That book was such an eye opener. I've been studying nuclear policy and weapons for close to a decade, and Good God, we came so close so many times to blowing ourselves up without the help of Comrades Khrushchev and Brezhnev.
Some other notes for @Yes And Company (a perfect 70s band name if I ever heard one):
- For trying to stand against the tide of bigger, more destructive nuclear weapons, this nation crucified Robert J. Oppenheimer, without we'd never have them to begin with, ruining his career and reputation.
- I think the Vanguard missile failure diminished the Navy in Ike's eyes, and didn't help them at a crucial stage of the debates.
- Ike's absolute failure to use his standing to stop this madness is an act of moral cowardice on the level of his failure to defend George Marshall against Joe McCarthy.
- That South Park meme for SAC's planning staff made me nearly choke laughing.
- Thomas Power exclusively reigns over the fourth circle of Hell.
- One great source I used for writing my JFK/LBJ short story was the declassified early 1960s SIOPs (thanks, National Security Archive, you brilliant boffins!)
- SIOP-62
- https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/...ngtoPresidentKennedyInternationalSecurity.pdf
- The highly redacted SIOP-64 document
- SIOP-63 (somewhat less redacted)
- The first ever declassified target mappings from the mid-late 50s, which, and this completely validates everything in the BDNE above, but for East Berlin alone, we had a ridiculous 72 targets in and around it. Even assuming a distribution of 20kt tactical weapons, it's blatant overkill. For example, here's 1/3 of those bombs, evenly distributed around the target areas.
- Imagine three times that amount in the area already there. It's insanity. I don't think there was any appreciation whatsoever of the fact that these weren't 400-lb. bombs coming off B-17s, they were a hell of a lot more nasty, but LeMay and Power treated them like it was the bombing of Dresden.
- And finally, the masterstroke of the insanity--THIS. Project Pluto, the SLAM missile, a nuclear-powered ramjet that would dump 16 H-bombs on its targets and then fly around endlessly, sending radiation spewing from its unshielded reactor. Here's the grinning master behind this perpetual motion machine of Death, Ted Merkle. Ted here found out he had incurable liver cancer when the program was finally, mercifully cancelled, so he made one good contribution to humanity. He built the first working version of a CT scanner to study his own liver.
Last edited:
