Reddit reviews Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety (ALA Notable Books for Adults)

The book Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety gives some pretty interesting insight into these topics, how close we came to blowing ourselves up and how much nuclear authority was actual in the hands of those in the field.

It's becoming obvious that all your social media is being manipulated. Twitter/Facebook/Reddit/etc. Professors have shown that the entire narrative of a subreddit/post can be controlled by as few as 5 bot accounts. $200 is enough to get a clearly false post onto the front page.

https://youtu.be/FxNvUWN3vYk

The key is that you should put NO faith in arguments nor articles written on social media/twitter/etc. Consider it all fun theater, but don't use it to form your opinions or be educated on a subject.

But this is not new. All during the Cold War, Russia would manipulate groups to stall and derail US politics. Despite the fact the whole effort was very poorly handled and turned into a witch hunt, the Red Scare searches for Russian manipulation was quite real.

If you think you're immune, know that the military's handling of nuclear weapons is often seen as incompetent and comical. See Dr. Strangeglove. Despite the fact Russia had even MORE incidents and worse handling, they did a tremendously good job of capitalizing on our failures. When their intelligence found an incident of mishandling, they would leak it to the news, and then use our own news/advocacy groups work against the government. They absolutely did fund/feed/use well-meaning groups that aligned with their goals: create scandal, discredit politicians, control narratives, ferment social disorder. Sound familiar?

Worth a read about cold war nuclear programs and had a good chapter on these tactics:

Command and Control - Eric Schlosser

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C5R7F8G/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Study, I dunno. I like to listen to books about nuclear science, nuclear power, weapons, accidents and the like while I'm driving. I don't do many fiction books.

While it may not be studying, learning about the world around you can help expand your mind and keep it active while you're focusing on the road. I've listened to these books a few times over by now.

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For more information on this I'd recommend the excellent book "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety" by Eric Schlosser.


It's a really great history of America's nuclear program and how close we were to disaster so many times. Highly recommended.


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00C5R7F8G?btkr=1

I find it hard to push for complete disarmament as long as the technology exists, but rolling back the stockpile to something less than needed to destroy a nation several hundred times over still sounds good.

I found the recent Eric Schlosser - Command and Control book pretty interesting with stories of how just managing the nuclear armaments carries plenty of risks, too.

Not necessarily. The accident that led to the explosion of a Titan II at a launch facility in Damascus, AR proceeded over the course of several hours. Here's a great recent book about it. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00C5R7F8G/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Having read about halfway through Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, I can definitely say that it's is both an accomplishment of engineering (for the bomb itself) and a failure of engineering (for the failure modes that exist that undermine safety).

> Sometimes that uses scientifically-valid concerns (anti-pipeline stuff), but more often its just crap

I wish a lot of our activists and tinfoil hat conspiracy folks would understand this. I doubt they realize they're becoming unwitting pawns of foreign powers.

China is getting better at this and there is already a lot of evidence they have tried implanting backdoors in many devices and backbone electronics they sell here in the states. The goal being to destroy our production of these devices via this kind of FUD and then provide them to us (with all their backdoors). Huawei is a government owned company largely known for their military contracts. They have been extremely cosy with lots of terrible Chinese government activities against their own, and foreign, peoples.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huawei#Controversies

Wired magazine did a huge, excellent piece on how the 'growing polarization' seen in all social media platforms in our country is being largely MANUFACTURED by foreign entities/bots posting articles/comments/etc. The goal being to destroy US confidence in the target political or economic effort. I recommend that as a great read too.
(many other articles as well on Wired as well as a great video from Smarter Everyday:)
https://www.wired.com/story/russia-election-hacking-playbook/

