Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

Eric Schlosser's "Command and Control" is a GREAT book. Every American--nay, every citizen of any country who is concerned about the hole we've dug ourselves with our unending pursuit of ever-more-powerful means of mass destruction--should read it. It's one of the most well written, compelling and important books I've read in years.Scrupulously accurate, extremely well footnoted and powerfully told in a fast-paced, highly readable style, "Command and Control" presents two stories in interleaved narratives, which basically flip back-and-forth in alternate sections. One narrative tells the history of America's development of nuclear weapons and the means to deploy and control them, and, perhaps more importantly, to assure none of them could detonate accidentally. The other narrative is the story of the accident in Titan II ICBM silo 374-7, near Damascus, Arkansas, on September 18, 1980, when a worker dropped a socket that punctured the missile's first-stage fuel tank and resulted, eventually, in a huge (but non-nuclear) explosion.I already knew quite a bit about nuclear weapons development, but Mr. Schlosser provides an excellent refresher course. Readers unfamiliar with that history should find those parts of his book very informative and technically fascinating. I knew little about the Damascus "Broken Arrow," though, and, thanks to his use of copious reference sources and exclusive interviews, I have no doubt that Mr. Schlosser totally nails that story, which he relates in exceptional detail and in an almost minute-by-minute chronology.We normally think of "command and control" in the big-picture sense. For example, how do we know for sure whether the nation is under attack, and how do we mobilize military forces in an appropriate response if it is. Perhaps the ultimate "command and control" icon is the "football" (actually an innocuous briefcase) that accompanies the President of the United States everywhere, and that contains the means to command (and, hopefully, to control) the nation's nuclear forces in the event of an attack. But there's another, small-scale aspect of command and control that becomes clear in Mr. Schlosser's book. It is that aspect that should frighten everyone with the mental capacity to think beyond the next minute.The response to the Damascus accident illustrated that there was very little meaningful command and control even at the lowest levels of the military and civilian organizations that were trying to deal with the crisis. For example, people who really needed to talk to each other couldn't because their radio systems used different frequencies or weren't compatible. Tools that were supposed to be stored in certain locations weren't there. A key door that should have opened didn't because someone secured an interlocked door in the wrong position. Protective suits had rips and would not seal properly. Critical valves did not operate because they had corroded. The entire disaster response, as Mr. Schlosser documents in chilling detail, was a textbook example of Murphy's Law at its most perverse.Consider the nuclear reactor meltdowns at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima Dai Ichi as other examples of what Murphy's Law, combined with inevitable human errors, can wreak, and every thinking person should be very concerned about what surprises our technology may hold for us in the future. "Command and Control" shows what happened in a situation involving America's most powerful thermonuclear weapon that had never happened before. How many other technological Armageddons await, undetected and unplanned-for, in the world, and how many of them will stop short of utter disaster, as did the Damascus accident, only by dumb luck? Are we willing to trust the future of life on this planet to luck? Read "Command and Control" and think about it.

