Nuclear struggle begins with a blip on a radar display. It’s 4.03am and in a seemingly barren subject 20 miles outdoors the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, an enormous cloud of fireside erupts simply toes off the bottom because the nation’s strongest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is launched. Generally known as ‘the Monster’, it begins its ascent.
Hovering 22,300 miles above Earth, sensors from the U.S. Defence Division’s satellite tv for pc methods spot the fireplace from the missile’s sizzling rocket exhaust.
The system alarm goes off: Ballistic Missile Launch, Alert!
Ballistic missile launches are usually not unusual. As a common rule, nuclear-armed nations inform each other of ballistic missile checks, often through diplomatic again channels, as a result of nobody needs to start out a nuclear struggle accidentally.
Even Russia continues to inform the U.S. of its check launches. The exception is North Korea. Not one of the greater than 100 missiles it has test-launched since January 2022 — together with nuclear-capable weapons — was introduced beforehand.
The North Korean ballistic missile (ICBM) often called the ‘Monster’
1-5 seconds after launch
A number of the quickest pc methods on this planet start calculating the size of the ICBM’s fiery plume.
Measurements reveal the missile is just not heading into area, as it might be for a satellite tv for pc launch, or in direction of the Sea of Japan, as is commonplace in a check. Is that this a provocative check or a nuclear assault?
An unlimited, world-wide community of U.S. intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance belongings begins churning out data.
In Colorado, fight pilots run in direction of fighter jets ready on the Tarmac, able to take to the air.
15 seconds after launch
The ICBM has travelled far sufficient for satellite tv for pc sensors to find out its trajectory extra exactly. The outlook is catastrophic: the Monster is travelling in direction of the continental U.S.
Two minutes after launch
Beneath the Pentagon, contained in the nuclear command bunker, the secretary of defence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Employees take cost.
As soon as floor radars present secondary affirmation that an attacking missile is on its approach to the East Coast, a dangerous nuclear warfighting technique involves the fore: Launch on Warning.
Which means that as soon as its early-warning methods have warned of an impending assault, the U.S. won’t wait to bodily take up a nuclear blow earlier than launching its counterattack.
Three minutes after launch
The president must be instructed. He’s within the White Home eating room, studying his briefing paperwork. The nationwide safety adviser rushes into the room, cellphone in hand. Talking from the bunker beneath the Pentagon, the secretary of defence tells the president North Korea has launched an attacking missile on the U.S.
The president now faces an inexorably small decision-making window of time. What should occur subsequent has been rehearsed by everybody in attendance on satellite tv for pc comms, besides, almost certainly, the president himself. Like nearly all U.S. Presidents since John F. Kennedy, he’s solely underinformed about tips on how to wage nuclear struggle when it occurs.
He has no concept that as quickly as he has been briefed on what is going on, he could have solely six minutes to determine which nuclear weapons to launch in response.
As Ronald Reagan lamented in his memoirs: ‘Six minutes to determine how to reply to a blip on a radar scope and determine whether or not to launch Armageddon! How might anybody apply purpose to a time like that?’
And so, in roughly the time it takes to brew a pot of espresso, the President will likely be requested to make a counterattack resolution that would kill tens of tens of millions of human beings on the opposite facet of the world. Civilisation might finish inside a matter of hours.
The nationwide safety adviser is working to get a North Korean official on the cellphone when he’s knocked apart by the particular agent in control of defending the president. Of all of the individuals within the room ready for disaster response, the Secret Service brokers are among the many greatest rehearsed.
‘Into the emergency bunker now,’ the particular agent in cost shouts on the president. Two members of the Counter Assault Staff (CAT) seize him by his armpits. He doesn’t but totally comprehend all that is occurring, or how briskly a counterattack should unfold.
9 minutes after launch
At Clear House Pressure Station in Alaska, the Lengthy Vary Discrimination Radar will get its first sight of the attacking missile because it comes over the horizon. A member of the Air Pressure picks up the crimson cellphone in entrance of her. ‘That is Clear,’ she stories. ‘Website report is legitimate. Variety of objects is one.’
