A Path Where No Man Thought

Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race

By: Carl Sagan, Richard Turco

Narrated by: JD Jackson

Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

The spread of nuclear weapons to unstable third world countries means that despite the dramatic improvement in US/Soviet relations, we are living in a time of unprecedented danger of nuclear war.

In 1982, Professors Sagan and Turco made known their discovery of the concept "nuclear winter", a widespread cold and dark, resulting in agricultural collapse and world famine, that would be generated in even a "small" nuclear war. It was a landmark discovery that revealed in the starkest terms how vulnerable our civilization is to the long-term environmental effects of nuclear war.

Carl Sagan, Pulitzer prize-winning science writer, and Richard Turco, tell the personal story of their findings, and how, despite the much-heralded thawing of the Cold War, there are dangerous inadequacies in nuclear policy and doctrine that need to be addressed.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©1990 Carl Sagan and Richard Turco (P)2017 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Boring military and political strategy

I hate to say it, but this book is motivated by ideology more than science. Sagan lays out a clear case for the severe impacts of nuclear winter. That's about 5% of the book. The rest covers military and political strategy that I found completely uninteresting.

TL;DR: Big nuclear wars cause fires that put so much soot into the air that it can kill crops for years.

But the cost in lives from the blasts alone is already so unthinkable that it's difficult for me to care about this added cost. Maybe this is due to my privilege from living in a time where nuclear war is synonymous with near human extinction, and I take it for granted that people understand this. Maybe Sagan helped this come about.

Still a boring read... from my favorite author of all time.