{"id":3392,"date":"2026-10-03T20:58:34","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T20:58:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/?p=3392"},"modified":"2026-10-03T20:58:35","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T20:58:35","slug":"nuclear-war-a-scenario-tv-series-silo-not-far-fetched","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2026\/10\/03\/nuclear-war-a-scenario-tv-series-silo-not-far-fetched\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cNuclear War: A Scenario\u201d: TV Series \u201cSilo\u201d Not Far-Fetched"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

So like most people (I assume), I don\u2019t dwell on the threat of nuclear war too much. Yes, it\u2019s a Sword of Damocles hanging over our head. But it has been for some 81 years, right? Surely it will continue this stasis that preserves . . . gulp . . . our shared civilization and very existence? Well after reading Annie Jacobsen\u2019s Nuclear War: A Scenario<\/em> (2025) I\u2019m not so sure. This may be the scariest book I\u2019ve ever read. Perhaps more accurately: This is a lucid book about the frightening and fragile reality in which we all live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I’m not thrilled with this book jacket. The nuclear mushroom cloud could be more dramatic.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

First off, the obvious: There\u2019s no shortage of doomsday scenarios floating and bubbling in our culture and news at the moment. A.I. could kill us all! (Maybe but nobody knows.) Bioterror attacks engineered by A.I. could kill us all! (One of the scarier possibilities.) Nanotechnology will kill us all! (See the doomsday-danger speech in Season Three of Silo<\/em>.) Climate change will doom our planet! (Data driven warning.) But climate change is slow and inexorable, and more a matter of adverse climatological consequences over time than an immediate menace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So let\u2019s talk speed: Nuclear war would be ungodly fast. As Jacobsen notes, President Reagan in the Eighties famously lamented that any American president would have approximately six minutes to respond to the threat of an incoming nuclear missile. Six minutes. And that only reflects how long he\/she would have to access the famous \u201cNuclear football.\u201d Then the missiles start flying. As more than one quote in Jacobsen\u2019s book warns, \u201cThe world could be over in two hours.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nuclear War: A Scenario<\/em> has essentially two parts: The scariest part, in my opinion, is the careful description of the various technological systems in place to enable, facilitate and control the danger of nuclear war. The recent Netflix film A House of Dynamite<\/em> (2025) also highlights the absurdity of this danger. It stars Rebecca Ferguson, who also stars in the Apple TV series Silo<\/em>, as the main character Juliette Nichols. She\u2019s a doomsday bookend of sorts: House of Dynamite<\/em> builds up to a nuclear Armageddon and Silo<\/em> imagines a post-apocalyptic world in which survivors live in fifty large silos underground, and have been doing so for four centuries. (Ferguson is excellent in both roles.) And the scariest part is how fast of all it would happen. In her scenario, we have about a half-hour from the moment the first missiles are launched before they start landing and other missiles launch in retaliation\u2014all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second part of the book is the \u201cscenario.\u201d It\u2019s fictional, and for that reason I find it less terrifying. It involves the North Koreans, Russians, and Americans making decisions to launch many nuclear-warhead missiles (and bombers), totally destroying the world as we know it\u2014at least the northern hemisphere. She doesn\u2019t mention Africa or South America. Or China for that matter. I can quibble with whether the North Koreans would start such a futile war, whether the Russians would then exacerbate it, and whether the U.S. would launch a massive strike in retaliation. One of Jacobsen\u2019s rhetorical arguments is MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) does not work as a peace policy. All it takes is one bad actor to violate it, and we\u2019re in a world full of falling nuclear missiles. (As this scenario goes, at least.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The unnerving speed to ultimate disaster: The book is framed by time, beginning with a quick history of the buildup of the world\u2019s nuclear arsenal from 1945 to the present. Jacobsen then relates the SIOP (Single Integrated Operational Plan for General Nuclear War), which details how the U.S. would respond to potential nuclear scenarios, including a First Strike. Then Part II unfolds the nuclear scenario:  the first chapter in that Part has the subhead Four-Tenths of a Second After Launch, which is referring to the first launch of a North Korean nuclear missile toward the continental United States. The rest of the chapters follow that pattern, followed by 1 to 3 Seconds After Launch followed by 4 Seconds etc. All of the events described in her scenario happen way too fast. One thing that strains credibility is how quickly Jacobsen imagines our forces respond. If the POTUS has only six minutes to respond to an attack, what makes us think he\u2019ll be available in those six minutes? What if he’s too busy posting angry screeds on his own Truth Social media platform?