Command and Control

Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

By: Eric Schlosser

Narrated by: Scott Brick

Length: 20 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

A myth-shattering exposé of America's nuclear weapons.

Famed investigative journalist Eric Schlosser digs deep to uncover secrets about the management of America's nuclear arsenal. A groundbreaking account of accidents, near misses, extraordinary heroism, and technological breakthroughs, Command and Control explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: How do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them? That question has never been resolved - and Schlosser reveals how the combination of human fallibility and technological complexity still poses a grave risk to mankind. While the harms of global warming increasingly dominate the news, the equally dangerous yet more immediate threat of nuclear weapons has been largely forgotten.

Written with the vibrancy of a first-rate thriller, Command and Control interweaves the minute-by-minute story of an accident at a nuclear missile silo in rural Arkansas with a historical narrative that spans more than 50 years. It depicts the urgent effort by American scientists, policy makers, and military officers to ensure that nuclear weapons can't be stolen, sabotaged, used without permission, or detonated inadvertently. Schlosser also looks at the Cold War from a new perspective, offering history from the ground up, telling the stories of bomber pilots, missile commanders, maintenance crews, and other ordinary servicemen who risked their lives to avert a nuclear holocaust. At the heart of the book lies the struggle, amid the rolling hills and small farms of Damascus, Arkansas, to prevent the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States.

Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with people who designed and routinely handled nuclear weapons, Command and Control takes readers into a terrifying but fascinating world that, until now, has been largely hidden from view. Through the details of a single accident, Schlosser illustrates how an unlikely event can become unavoidable, how small risks can have terrible consequences, and how the most brilliant minds in the nation can only provide us with an illusion of control. Audacious, gripping, and unforgettable, Command and Control is a tour de force of investigative journalism, an eye-opening look at the dangers of America's nuclear age.

©2013 Eric Schlosser (P)2013 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

A New York Times Notable Book of 2013

"A devastatingly lucid and detailed new history of nuclear weapons in the US...fascinating." (Time magazine)

"Schlosser's book reads like a thriller, but it's masterfully even-handed, well researched, and well organised. Either he's a natural genius at integrating massive amounts of complex information, or he worked like a dog to write this book. You wouldn't think the prospect of nuclear apocalypse would make for a reading treat, but in Schlosser's hands it does." Lev Grossman, Jonathan Franzen, The Guardian)

Can you handle the brutal truth about nukes?

There HAS TO BE A GOD! No country has blown itself up yet. Scary history.

Let's get rid of missiles. Subs and B052s keep

Where does Command and Control rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Missiles are dangerous and the upper command was unable to understand the danger.

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

The incompetence of the military.

What does Scott Brick bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

x

What’s the most interesting tidbit you’ve picked up from this book?

x

Any additional comments?

x

It is amazing that we are all still here.

This was an amazing look not only at the history and statistics involving nuclear weapon accidents, but an incredible look into the human stories surrounding some of our closest calls. I highly reccomend this book.

great book

Well told, interesting, and keeps you on your toes. It is told like a fiction novel, but it is all true.

Awesome book

I am a huge Stephen king fan and love books that scare the hell out of me. This book will keep you up at night knowing how close we have come as a society to nuclear destruction. It is long but written in a way that keeps you entertained, and of course Scott brick is the best narrater out there

The Keystone Cops manage our nuclear arsenal

How can anyone trust our government to tell the truth or to manage affairs competently after listening this? It's just a matter of time before we also have "the illusion of health care" and "the illusion of education."
My only problem was the jumping around. I'm sure it works in the print book, but it got a little confusing in an audiobook. However, Scott Brick did his usual fabulous job.

Insightful

Though it was getting long toward the end, it was as long as it needed to be and gave great insight into the great difficulty in managing the safety and use of nuclear weapons without any clear agenda, which is refreshing. well written and well read.

Well written book on complex subject

This is a beautifully done book. The subject is complicated and the author has done a huge thing in successfully tackling it.

Well known narrator works hard at chewing every bit of scenery possible. His baseline tone here is a kind of quavering hysteria. Less would be more. But it's really the producer's job to reel that in and look out for the v.o. talent. The producer let him down in this case.

Overall, great book!

nuclear risk then and now

Great big picture of the history of nuclear weapons and the role that they have played in world politics and international relations

Very interesting. Somewhat hard to follow.

Would you listen to Command and Control again? Why?

Command and Control tells two stories concurrently, alternating back and forth, from one to the other. The first story is the story of the Damascus incident, in which a Titan nuclear missile came close to exploding in Arkansas due to a series of oversights which, as the author documents, are not nearly as rare as the public might suppose. The second story is the history of nuclear weapons themselves - their use, development, design, and testing, as well as their technical limitations (or lack thereof) and the strategic calculations that drove their development and deployment during the Cold War.

The first narrative, which recounts the Damascus incident, is illuminating and entertaining, but at times it also feels overly drawn-out and confusing. This is largely due to the way its telling is broken up over the course of the book. This structure might work better in print, but I found it challenging in audio format. The second narrative - where the author traces the history of nuclear weapons broadly, from the Manhattan Project to the present, is where the book really excels. It is first-rate. I would listen this portion of the again, for sure, and recommend it to others interested in the subject without any reservation.

On the whole, a very good book.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Command and Control?

The discussion of thermonuclear weapons, as opposed to pure fission bombs, and how the former fundamentally altered the strategic calculus about the use of nuclear weapon in war. In the modern era, we do not really distinguish between the awesome but comprehensible power of fission bombs, and the truly cataclysmic and unthinkable force of thermonuclear weapons, but the distinction was actually a major turning point in the way these weapons were viewed by political and military leaders. A second highlight was the author's excellent history of the U.S. Strategic Air Command, and its rivalry with the other military services and the (civilian) U.S. Atomic Energy Commission for primacy in the control U.S. nuclear weapons capabilities.