https://youtu.be/FY_NtO7SIrY

This also happened during the Cold War. There is a great book called 'Command and Control' that discussed this tactic and is a very highly recommended read. Russians used their intelligence gathering to discover any western nuclear accidents/failures/blunders - so they could report them to the news media and activist groups to make everyone think western military/government is incompetent. Then, you fund protest groups - ones legitimately concerned about nuclear proliferation - and get them protesting for complete bans. But only in the target countries. You suppress that in your own. Now you have a country internally fighting itself without having to lift a finger yourself. Funding protests groups cost next to nothing in an espionage budget. It's the same thing we did to de-stabilize Banana Republic countries for decades. In some ways, Dr Strangeglove was a masterpiece for Russia's goals.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C5R7F8G/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Yes, you can be right - but completely playing into the hands of your enemies. We must remember that we are all Americans - of every race, creed, religion, age, and gender. And that our strength is in our diversity all striving together towards the greatest good and dignity of every person. Not in tearing each other down. Not in fighting each other as factions. Not in disposing of arguing with ideas for moronic fist fights in the streets. Not for the destruction of liberties for 'safety'. Not in alienating and blaming anyone by age, race, or religion.

You're welcome! If you enjoyed that, you might also like this book. It's fascinating, though it's best to keep in mind that it's trying to tell an entertaining story and as such fuzzes the truth a little bit for the sake of entertainment.

I do read a few history books a year. Currently reading Command and Control.

Gaming wise I'm a Civilization guy. Those Paradox games intimidate me, though I've fallen into a few Let's Play/write-up rabbit holes of people's games over the years.

For some extra nightmare fuel, give "Command and Control" by Eric Schlosser a go. It tells the story of accidents and "almost-escalations" with the US nuclear arsenal.

It's based on the premise that for nuclear deterrence/mutually assured destruction to work, the systems controlling the nukes and the devices themselves have to have a 100% reliability rate. Always work when they should (deterrence), never work when they shouldn't (accidental first strike as a "retaliation").

The accidents, mishaps and aborted apocalypses described in the book are nothing short of terrifying.

So yeah, it really would be a smart decision to get rid of those things - even though I doubt it'll ever happen. Let's hope they won't be our Great Filter after all.

The problem with elaborate risk analyses of rare events is that it is very hard to assign probabilities to events that have not (yet) happened. There are many opportunities for motivated reasoning.

Two recent books that look at how things actually went wrong DESPITE elaborate risk modeling are:
Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster

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

The 1% statistic DOES ignore a lot of details, but it IS based on actual events that cannot be explained away as being "to unlikely to even consider".

I've read quite a few WWII books (Bands of Brothers, If You Survive, that tank book by Zaloga), but the one that stuck out to me the most was Command and Control. It's a book that's loosely about the Damascus incident, but also talks a lot about the "safety" features on America's nuclear arsenal during the cold war, and to a slight extent, today. That book taught me that human incompetence has no upper limit, and the ability to predict what could go wrong is incredibly difficult. You guys have no idea how close we came to accidentally bombing ourselves with a hydrogen bomb and/or accidentally going full nuclear against Russia by accident.


It even got turned into a documentary on Netflix going by the same name. It's pretty short, so I'd highly recommend watching it.

Command and Control by Eric Schlosser. He wrote Fast Food Nation which I really enjoyed. The book is about the near-misses and accidents with nuclear weapons during the Cold War. There are a lot of dangers I didn't really think about before, like the use of corrosive rocket fuel and rocket fuel leaks. It's a really interesting and informative read.

There's a really good book about this in regards to the U.S. ICBM stockpile (specifically, the Titan missile) and a really bad accident that happened in Damascus Arkansas in the 80s. It also gives a great history of the various American nuclear weapons programs, including a bunch of accidents where I'm still not sure how the bombs didn't go off, or how we haven't had a full-detonation nuclear accident yet.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00C5R7F8G if you're interested in the book.

Where is this fantastical pragmatic world you live in? The stuff that matters, gets classified. The stuff the public SHOULD know. The only shit that should be classified is the launch codes. You could make an argument about classifying locations, but even that, after reading Eric Schlossingers Command and Control our government can't be trusted to keep a hen in a henhouse.