The Doomsday Scenario

by L. Douglas Keeney

Subtitled: . This chilling 1958 Cold War defense document lays the foundation for how Bush, Cheney and Congress reacted to the September 11th attack on America. Under government wraps for forty years, "The Emergency Plans Book" was de-classified in 1998 and moved to the public viewing area of the National Archives. Months later the document was re-classified, hidden from public view once again, and stamped Top Secret. Candid archival photographs accompany an intriguing text that chronicles the recently re-classified "Plans Book," the highly secret official answer to the most important Cold War defense question of the day: "What happens to America if the Soviet Union attacks?" The Emergency Plans Book, included here in its entirety, provides dramatic new insights into cold war practices, and what might happen in the event of a total nuclear war. This extremely sensitive government document contains a pointed foreword by nationally known and respected atomic weapons authority Stephen I. Schwartz.***Here is what critics say about"The Doomsday Scenario: The US Government's answer to the Cold War question:" Newsweek: This Pentagon document "coldly details the damage a nuclear attack on the US would do."Salon.com: "extraordinary insight into the military mindset."Publishers Weekly: "promises to raise hairs and possibly red flags."'

Genres: American History, Military Fiction

128 pages, Hardcover

First published March 17, 2002

About the author

L. Douglas Keeney is an author, historian, commentator and speaker with twenty-two books in print from Simon & Schuster, St. Martins/Macmillan, HarperCollins and Lyons Press. Keeney’s passion is to unearth the lost stories in world history and in those stories find the fabric of the people we are today. To that end, Keeney has written about events as seminal as 9/11 and World War II, as entertaining as the fashionable roots of the French Riviera, as revealing as the profiles of such luminaries as Curtis LeMay John F. Kennedy, and Franklin Roosevelt, and as unusual as those who pioneered international aviation and travel into space. He is an engaging speaker who has entertained hundreds of audiences across the nation.

Keeney’s books have been well reviewed by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Naval Institute Press, slate, The New Yorker and more than one hundred other newspapers and magazines.

He has a master’s degree in Economics, is a pilot and scuba diver and was the cofounder of cable TV’s The Military Channel. He has appeared as a subject matter expert and commentator on Fox TV, CBS, PBS, The Discovery Channel, The History Channel, The Learning Channel, and on numerous radio shows.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a declassified government report from the late fifties about how a nuclear war would be fought. It includes annotations that are very informative and suplemental material including pictures.

Apparently, despite the fact that the first nuclear weapons were used on civilian centers, the general strategy of the United States and Russia was to use nuclear weapons as a tactical weapon. This book describes how the strategy of nuclear combat evolved from use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield to Mutually Assured Destruction with Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles.

This book was very informative.

I read this book because I saw it for cheap at a used book store and it caught my interest.