER AGA ...more

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Oct 23, 2013 Scott Wilson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is one of those books in which every page seems full of information -- never too much at a time, though, and not just data or raw facts. A broad plurality of voices, from interviews the author conducted as well as from his careful distillation of seemingly every source available (almost 150 pages are devoted to endnotes), conveys both big-picture policy and idiosyncratic detail over every generation of the nuclear age. There's a narrative through line, and there is even suspense -- at least ...more

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Feb 10, 2014 Andy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Nuclear war is a very important topic and Schlosser delivers a well researched entertaining history from the angle of nuclear weapon safety. It's like a whole book about penicillin that only covers its side effects. That approach works in this case because the long list of hair-raising near misses, any one of which could have killed millions of people, is fascinating. Of course, a mistaken bomb detonation in the wrong place wouldn't just kill a lot of people near the bomb, it would start World W ...more

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Feb 07, 2018 aPriL does feral sometimes rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history, science, literary, academic-notations, twisted-me-peculiar, non-fiction

‘Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety” should be required reading for everyone - not that I believe much can be done now to fix the dangers of nuclear weapons everyone in the world lives with. However, most of us are completely ignorant of the thin line of safety between all life on Earth and the one weapon of mass destruction which actually IS a current threat to all of Mankind. This book goes a long way towards rectifying that ignorance.

Gentl ...more

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Oct 04, 2014 Bryan Alexander rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: geopolitics, technology, politics, cold-war

Dropping a nuclear weapon was never a good idea. (168)

Command and Control is a far more interesting book than it may seem. At first glance Schlosser's topic is fairly technical, even rarefied: safety problems for atomic weapons during the Cold War. And yet I* couldn't put the book down without a struggle, and read parts of it out loud to my family.

What makes this book so good? To begin with, Schlosser creates a nice narrative structure, intertwining two timelines, big and small. The macro story ...more

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Nov 19, 2013 Ushan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nuclear-weapons, cold-war

Around 6:30pm on September 18, 1980, two missile technicians were servicing a Titan II ICBM in a silo in rural Arkansas. As one of them was unscrewing an oxidizer pressure cap with a socket wrench, a socket fell off the wrench and dropped through the gap between the missile and the work platform; falling about 70 feet, the nine-pound socket bounced off the thrust mount platform, hit the missile and punctured its skin, causing a leak of rocket fuel. Incompetent management of the emergency by Air Around 6:30pm on September 18, 1980, two missile technicians were servicing a Titan II ICBM in a silo in rural Arkansas. As one of them was unscrewing an oxidizer pressure cap with a socket wrench, a socket fell off the wrench and dropped through the gap between the missile and the work platform; falling about 70 feet, the nine-pound socket bounced off the thrust mount platform, hit the missile and punctured its skin, causing a leak of rocket fuel. Incompetent management of the emergency by Air Force officers could not be fully mitigated by heroism of missile technicians, so by 3am the missile exploded, blasting a 740-ton silo closure door 200 feet into the air. The 9-megaton thermonuclear warhead was also blown away but, luckily, hasn't exploded; if it had, it would have contaminated much of Arkansas.

This book is a minute-by-minute account of the disaster interwoven with the larger story of nuclear weapon safety in the United States. A nuclear bomb or a missile warhead should explode when commanded to, and not explode when not to: even if it is inside a B-52 that is on fire, or one that is crashing, or disintegrating in a mid-air collision. In a situation like this, a crushed electrical circuit can have unanticipated currents, and remember that a nuclear explosion takes place on a much shorter timescale than a mechanical collision. Also, a missile crew can be on drugs (yes, this has actually happened); its members can have psychiatric problems; in fact, the President of the United States, who is supposed to order a nuclear strike, could be drinking heavily, as Richard Nixon did shortly before his resignation. As Turkey was preparing to host American nuclear missiles, it went through a military coup. In Italy, American missiles were put up in a Communist-leaning region, the residents of which could steal or disable the warheads if the push came to shove. In addition to problems with the nuclear weapons themselves, there also have been problems with command-and-control and early warning systems. An early warning radar once mistook the rising Moon for Soviet missiles. Once, all communication between the SAC headquarters in Omaha and both an early warning radar in Greenland and the NORAD headquarters in Colorado Springs went dead; were they destroyed by Soviet missiles? No: an AT&T phone switch in Colorado has burned out. Another time, a computer system that was supposed to show "0000 ICBMs detected" started replacing some of the 0s with 2s because of a faulty computer chip.

