Reddit reviews The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy

Generally speaking there were two "very close calls":

• 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis. You probably know about this one. The danger, most historians currently believe, is less that either nation would voluntarily start the war. Rather, the situation quickly devolved down to threats from accidental escalation between relatively low-level military forces, and the possibility of misjudgment. So one example, there was an American military ship dropping depth charges onto a Soviet submarine, intending to just make them surface, but the Soviet sub interpreted it as an attack, and were one vote away from replying with a nuclear-tipped torpedo. Another example: the US military was very seriously considering invading the island of Cuba, not knowing that the Soviets had actually transferred many dozens of tactical nuclear weapons there, and that the Cubans and local Soviet forces were planning to use them in such an event. Any such activity could have easily escalated to major war, and nuclear war. In both of these situations, we have possible American miscalculations leading towards a low-level nuclear reply, with unknown consequences.
  
  
• 1983, the Able Archer exercises. On the heels of very militaristic American language, NATO and the US ran a full-scale mock war situation in Western Europe, flying very close to the Soviet borders. What they did not realize is that the Soviets were terribly afraid of an American first-strike attack, and thought the exercise might be in fact one flying under a benign cover. Any accidents or mishaps, or even just misinterpretations of data by the USSR, could easily have led to some kind of nuclear altercation (probably low level, initially), which could have escalated. (1983 is also the year that Stanislav Petrov may have averted nuclear war by disregarding the incorrect results of a Soviet early warning system.)
  
  In general, both of these situations share common characteristics. Both involve moments of jitteriness, compounded by physical proximity, mixed with the common human problems of crossed signals, mistrust, and over-reliance on low-level military officers to make decisions that would affect the whole nation if done poorly. They are also characterized by inadequate intelligence: the US thought it knew what had (and had not) been transferred to Cuba in 1962, but in reality there were many more nukes there than they realized, for example. In 1983, the US poorly understood the Soviet mindset with regards to the NATO exercises.
  
  It is hard to determine which of the above cases is worse, in my mind. What makes the 1983 case potentially worse is in that both sides were much more nuclear-armed than in 1962 (where the US had many more arms than the USSR), and the delivery systems were at a point where both were in a use-it-or-lose-it situation (that is, they were fast and accurate, and so if the other side launched a surprise attack first, they could wipe out your nuclear assets very quickly unless you too replied in kind — and with very little time to make that call). But more to the point, in 1983 the United States was, in retrospect, remarkably ignorant of how jangled the Soviets were feeling, and did things that to the US looked like regular military exercises, but to the Soviets looked like a preliminary for a surprise nuclear attack. The Americans were shocked to find out, later, that the Soviets were taking the harsh militaristic language (which was really just for a domestic political audience, anyway) seriously. This kind of miscalculation is more fundamental than technical errors: it is about the way in which deterrence ultimately devolves down to human psychology in complex and very individual ways.
  
  On the Cuban Missile Crisis, see Michael Dobbs, _One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War; on the 1983 war scare, see David Hoffman, The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy_.
  
  There were, arguably, other "close calls" — accidents, bad early warning signals, mishaps. But the above two are generally regarded as the closest with regards to full nuclear war, because of the likelihood of escalation and all-out attack.

Well I just ordered Spy Handler: Memoir of a KGB Officer which is about the spy who recruited Aldrich Ames after a recommendation from a friend.

Some that I have found recommendations from on other subreddits include:

• One Minute to Midnight
  
• The Dead Hand
  
• Betrayal: The Story of Aldrich Ames, an American Spy

https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Hand-Untold-Dangerous-Legacy/dp/0307387844

Ive never heard of it being ship based. Most of what I know about it can be found in this book.

I last devoured David Hoffman's "Dead Hand" in a few of these issues be alleviated by getting rid of this denomination - it's low hanging fruit! When the 1% have more than enough to merit a debate on the left is to cut it out.

420trashacct: ^^original ^^reddit ^^link

Like I said the other day, I am a consultant. My rate starts at $120/hour so if you really want an in depth education on the subject, it is going to cost you. If not then do yourself a favor and develop some Google-Fu. Regardless of what you end up doing in life it will come in handy.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Dead-Hand-Untold-Dangerous/dp/0307387844/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368539799&sr=8-1&keywords=the+dead+hand
http://www.amazon.com/The-Secret-Sentry-National-Security/dp/B004R96UEU/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368539813&sr=8-1&keywords=the+secret+sentry

Those are also both worth reading.

Here are my picks.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda
The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy

The Dead Hand is pretty excellent.


https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Hand-Untold-Dangerous-Legacy/dp/0307387844

The Soviets were very worried about Moscow being destroyed and their government 'decapitated'. They had fully automated retaliatory nuclear and bio/chem systems configured for just such an occasion. It's called 'The Dead Hand' and there is an excellent book by the same name that sheds a lot of light on cold-war era tactics behind the 'Iron Curtain'.

• The Art of Racing in the Rain
  
• Castles of Steel
  
• Seveneves (pretty much anything by Stephenson)
  
• The Dead Hand
  
• The Century Trilogy by Ken Follett
  
• The Laundry Files by Charles Stross

Haha! Yeah, as a kid of the 70s/80s I'm just a sucker for cold war history. I last devoured David Hoffman's "Dead Hand" in a few days.

Go read The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy and see if you feel the same way.

Like I said the other day, I am a consultant. My rate starts at $120/hour so if you really want an in depth education on the subject, it is going to cost you. If not then do yourself a favor and develop some Google-Fu. Regardless of what you end up doing in life it will come in handy.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Dead-Hand-Untold-Dangerous/dp/0307387844/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368539799&sr=8-1&keywords=the+dead+hand
http://www.amazon.com/The-Secret-Sentry-National-Security/dp/B004R96UEU/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368539813&sr=8-1&keywords=the+secret+sentry

Those are also both worth reading.