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If anyone has not read Ellsberg’s 2017 book “The Doomsday Machine”, I highly recommend it. It covers his work and knowledge regarding potential nuclear war within US policy which was the main reason he wanted to become a whistleblower. Within the book he discuses numerous problems with US command and control procedures for launching nuclear attacks and even calls the movie “Dr. Strangelove” a “documentary” (tongue in cheek) because of its satirical yet accurate highlighting of these issues. It’s a captivating, informative, and frightening book.

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His story about his attempted nuclear whistleblowing is pretty amazing.

Aside from the Pentagon Papers he copied thousands of pages on US nuclear war doctrine, which was horrific. Decided to release the Pentagon Papers first, because he figured nobody would even care about them in the wake of the nuclear documents. Hid them in a black plastic bag on the edge of the town dump, then a freak storm washed that whole section of the dump down a hill. He and his brother spent a year looking for it and finally gave up.

He said his wife considered the storm a gift from God, because he certainly would have gone to prison for life if he'd released that stuff.

The really shocking (at the time!) part of that book is not just the level of destruction, but the fact that any small number of bombers or a rogue commander could have started the entire process off. It is an absolute miracle we survived the cold war. It's hard to imagine we would survive it twice.

Worth noting that UK nukes apparently don't have PALs - the crews of the UK Trident submarines have all they need to launch. Of course, being the UK the ultimate guidance on what to do if Radio 4 goes off air (thus civilisation ending) is in the form of hand written letters!

Letters of Last Resort is an interesting rabbit hole.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort

The Guardian reported in 2016 that the options are said to include: "Put yourself under the command of the United States, if it is still there", "Go to Australia", "Retaliate", or "Use your own judgement". The actual option chosen remains known only to the writer of the letter.

Well.. if there's any truth to that reporting whatsoever.. blimey....

> “four identically-worded handwritten letters from the prime minister of the United Kingdom”

I wonder if they even got Liz Truss’s letters shipped to the boats before she was out.

Her letters probably read:

“Nuclear war is very sad. But the priority now is to reduce the top marginal tax rate for high earners and follow through on Brexit”

— since these were her answers to everything.

I second that recommendation. I'd also highly recommend Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser, which discusses similar C&C issues as well as nuclear accidents, and efforts to efforts to make nukes safer and more reliable e.g. PALs and insensitive explosives, and more and it inter-cuts with the story of an "incident" at a Titan missile silo in Arkansas.

...and for some lighter reading, anything by James Mahaffey, in particular the "Atomic Accidents". Both insightful - and bizzarely entertaining to read.

Honestly, that book was pretty meh. I liked Schlosser’s earlier work, but you could have summed up command and control in about 40 pages.

I’d recommend “Soldiers of Reason”, which is about the RAND corporation and the thought process behind the madness.

Hearing about how military bureaucracy does stupid and incompetent things is a given… understanding how a lunatic like LeMay was in charge of and restrained from initiating a global apocalypse is more enlightening, if not terrifying.

I'll have to take a look at that book.

Apparently LeMay's successor Thomas Power was even more crazy.

LeMay was quoted as privately saying that Power was mentally "unstable" and a "sadist."

"The total death toll as calculated by the Joint Chiefs, from a U.S. first strike aimed primarily at the Soviet Union and China, would be roughly 600 million dead. A hundred Holocausts.

I remember what I thought when I held the single sheet with the graph on it. I thought, this piece of paper should not exist. It should never have existed. Not in America. Not anywhere, ever. It depicted evil beyond any human project that had ever existed. There should be nothing on Earth, nothing real, that it referred to."

https://apjjf.org/-Daniel-Ellsberg/3222/article.html

He also notes that Finland would have been completely destroyed by the US strike and 100 million would die in Western Europe from the effects of US weapons.

Were Soviet war plans any different?

Nope, and this fact amplifies the evil of the system, it doesn’t mitigate it.

In the relevant timescale the Soviets were far less of a strategic threat to the US than they would later become. However, they did have lots of weapons pointed at Western Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap

In many respect the Soviet leadership was terrified of the West and a first strike - later it was Reagan who was eventually persuaded of what a risk that fear was and de-escalated.

Different yes, less catastrophic no. Soviet plans (to the extent that they've been declassified) generally assumed that nuclear weapons would be used in support of tank warfare in Europe.

I remember that at least the Seven Days to the Rhine plan assumed NATO launched a first strike and this was the Soviet counterattack.

> "The total death toll as calculated by the Joint Chiefs, from a U.S. first strike aimed primarily at the Soviet Union and China, would be roughly 600 million dead. A hundred Holocausts.

In retort - "Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks."

Another scary thing in that book is the delegation of use of nuclear weapons to relatively junior commanders - the public statement that only the US president can authorise the use of nuclear weapons being completely untrue at the time.

That is probably why Ellsberg referred to Dr Strangelove as a documentary...

I wonder if it's still true. I'd assume there still has to be some delegation in order to keep a second strike viable, otherwise the entire nuclear arsenal can be rendered useless with a decapitation strike, or the person with the 'nuclear football' jumps off a bridge or something.

I can only presume there's some delegation of authority still, in case of circumstances like that. The Russians can delegate command authority to a system called "Perimetr" [1], which uses sensors to detect nuclear detonations to ensure a second strike can be (correctly) launched. Still doesn't give me that warm and fussy feeling inside knowing that there's either a rogue system or rogue commander that can launch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand

What's interesting about that system is the question of the motivation - it ensures a nuclear holocaust even in the event of a decapitation strike, but it also was said that it could give 'command elements' time to consider to not retaliate in the event of false alarms etc. so that "cooler heads" might prevail.

So it goes.

Ellsberg very eloquently articulated the fallacy that juniors were less trustworthy. I don't think their junior status is an issue. I think perhaps the bigger concern is their quantity. I'll leave it to probability and game theory experts to discuss whether it is better or worse to have more people capable of wielding such a weapon.

I think a document like that absolutely should exist, as a part of a larger file titled "Why the US is not going to strike first".

Full terrors should be exposed for MAD to work.

"Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, EH?"

"It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday. As you know, the Premier loves surprises."

Why even launch the weapons? Have them in beautiful crystal palaces in remote locations. Detonate them on your own soil.

This has been researched; I highly recommend this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_on_Earth_(novel)

Stanislaw Lem fan! Thanks for the recommendation, I haven't read that one yet.

I read "To win a nuclear war: the Pentagon's secret war plans" by Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod last summer. I had thought I was very well-informed on military matters, WW2 history, nuclear strategy and SIOP. After almost every chapter, I would look up at the ceiling or out a nearby window and think that a madness had overcome the US government and military after acquiring and using the atomic bomb against Japan. This weaponry combined with the apoplectic fear of the USSR and communism has shaped the modern world in ways that are hard to overestimate.

I think that it should be required reading at all the US military academies.

For an excellent pseudo-documentary film on a nuclear war in the UK (in the early-mid sixties), The War Game[0] is kind of terrifying.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Game

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