Over the years, the United States has manufactured some 70,000 nuclear weapons. Luckily, none have accidentally or mistakenly detonated and produced a nuclear yield. A few times, the chemical explosives detonated and scattered deadly plutonium. However, nuclear weapons are an inherently unsafe technology. The fewer of them there are, the better for everyone. ...more

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Nov 26, 2017 Antonio Nunez rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Having read Schlosser’s Junk Food Nation, and having thought it excellent, I decided to pick up Command and Control as a follow-up to Rhodes’s The Making of the Atom Bomb. Although Rhodes’s book was a towering achievement, I must say I enjoyed Schlosser’s much more: while rigorous and very well researched it is also less hard to follow for a lawyer with limited scientific understanding. Command and Control is a terrifying book. Nowadays (or at least until November last year) it is fashionable to Having read Schlosser’s Junk Food Nation, and having thought it excellent, I decided to pick up Command and Control as a follow-up to Rhodes’s The Making of the Atom Bomb. Although Rhodes’s book was a towering achievement, I must say I enjoyed Schlosser’s much more: while rigorous and very well researched it is also less hard to follow for a lawyer with limited scientific understanding. Command and Control is a terrifying book. Nowadays (or at least until November last year) it is fashionable to blame the risk of nuclear warfare on emerging powers like North Korea or Pakistan but Schlosser shows that for decades the greatest risk was in fact posed by the thermonuclear weapon command and control systems of the USA and the USSR. These systems were so complex that it was impossible to manage them under zero risk. Often, minuscule events like workers using the wrong tools or inserting the wrong tape in a computer have caused the system to fail and nuclear weapons to launch or at least be activated irregularly. Often too, some cockamamie thing like the moon rising or geese flying over the horizon was interpreted by the system by a nuclear first strike by the Soviets. The Damascus incident, when a nuclear missile exploded in Arkansas, is a primer on what not to do when accidents happen to these weapons. One thing I learned from the book (and many movies) is not to expect any clear answers from the military when something goes wrong, for the military bureaucracy cares most about preserving its credibility and funding rather protecting human lives or being accountable to the taxpayer. Throughout the book there are numerous instances of the military lying to the public both in the US and abroad, covering up its failures and blaming loyal underlings for system failures.

What’s scarier is that for the first time the US has a President without military or government experience, who has shown little tendency for introspection and a bias for action, usually without much deliberation, in a White House that appears dysfunctional and permeated by foreign influences. Russia is again flexing its muscles for the first time since the Afghanistan invasion. China has signaled it does not reject the possibility of a first strike. We are living in the scariest nuclear moment in over 50 years.

If so far the world has been saved from nuclear holocaust by a few brave men and much good luck, one may only hope our luck will hold out. ...more

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Sep 30, 2016 Jose Moa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: nuclear-war