The dreaded secondary affirmation of an attacking ICBM, headed in direction of the East Coast has simply been made.
This facility in Alaska is considered one of six early-warning floor radar services which have stored look ahead to nuclear assault for the reason that Chilly Struggle. Others are in California, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Greenland, and at RAF Fylingdales on the North Yorkshire Moors.
Now begins the try at interception, a feat ‘akin to capturing a bullet with a bullet’. However 9 out of 20 hit-to-kill interceptor checks have failed. This implies there’s solely a 55 per cent probability that the Monster will likely be shot down earlier than it reaches its goal.
Positive sufficient, the interception fails. So do three extra consecutive makes an attempt. The die is solid.
Ten minutes after launch
The president has been moved to a bunker beneath the East Wing of the White Home, which was initially constructed to cover President Roosevelt throughout World Struggle II.
Standing beside him is a army aide carrying the emergency satchel, an aluminium and leather-based bag containing the manager orders that may be put in force when a nuclear assault involves cross.
The U.S. president has sole authority to launch his nation’s nuclear weapons.
He asks the secretary of defence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Employees what he ought to do. It is a pure query to ask. Nobody however a madman would wish to launch nuclear weapons of their very own accord.
The chairman tells the president that he, as chairman, is a part of the ‘chain of communication’, not the ‘chain of command’ for authorising a nuclear launch.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Employees solely provides recommendation. ‘Advise me,’ the president instructions.
The secretary of defence urges the him to seek the advice of his counterparts in Russia and China. Others round him are extra centered on getting him to launch the counterattack, to ‘retaliate to decapitate’.
The secretary of defence urges warning, voicing what everybody fears however nobody else dares to say: ‘To launch now all however ensures a wider struggle.’
There is no such thing as a means of understanding if an incoming ballistic missile assault is a spoof, designed to trick the president into launching nuclear struggle or even when the warhead is armed with nuclear weapons.
The president reaches into his pockets for the laminated nuclear codes card he should carry with him always. The ‘Biscuit’, in nationwide safety phrases.
The bunker’s doorways fly open. Ten Counter Assault Staff members armed with SR-16 gas-operated, air-cooled carbines and AR-15 assault rifles burst into the room. They rush to the president and seize him by the armpits, his toes now not touching the bottom.
14 minutes after launch
The president is taken to Marine One helicopter, an plane hardened in opposition to the electromagnetic pulse that accompanies a nuclear flash. Nonetheless, nobody has any thought if the system will collapse in a nuclear struggle, inflicting the helicopter to plummet to Earth.
The plan is for one of many CAT operators to tandem soar the president out of the plane if the pilot can not get them out of the hazard zone in time.
However the president’s army advisers take difficulty with this plan because the president has nonetheless not given the go forward for a counterattack.
‘We’d like launch orders, Mr President,’ says the commander of U.S. Strategic Command [Stratcom].
However the particular agent in control of the president disagrees, and overrrules the commander.
‘We’re shifting POTUS now,’ he insists.
U.S. President Joe Biden boards the helicopter often called Marine One – an plane hardened in opposition to the electromagnetic pulse that accompanies a nuclear flash
16 minutes after launch
Satellite tv for pc sensors have detected the exhaust on a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) which has breached the floor of the Pacific Ocean, 350 miles off the coast of California.
The dreaded SLBM can strike and hit a goal contained in the U.S. even sooner than an ICBM.
Nobody can say who owns it missile, nor the submarine it was launched from, however everybody’s greatest guess is North Korea.
In a second of profound realisation, officers at management centres throughout the nation recognise this case: the start of the top of the world. Deterrence has failed. Nuclear struggle is going on.
Again on the White Home garden, Marine One readies for take-off. Lots of the president’s advisers have stayed behind within the Emergency Operations Centre.
They’ve learn briefings about this type of situation and have made peace with what is going on. As President Carter and President Reagan are stated to have determined, they’re going to go down with the ship.