On the 18th of September, 1980, at around 6:30 pm, a USAF Senior Airman conducting routine maintenance on a Titan II liquid-fueled ICBM near Damascus, Arkansas, dropped a wrench socket down the silo of the missile he was working on. This in and of itself was not an unusual occurrence; tools and other material were often dropped in the silo, usually resulting in nothing more serious than a trip to the bottom to retrieve the item. This time, though, the socket bounced at struck the thin skin of the missile, puncturing a hole in the fuel tank. Fuel began to pour out. What followed was almost a textbook example of how complex systems and a complicated bureaucracy can take a serious, but controllable, situation and allow it to spiral out of hand into a disaster.The events that took place that day, and the following day, serve as the backdrop for Eric Schlosser's detailed history of the technology and the policies that evolved to control the US Military's nuclear arsenal in the post-WWII period. The first bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were very much cobbled together by scientists, engineers, and machinists in the heat of war. There was a tremendous pressure to deliver a weapon to the Pacific theater to forestall the need for an invasion of Japan, and that meant that there was only one major consideration- that the bombs work. Considerations like safety, security, and the ability to stockpile weapons would have to come later.With the end of the war came a new enemy- the USSR- and new demands and new questions. Who should be responsible for controlling the weapons- the AEC, or the military? How should they be stored? Was there a way to make them fail-safe, that is, to insure that accidents and malfunctions wouldn't result in an unintended nuclear detonation? And what was the proper balance between having a nuclear weapon that was secure from theft, misuse, and rogue commanders, and making sure that the weapons could be delivered in response to a Soviet attack? For some time the US nuclear arsenal included a great many weapons that were deployed in overseas bases and which contained the real safeguards other than an armed Airman or an AEC official a clipboard. There was the Davy Crocket, a jeep-mounted recipes rifle that could throw a variable-yield nuke about a mile and a half, and the nuclear demolition devices- mines that were to be armed and set in the path of an oncoming Soviet armored invasion.Schlosser delves deep into the history of the weapons, the people involved, the policies, and the politics. I was particularly impressed with some of the little known facts he uncovered, like that noted philosopher, pacifist, and anti-nuclear activist Bertrand Russell had actually called for a first strike against the the USSR after they'd managed to explode a nuclear weapon. Russell acknowledged that yes, thousands or millions would die, but it was a better alternative than leaving allowing the Soviets to assemble a large nuclear arsenal that they could threaten the world with. General Curtis LeMay, often portrayed as a bloodthirsty buffoon in the press and in some histories, comes across as a very thoughtful and intelligent leader in Schlosser's narrative, a man who was one of the first to consider the issues of safety and security, and who shaped SAC into a modern, reliable, and efficient force. There's also Thomas Schelling, who, inspired by a novel, proposed the US-USSR Hot Line; Fred Ikle, who is considered to be the father of the PALs or Permissive Action Links that secure every US nuclear weapon, and several other, lesser known figures who helped shape US nuclear weapons policies and protocols.Schossler also does a good job of explaining the physics and the technology of nuclear weapons as it applies to safety- the problems of designing a warhead that won't explode if his by a bullet, dropped on the runway, or jettisoned into the ocean (water slows neutrons, and can make a certain unarmed nuclear cores go critical.) The reader learns the difference between symmetrical implosion and linear implosion devices, and the problems in making both designs fail-safe. There's a history of the aforementioned PAL codes and devices, and the technologies to used to insure that a hollow plutonium core or "pit" cannot go critical, like filling it with a neutron-absorbing cadmium chain that can be quickly withdrawn to arm it.This is both a tremendously informative, and at times gripping, narrative that should be read by anyone concerned with the safety of nuclear weapons, or with US nuclear deterrence policy.

The book provides a frightening glimpse of how close to the abyss we all have got during the Cold War.

Lovely book with great research by the author and every character and story has come out totally credible. Makes you shudder on what treacherous and slippery ground we all walk.

Inizio con alcune note "di servizio" per un lettore italiano: il libro è scritto in un inglese semplice e scorrevole e si legge facilmente; l'unica difficoltà è tenere a mente i nomi di tutte le persone citate, ma per questo viene in aiuto lo specchietto riassuntivo all'inizio nelle pagine iniziali.Questo libro, usando come filo conduttore ed esempio principale un incidente avvenuto con un missile Titan II (che per poco non ha fatto detonare una testata termonucleare in mezzo agli Stati Uniti), descrive la storia dello sviluppo delle armi nucleari statunitensi, dai primi test fino agli ultimi trattati di riduzione degli armamenti; particolare attenzione viene rivolta ad alcuni significativi incidenti occorsi e alle resistenze dei militari alle misure di prevenzione di tali episodi. Il tutto è narrato come se si trattasse di un racconto, quasi un thriller. Il calce al testo è presente anche una ricca bibliografia suddivisa per tematiche per chi volesse approfondire ulteriormente alcuni aspetti delle vicende narrate.

