Command and Control Quotes

“A civilian agency that had once enjoyed complete control over the stockpile became, in effect, a supplier of nuclear weapons for the military. The Army, Navy, and Air Force were now customers whose demands had to be met.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“Atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs had been liberated from civilian oversight and scattered throughout the world, ready to be assembled by military personnel.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“Legally, the hydrogen bombs were still in civilian custody. But in reality, after nearly a decade of unrelenting effort, the military had gained control of America’s nuclear weapons.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“A bunker was later constructed for the Federal Reserve at Mount Pony, in Culpeper, Virginia, where billions of dollars in currency were stored, shrink-wrapped in plastic, to help revive the postwar economy.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“Below the East Wing at the White House, a small bomb shelter had been constructed for President Roosevelt during the Second World War, in case the Nazis attacked Washington, D.C. That shelter was expanded by the Truman administration into an underground complex with twenty rooms. The new bunker could survive the airburst of a 20-kiloton atomic bomb.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“The attempt to create a defense against Soviet bombers helped to launch a technological revolution.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“fallout from a hydrogen bomb was likely to kill far more people than the initial blast.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“Radiation poisoning, like a sunburn, can occur gradually. Gamma rays are invisible, and radioactive dust looks like any other dust. By the time a person feels the effects of the radiation damage, nothing can be done to reverse it.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“Rocks, dirt, even seawater are transformed into radioactive elements within the fireball, pulled upward, carried by the wind, and eventually fall out of the sky.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“The gamma rays can be deadly. They can pass through the walls of a house and kill the people inside it.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“The fireball was about four miles wide, and about two hundred billion pounds of coral reef and the seafloor were displaced, much of it rising into a mushroom cloud that soon stretched for more than sixty miles across the sky.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“The steel, lead, plastic foam, uranium, and other solids within the bomb would be subjected to pressures reaching billions of pounds per square inch.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“Cities adapted to the bombing, and their morale wasn’t easily broken. Even in Hiroshima, the desire to fight back survived the blast: when rumors spread that San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles had been destroyed by Japanese atomic bombs, people became lighthearted and cheerful, hoping the war could still be won.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“The tipping point seemed to be reached when about 70 percent of a city’s homes were destroyed. That’s when people began to leave en masse and seek shelter in the countryside.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“Before the Second World War, British planners had assumed that for every metric ton of high-explosive bombs dropped on a city, about seventy-two people would be killed or injured. The actual rate turned out to be only fifteen to twenty casualties per ton.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“A breakdown in command and control could make it impossible to launch a nuclear attack—or could order one by mistake.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“The death rate among American bomber crews was extraordinarily high: more than half would be killed in action before completing their tour of duty.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“And the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, was not only paranoid and megalomaniacal, but had already killed almost as many Russians as the Nazis had.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“An overpressure of 0.5 psi shatters windows. An overpressure of 2 psi destroys wooden homes, and an overpressure of 8 psi knocks down brick walls. The Titan II silo door was designed to withstand a nuclear detonation with an overpressure of 300 psi. The underground blast doors were even stronger. They were supposed to protect the crew not only from a nuclear detonation outside but also from a missile explosion within the silo.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“Kenneth Bainbridge, the supervisor of the test, turned to Oppenheimer and said, “Now we are all sons of bitches.” Within minutes the mushroom cloud reached eight miles into the sky.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“A nanosecond is one billionth of a second, and the fission of a plutonium atom occurs in ten nanoseconds.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“The steel door was about seven feet tall, five feet wide, and one foot thick. It weighed roughly six thousand pounds. The pair of steel doorjambs that kept it in place weighed an additional thirty-one thousand pounds. The blast door was operated hydraulically, with an electric switch. When the door was locked, four large steel pins extended from it into the frame, creating a formidable, airtight seal.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“At a level of about 18,000 parts per million (ppm), the RFHCO would start to melt. At 20,000 ppm, the fuel vapor could spontaneously combust, without any exposure to a spark or flame, just from the friction caused by the movement of air. Waving your hand through the fuel vapor, at that concentration, could ignite it. The”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control

“Captain Barry steered the plane back toward land and ordered the crew to bail out. One of the copilots, Captain Theodore Schreier, mistakenly put on a life jacket over his parachute. He was never seen again. The”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control