A book full with a lot of information about the command and control subject of nuclear weapons,the evolution of nuclear weapon design from the primitive canonball design,the implosion design with explsive lenses til the multiestage Teller Ulam design of a nuclear Litium-Deuteride fusion bomb and a extensive histhory of the cold war from the USA point of view.
Narrate the decision of drop the fission bombs in Japan,the narrow histhoric window when it seems that the nuclear weapons could be banned A book full with a lot of information about the command and control subject of nuclear weapons,the evolution of nuclear weapon design from the primitive canonball design,the implosion design with explsive lenses til the multiestage Teller Ulam design of a nuclear Litium-Deuteride fusion bomb and a extensive histhory of the cold war from the USA point of view.
Narrate the decision of drop the fission bombs in Japan,the narrow histhoric window when it seems that the nuclear weapons could be banned by the UN,but this window was closed by the threats of the SU against west Europe and the test of the Soviet bomb,the not fullfilled plans of preventive nuclear bombing the SU when the USA had a a nuclear superiority,the nukes race till reach with the three strategic legs,bombers,ICBM,SLBM the mutual assured equilbrium or MAD policy when USA and the SU owned each one more than 30000 nuclear warheads,a extreme insane overkill capacity and when USA had more that 1000 nuclear tarjets in SU,China and east Europe;the problem of mantein the chain of command with deep bunkers and othe strategies in case of nuclear war,the problem of the safety of handling the nukes with accidents as the Palomares in Spain where several fussion bombs were droped from a B52 fortunately without explde but contaminating the surroundings with Plutonium,the problem of their contrl as no a madman could intiate a war as in Dr Strangelove film,the problem of a accidental unintended nuclear war with several close calls as in the film Fail Safe.The book also extensively describes the Damascus accident in a Titan II ICBM silo
With the end of the cold war reductions in the arsenals were made but USA and Russia yet have each one arround 7000 nuclear warheads many of them in lauch on warning or hair trigger and othe states were joining to the nuclear club,France UK,China,India , Pakistan,Israel,North Korea making the accidental war inevitable and a question of time.

A very interesting,almost enciclopedic in information and references book.Recomended for all those worried about the possibility of a accidental explosion or a accidental nuclear war. ...more

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Dec 11, 2014 Sean O'Hara rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history-american, history-europe, cold-war, nuclear-war, nuclear-disaster

As an army brat I've always found it odd how Americans view the military as a bunch of uber-competent and noble professionals. Uh-uh. No, no, no. The military is made up of a bunch of dorks who couldn't think of anything better to do after graduating high school or college. Putting them in a uniform and giving them basic training doesn't change that. Trust me here, I watched my dad and his friends drop water balloons from an 11th floor balcony and get into drunken silly string fights. Dorks. Esp ...more

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Mar 14, 2019 Charlie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, history-military, history-modern

It is a miracle that the world has avoided an accidental nuclear explosion. The risk of that has been greater than the risk of nuclear war. This is the kind of book that will keep you up at night. The story of the Damascus incident is interwoven with the development of nuclear weapons and all that it entails. These are the most deadly weapons that humanity has created. How are they managed? Command and Control seeks to answer.

The instances when nuclear war starting by accident has been averted, ...more

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Oct 11, 2013 Chris Fellows rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Probably the best argument for the existence of God that I have ever read... that is, it seems vanishingly improbable that the litany of catastrophic near-misses described in this book *never* destroyed civilisation, or at the least several medium-sized cities in Texas and North Carolina. Sheesh. Like one source quoted in the book says, divine intervention seems like the most likely explanation.

It was also sobering how much of the technological infrastructure of the 21st century was driven by th ...more

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Apr 23, 2014 Philip Hollenback rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Hey, do you like being terrified? Are you the sort who obsesses about armageddon? Then boy howdy do I have a book for you.

It's pretty close to just dumb luck that a nuclear weapon has never exploded accidentally. Schlosser does a hell of a job of describing the various near misses and accidents that have occurred with nuclear weapons in the past 70 years or so. He also explains a great deal about the culture that surrounds the production and storage of nuclear weapons in the US and how that has ...more

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Mar 22, 2014 C rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I first heard about this book at the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History in Albuquerque, a few days after j and I visited Los Alamos, which is one the strangest places I've ever been. My dad has also been giving me all sorts of information about the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, since he lives relatively close to Japan. So, I've kind of been obsessed with nuclear science and history for the last six months.

This book is really fascinating and tremendously important, and I highly r ...more

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Apr 11, 2013 Andy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A fantastic and frightening account of our nuclear armament situation. The fact we haven't blown up the world accidentally is shocking and Schlosser shows exactly how close we have come (many times over). A required read for anyone interested in the Cold War or systematic failures of the government. ...more

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Sep 26, 2013 Ryan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Command And Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety
Eric Schlosser
Read it in Hardcover at an investment of 640 pages thick with it.

Browsing the book bin at Costco is dangerous, especially when you walk out the door with a 640 page tomb. None the less this was excellent and consumed it greedily.

"They are out there, waiting, soulless and mechanical, sustained by our denial - and they work." - Schlosser

Command and Control looks at the events leading to the creatio Command And Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety
Eric Schlosser
Read it in Hardcover at an investment of 640 pages thick with it.

Browsing the book bin at Costco is dangerous, especially when you walk out the door with a 640 page tomb. None the less this was excellent and consumed it greedily.

"They are out there, waiting, soulless and mechanical, sustained by our denial - and they work." - Schlosser

Command and Control looks at the events leading to the creation of the nuclear bomb, it's creation, how it works, initial use and testing, military and political leaders at the time of creation and their general attitudes towards the bomb, protocol for use, as well as the miss management of the stock pile; and technical advancements from a technological perspective as well as following these criteria to the near current world. It's thorough and engrossing to say the least. All of which is spun through the story of the Damascus Arkansas non-nuclear accident that carriers the reader along as they learn about the most feared weapon on the planet.

There are several themes within Command and Control, but it's most prominent is the miss management of our nuclear stockpile throughout the decades. It's a theme that is carried throughout the book and broadcast to the reader. It's presented in such a fashion that as a reader, I am surprised a full thermonuclear detonation has not occurred on the many military instillations across the world, let alone on American soil. Of primary interests to me was the detailed account of how to make the stockpile current, or if nothing else, safe and the resistance from our military leaders towards that effort. The amount of money the government was spending to make new weapons of even deadlier caliber, in the name of deterrence, was staggering. Especially compared to the price of updating the clearly unsafe stockpile we have had throughout the years right here in our backyard. The list of accidents is long.

In addition, Schlosser identifies and outlines some very interesting world leaders and the part nuclear weapons played in politics. One of the more interesting things for me in the book is to hear about the actions of our presidents and top brass, following World War Two and into the Cold War. For instance, Kennedy, a notoriously anti-nuclear weapon president and fathered the famous 'Sword of Damocles' speech often said one thing while directly doing another. A short time after giving said speech about the prolific destruction that a nuclear strategy guaranteed:

"Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us."

He met with top brass and officials about investigating and considered adopting a nuclear strategy that weighed a first strike option as the only option. Command and Control is full of this sort of horrifying stuff and much much more. To try and capture it all here wouldn't do it justice.

I learned a lot and was highly charmed with every horrifying page, highly recommended, especially if you are a fan of history. ...more

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About Eric Schlosser

Eric Schlosser

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Eric Schlosser is an award-winning American journalist and author known for investigative journalism. A number of critics have compared his work to that of Upton Sinclair.

Schlosser was born in Manhattan, New York; he spent his childhood there and in Los Angeles, California. His father, Herbert Schlosser, a former Wall Street lawyer who turned to broadcasting later in his career, eventually became ...more

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Quotes from Command and Control

“Right now thousands of missiles are hidden away, literally out of sight, topped with warheads and ready to go, awaiting the right electrical signal. They are a collective death wish, barely suppressed. Every one of them is an accident waiting to happen, a potential act of mass murder. They are out there, waiting, soulless and mechanical, sustained by our denial - and they work.” — 5 likes

“Green had been amazed by their discovery: you could break into a Titan II complex with just a credit card. Once the officers showed him how to do it, Green requested permission to stage a black hat operation at 4-7—an unannounced demonstration of how someone could sneak into the launch control center undetected. SAC had a long history of black hatting to test the security at its facilities. Black hat teams would plant phony explosives on bombers, place metal spikes on runways, infiltrate a command post and then hand a letter to the base commander that said, “You’re dead.” — 4 likes

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