21 minutes after launch
The incoming submarine-launched missile races in direction of Diablo Canyon Energy Plant, a 750-acre facility 85 ft above the Pacific. Diablo is the one nuclear energy plant in California that is still energetic. When a nuclear weapon explodes within the air, the radiation launched into the ambiance will dissipate over time.
Attacking a nuclear reactor with a nuclear-armed missile is solely totally different. All of it however ensures a core reactor meltdown, leading to a nuclear disaster that may final for 1000’s of years.
This violates the Geneva Conventions, and the foundations that decide what might be executed in struggle. However, because the world is about to be taught, there aren’t any guidelines in nuclear struggle.
The missile launched from the submarine explodes in Diablo Canyon. The nuclear energy plant is consumed in a flash of nuclear gentle. There’s a large fireball. A facility-destroying blast. A nuclear mushroom cloud and a nuclear core meltdown.
Recognized to insiders as The Satan’s State of affairs, the worst of the worst-case situations has come to cross.
23 minutes after launch
As Marine One takes off, the president is instructed {that a} nuclear bomb has hit California. He removes the code card from his pockets and prepares to authorise a counterstrike in opposition to North Korea — one involving 82 nuclear warheads. This retaliatory strike will all however assure the deaths of tens of millions of individuals — possibly even tens of tens of millions of individuals — on the Korean peninsula alone.
24 minutes after launch
4 miles north-west of the Diablo Canyon Energy Plant, a cattle rancher is tending to his herd when he’s blown off his toes by the blast from the nuclear missile. He’s alive owing, partly, to geography; the earth and stone buffered a few of the bomb’s lethal thermal radiation.
The stress from the bomb tore off his garments and threw him to the bottom, however he’s outdated as grime and hard as hell.
Recognizing his smartphone within the grime, he begins to movie what’s occurring. He’s conscious of the deadly ranges of radiation he’s receiving however he uploads the video of the mushroom cloud to Fb.
His video connects to the web through a communications satellite tv for pc passing overhead and begins making its means world wide.
Experiences begin to flood the web, with the hashtags #NuclearWar, #Armageddon and #EndOfTheWorld.
The bomb destroys the 750-acre facility. Not like when a metropolis is focused, an assault in opposition to a nuclear energy plant means radioactive items of spent gasoline rods get seeded into the particles and are dispersed far and large, as fallout. Diablo Canyon won’t ever get better.
32 minutes after launch
The secretary of defence stays centered on getting the Russian President on the road. American ICBMs, launched from a missile subject in Wyoming, should journey immediately over Russia so as to attain North Korea.
A motherload of American ICBMs travelling via Russian airspace will nearly definitely be interpreted as an incoming assault. Russia must be warned.
33 minutes after launch
Hurtling in direction of the Pentagon, the North Korean ICBM enters Terminal Part — its final 100 seconds earlier than it detonates.
Within the first fraction of a millisecond after detonation, a flash of sunshine superheats the air to 180 million levels Fahrenheit, creating an enormous fireball that incinerates the whole lot close by in a holocaust of fireside and demise.
Not a single factor within the fireball stays. Nothing. No human, no squirrel, no ladybird. No mobile life. By no means within the historical past of mankind have so many human beings been killed so rapidly.
Not since a mountain-sized asteroid smashed into the Earth 66 million years in the past has a lot world devastation been set in movement in a single strike.
Ten seconds cross. The fireball rises three miles up into the air. Those that have survived the preliminary blast a number of miles from floor zero get trapped on melting roads and burn alive.
38 minutes after launch
The 15-mile radius surrounding the Pentagon is an inferno. There is no such thing as a electrical energy. No cellphone service. No 911. In nuclear command bunkers throughout the nation, contact with the President has been misplaced. He’s presumed to have been separated from the core parachute group, in flight.
Inside Website R, the underground command centre in Pennsylvania, the secretary of defence and Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs have been desperately making an attempt to achieve their Russian counterparts. Do they inform the Russians that they’ve misplaced contact with their president? That he’s lacking, presumed lifeless?
