GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: Apes on a Treadmill.

I stumbled on Annie Jacobsen’s new book “Nuclear War: A Scenario” while looking for something to read on a long day of airline travel this past weekend. I’ve long considered myself a “Prepper” and have devoured more than my share of apocalytpic fiction over the years, and so this book seemed like it would be right up my alley.

It is an engrossing highly-technical story full of bracing details, a book I described to a friend as “A Tom Clancy novel without a happy ending.” What makes it terrifying is that Jacobsen’s “scenario” can only be labeled fiction because well, technically, it hasn’t happened yet.

“Nuclear War: A Scenario” is the story of how a single nuclear-tipped ICBM fired at the United States, in this case by North Korea, leads inexorably to full-scale nuclear war and the end of the world in only seventy-two minutes… just over one hour.

It’s important to understand that in Jacobsen’s story, the world does not end because of “bad luck” or some black swan cosmic misunderstanding… in “Nuclear War: A Scenario” the world ends because it has to… because that’s how the system is designed to work.

Turns out, they don’t call it “Mutually Assured Destruction” for nothing.

George MF has written a thoughtful and disturbingly timely essay.