Command and ControlBy Eric SchlosserNuclear weapons are the most dangerous technology ever invented. Anything less than 100% control of these weapons, anything less than perfect safety and security is unacceptable.Unfortunately, the command and control of America's nuclear weapons has been far from 100% perfect, as investigative journalist Eric Schlosser points out in his latest book Command and Control. Schlosser is the author of the best-selling exposé Fast Food Nation, published in 2001.In addition to presenting an historic account of nuclear weapons development from the Manhattan project to the end of the Cold War, Schlosser provides chapter and verse on a hair-raising series of accidental mishaps that could have resulted in a nuclear detonations, and conceivably even led to an unintentional nuclear war. In typical government fashion, most of these accidents and close calls have been kept from the public.Examples include a shocking incident in March 1958, in Mars Bluff South Carolina which saw an atom bomb fall from the sky into the backyard of Walter Gregg as he and his young son built shelves in his shed and his little girls played outside. Fortunately, the bomb's fissile core had been removed but, although the family survived, the bomb's explosives blew the Gregg house to bits. Other notable examples cited by the author include crashes of nuclear armed bombers and the accidental release of nuclear bombs over land and sea.Such accidents are known as "broken arrows" and there have been dozens of them in the US and around the world. Some of the nukes involved have never been recovered. That none have ever resulted in a nuclear explosion is attributable more to luck and possibly divine intervention, than good planning.The book is well researched and the author goes into minute detail about weapons design, delivery systems, triggering devices, safety systems and the vulnerabilities of each. Threaded throughout Schlosser's narrative is the compelling story of a 1980 incident at Titan II launch silo 374-7 in Damaskus, Arkansas - an event that resulted in the preparation of a 1,000 page accident report by the Eighth Air Force Missile Investigation Board. The Titan II was America's largest-ever IBM, standing 103 ft tall, with a nine-megaton thermo-nuclear warhead, "primed, cocked, and ready to go".The accident was caused when a technician accidentally dropped a socket down the missile silo which pierced one of the rocket's lower fuel tanks, leading to the release of toxic vapors and the threat of the rocket collapsing on itself. A series of missteps leads to the rocket's explosion, sending its nuclear warhead 200 feet in the air, killing a serviceman and seriously injuring several others. Miraculously, the nuclear warhead did not go off, otherwise half of Arkansas might have been obliterated. The description of the gallant efforts to save the missile and its launch site read like a Tom Clancy thriller.Schlosser's book makes the point that none of the 70,000 nuclear weapons built by the US since 1945 has ever detonated accidentally, partly due to the country's technological sophistication and good luck. But he also points out that "Other countries, with less hard-earned experience, may not be as fortunate." Let's hope he's wrong on that point.Barry Francis

Dies ist ein erschreckendes Buch. Der prosaische Stil hilft dabei, ein bisschen Distanz zum Inhalt zu schaffen. Es geht dabei vorwiegend nicht um den nuklearen Krieg, sondern vor allem um den Umgang mit Nuklearwaffen in Friedenszeiten. Runter vom politischen Klima bis hin zu den Personen die direkt damit umgehen, wird aufgeschlüsselt welche Risikofaktoren es bei Nuklearwaffen gibt, welche Sicherheitsmaßnahmen greifen und welche nicht. Dies wird größtenteils nüchtern und sachlich vorgelegt, und mit unzähligen Quellen belegt.Der Autor schwingt dabei nicht mit dem moralischen Zeigefinger, er verurteilt niemanden, und geringschätzt auch nicht die Arbeit des Militärs. Wenn er über Fehler redet, dann mit dem größtmöglichen Respekt.Unter der Oberfläche befindet sich aber mehr als nur ein Appell gegen den Bau von Atomwaffen.Dies ist auch ein Buch über Unfälle, über die Grenzen des menschlich machbaren, was an der Grenze der menschlichen Wahrnehmung passiert, die Kosten und Limitierungen von Sicherheit, und wie man mit schwer beherrschbaren Situationen umgeht. Die Nuklearwaffe dient da nur als Extrembeispiel, für einen Unfall der schlicht nicht passieren darf.Ich habe das Buch verschlungen. Die Rahmengeschichte liest sich wie ein Thriller. Man braucht kein Fachwissen um dem Inhalt zu folgen, aber die Informationsdichte ist mitunter gewaltig. Und es ist ein Stück weit Zeitgeschichte, über eine Epoche die heute fremd und unwirklich scheint.Ich habe auch beruflich daraus ein bisschen mitgenommen, denn hier und da finden sich so einige Tipps wie man Sicherheit und Robustheit verbessern kann - oder was eben nur scheinbar Sicherheit erzeugt.Kurzum: tolles Buch!