As the controversy continues, they lastly attain an officer from the Russian Common Employees. ‘The U.S. is beneath nuclear assault,’ they are saying, including that it is crucial that Russia refrains from any army motion till the 2 nuclear-armed adversaries can get their two presidents on the cellphone.
However the Russian officer sees issues in another way.
‘Your president ought to have referred to as us by now,’ he says and the road goes lifeless.
42 minutes after launch
Nobody has heard from the U.S. president as a result of when the nuclear bomb hit the Pentagon, Marine One skilled a system failure from the electromagnetic pulse and commenced to crash. The CAT operator tandem-jumped the president out of the open door of the plane in an try to avoid wasting his life.
The 2 males landed violently in a forested space. The agent is lifeless, his neck damaged.
The president was cushioned by the agent’s physique. There is a deep gash on his brow. His left arm and proper leg are fractured. He’s helpless and determined. Will anybody discover him earlier than he bleeds out?
43 minutes after launch
The Russian president is livid. The U.S. president has not reached out to him but. Susceptible to paranoia, the Russian president now believes that Russia is being focused for a decapitation strike.
Confronted with what he believes are lots of of nuclear warheads bearing down on Russian soil — launched by the opportunistic People in a pre-emptive sneak assault — the Russian president chooses to launch a nuclear counterattack at the US. One thousand ICBMs at the moment are headed for America.
49 minutes 30 seconds after launch
The secretary of defence is sworn in as Commander in Chief. Early-warning satellite tv for pc methods present an onslaught of incoming Russian missiles. The now Appearing President, vocalises a crisis-of-conscience debate.
Simply because lots of of tens of millions of harmless People are about to die, possibly the opposite half of humanity — stuffed with so many different innocents — needn’t die, too. His suggestion is dismissed.
In nuclear struggle there isn’t any such factor as capitulation, no such factor as give up.
55 minutes after launch
300 miles over the US, North Korea detonates a high-altitude Tremendous-EMP weapon.
An electromagnetic pulse weapon doesn’t hurt individuals, animals or crops, but it surely does destroy main components of all three of America’s electrical grids.
The pc-based, human-interfaced management system structure often called SCADA [Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition] goes down, creating an immediate, out-of-control nightmare. Subway trains, freight trains and passenger trains collide or crash. Planes lose wing and tail management and plummet to the bottom.
Oil and fuel pipelines rupture and explode. Sewage spills out all over the place. Dams burst, inflicting mass flooding. There will likely be no extra contemporary water, no sanitation. No cellphone calls, no lights, no gasoline, no working hospital tools. Individuals, all over the place, start to flee on foot.
57 minutes after launch
Russian nuclear warheads start to rain down on the U.S., Targets throughout Europe are hit on the identical time. Air bases throughout the continent are obliterated, and capital cities together with London are hit with nuclear warheads. Thousands and thousands of individuals die, and scores of civilisation’s masterpieces, from Stonehenge to the Colosseum, Notre Dame and the Parthenon, are destroyed.
72 minutes after launch
Throughout the U.S., Europe, and the Korean peninsula, lots of of tens of millions of individuals are lifeless and dying, whereas lots of of army plane fly aimlessly within the air till they run out of gasoline. The final of the nuclear-armed submarines transfer stealthily out at sea, patrolling in circles till the crews run out of meals.
On land, survivors disguise out in bunkers till they dare go outdoors, or run out of air.
The few survivors who ultimately emerge from these bunkers will face what the Chilly Struggle Russian chief Nikita Khrushchev foresaw.
Within the occasion of a nuclear struggle, he stated: ‘The survivors will envy the lifeless.’
Tailored from Nuclear Struggle by Annie Jacobsen (Transworld Publishers, £20). To order a duplicate for £18 (legitimate to twenty/4/24); UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or name 020 3176 2937.
Click on right here to learn half considered one of Annie Jacobsen’s account of what nuclear struggle might seem like.