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brief aside: The \u201cscenario\u201d involving the U.S. President is the only thing that approaches humor in Nuclear War<\/em>. I think it\u2019s inadvertent: The fictional POTUS doesn\u2019t even seem to know what his role in a nuclear war is. The generals get frustrated when he won\u2019t supply the attack codes. But it\u2019s clear from Jacobsen\u2019s description of our nuclear systems: The U.S. President has the ultimate\u2014and only\u2014power to launch. Now that\u2019s beyond scary. In such an apocalyptic scenario, do we really trust Trump to do the right thing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rebecca Ferguson should win an Oscar for Apocalypse Queen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To be clear, Jacobsen doesn\u2019t imagine the POTUS as being Trump, or any other recognizable politician. He doesn\u2019t come across as a fool, either. He doesn\u2019t want to retaliate, or even make the decision of whether to launch nuclear missiles or not. (He also ends up dead.) House of Dynamite<\/em> stars Idris Elba as the fictional POTUS, as well as a terrific Jared Harris as the Secretary of State. This fictional POTUS is not unlike his counterpart in Nuclear War: A Scenario<\/em>. Neither of them wants the decision. Jacobsen notes that many past presidents have been woefully na\u00efve about their role, and that some of them seem not to want to know. I don\u2019t blame them. But if push comes to shove (nuclearly speaking), it might affect the history of our world if our POTUS doesn\u2019t do the right thing. What would that be? Who knows. But launching hundreds if not thousands<\/em> of thermonuclear-armed missiles never seems it would be the \u201cright thing\u201d to do. Unless you want to kill us all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nuclear War: A Scenario<\/em> is quite rhetorical. And Jacobsen convinced me. Of what, exactly? We shouldn\u2019t even have nuclear weapons. It\u2019s madness. Fueled in part by an irrational belief we can point civilization-ending weapons at each other indefinitely and not expect a dire outcome. Lastly, I suppose I should address this question: Is it a good book? Yes, absolutely. It was a bestseller when it (originally) came out two years ago. I read the 2025 update with its updated Afterword. It\u2019s addictive. Although I didn\u2019t find the fictional \u201cscenario\u201d scary, due to its being fictional, it\u2019s still riveting. You rush through it to the end, which is really The End.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After that we enter the post-apocalyptic reality, which Jacobsen only imagines in a quick summation, but thanks to the folks at Apple TV, we have the series Silo<\/em> to do that. I confess to joining the Silo<\/em> fandom rather late, as I didn\u2019t start Season One until Season Three was being advertised. But now I\u2019ve seen all three seasons, and expect a fourth. Spoiler alert: If you don\u2019t want to hear some observations from the Season Three finale, don\u2019t continue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Now that’s a classy design <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the first two seasons of Silo<\/em> the actual cause of whatever apocalyptic catastrophe occurred (which seems to have been four hundred years earlier, more or less) is obscure. It\u2019s hinted at and flirted with, fairly obliquely. This viewer had actually ruled out nuclear apocalypse because there was no mention of radiation. I was wrong: In the finale of Season Three a nuclear weapon explodes (on the horizon somewhere in the distance, beyond the fifty silos). All these silos are the brainchild of a techworld billionaire named Per Stenson, who most resembles an Elon-Musk stand-in. He\u2019s convinced the apocalypse will happen, and has undertaken the gargantuan (and expensive) task of constructing fifty silos (each of which holds around 10,000 people) and populating them, with the intention to save humankind. That all sounds nice and dandy. Except from several clues I suspect Per Stenson actually knew of<\/em> and maybe even engineered<\/em> the apocalypse to begin. (The character of Per Stenson is played by Colin Hanks, Tom Hanks\u2019 son, who is quite good in the role.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What to think of all this nuclear threat? We have to sleep at night, don\u2019t we? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t have any answers for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not like we live in a world where we all get along. As of the first of October 2026, a headline in CNN this week: \u201cPutin warns Russia is prepared to use \u2018all weapons,\u2019 including nuclear, to protect Kaliningrad.\u201d Or this quote from the NY Times: \u201cForeign Minister Abbas Araghchi told \u201cMeet the Press\u201d that Iran was fully prepared for a new round of fighting, \u2018even if it comes to a doomsday war.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are only a few ominous rumblings from some so-called \u201cleaders.\u201d Trump has threatened to \u201cwipe Iran off the map.\u201d Good god. Tone it down, people. Those threats feed into one of the biggest rational fears to emerge from Nuclear War: A Scenario<\/em>: Our main hope for stability and safety resides in the people in charge doing the right thing. Lord help us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nuclear War: A Scenario may be the scariest book I\u2019ve ever read. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3393,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[525,230,552,2,551,284,20,550,36],"tags":[55,62,553],"class_list":["post-3392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-silo-apple-tv-series","category-a-i-apocalypse","category-annie-jacobsens-nuclear-war-a-scenario","category-annihilation","category-armageddon","category-disaster-movies","category-horror-films","category-nuclear-war","category-weird-science","tag-book-reviewing","tag-climate-change","tag-nuclear-war-a-scenario-book"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t