'Nuclear War: A Scenario' -- Conversation With Annie Jacobsen On The 'Razor's Edge' Of Global Destruction

Nothing — and no one — we are pre-occupied with now will matter one damn bit.

Feb 02, 2025

This alarming book is a must-read for ...

“Everyone would be dead.”

As the bipartisan enthusiastic support for the perverse US/Isr^el genocide in Gaza proves, neither political party cares a damn for human life or stopping military war crimes. BOTH political parties are grotesque, treasonous bought-off criminal operations.

By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (2/2/25)

Eight-nine seconds. Just a tad under a minute and-a-half. That’s how far the Doomsday Countdown Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists now is from the midnight of global nuclear annihilation.

In a time of Donald Trump’s rapid-fire impulsive, egotistical, ignorant, corrupt brainfart “leadership” matched by Democratic Party timidity and corporate subservience, it is easy to get caught up in the flushing toilet bowl of American politics and ignore the crushing reality of just how close the world is to complete destruction.

Once the first missile launches, Elon’s looting of the American state, leadership of the Wall Street-owned Democratic National Committee or how well Trump’s orange mango face creme has been applied that morning will not matter. Everything and everyone you know will be gone. The planet will be a seared, rubble strewn radioactive wasteland of crumbled concrete, vaporized steel and ragged charred scraps of humanity.

Nothing — and no one — we are pre-occupied with now will matter one damn bit.

“Humans are wired to advance. Humans do whatever it takes.
And yet, nuclear war zeros it all out.
Nuclear weapons reduce human brilliance and ingenuity, love and desire, empathy and intellect, to ash.”
― Annie Jacobsen, Nuclear War: A Scenario

In the interview below with author Annie Jacobsen, Jeffrey Sachs discusses her recently published book, “Nuclear War: A Scenario” (2024). Despite decades of academic work and international economic policy consulting with leaders around the globe and his close involvement with government and the UN, Sachs found Jacobsen’s book shocking. He admits to a certain wishful naivete in denying the full ramifications of the “razor’s edge” reality Jacobsen documents in her step-by-step unrolling of how a single missile launch would lead — in less than an hour — to nuclear destruction of the world.

Jacobsen’s sequence of events are not conjecture or guesses. It is based upon interviews with nuclear scientists and officials, military officers and government documents. She tracks the choreographed pathway to Armageddon second by second.

‘The Day After’ 42 years on

During the interview, mention was made of the 1983 ABC News movie “The Day After”, which I had watched at the time but forgotten about. The movie lays out what the world and ‘life’ would look like in the aftermath of a nuclear war, focusing on residents of Lawrence, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri. As grim and hellish the scenario, the movie’s producers noted — in actuality — the aftermath would be much worse.

The 42-year old movie carries over very well. It is timely and instructive and — given our current state — even more appropriate to the times than when originally produced. Chillingly, the international situation leading to nuclear war outlined in the movie could have been drawn from today’s headlines.

In 1987 the movie was broadcast in the Soviet Union without any editing or commentary. You can watch the movie trailer here, but I would urge you to take the time to watch both the Jacobsen interview and then the full movie below.

As exhausting and darkly entertaining and carnival like the state of our lives is under Trump 2.0 and the Democratic Party pantomime of resistance, we need to be fully aware of the disaster we, our families, neighbors and world are just 89 seconds away from. Truly, the stakes are far greater than Donald Trump ticking up or down in the polls.

As the bipartisan enthusiastic support for the perverse US/Isr^el genocide in Gaza proves, neither political party cares a damn for human life or stopping military war crimes. BOTH political parties are grotesque, treasonous bought-off criminal operations.

Finish up watching Carl Sagan’s starkly beautiful “Pale Blue Dot” to confront the reality of our lonely position in the universe. And no, Elon, there is no delusional scam of running off to Mars or anywhere else for humanity to begin anew.

This is it.

Everything is here.

And this is what we confront.

Resist
Persist
Don’t be complicit

“Nuclear War: A Scenario

Book Club With Jeffrey Sachs (1/2025)

Join Professor Jeffrey Sachs and award-winning journalist Annie Jacobsen as they discuss Jacobsen’s chilling and rigorous depiction of nuclear war in her groundbreaking book, Nuclear War: A Scenario. With meticulous research and interviews with military and political insiders, Jacobsen takes us through a riveting, heart-pounding, second-by-second scenario of a world-ending nuclear war.

From the technological aspects of nuclear weapons and missile defense systems to the horrifying and total incapacity of modern society to survive a nuclear onslaught, Jacobsen depicts the razor-thin margin separating us from catastrophe.

Together, they delve into the sobering realities behind nuclear war games, miscalculated missile strikes, and the relentless risks of omnicidal escalation that history and simulations reveal. They reflect on the lessons of Cold War diplomacy, near-miss incidents, and past disarmament efforts. This conversation isn’t just a wake-up call—it’s a rallying cry to face and address the ultimate existential threat of our age: nuclear war. Tune in for a discussion that is as riveting as it is vital.

58-minute video

THE MOVIE THAT MOVED REAGAN TOWARD ARMS REDUCTION: ‘The Day After’ (1983)

The Day After (1983)

In the mid-1980s, the U.S. is poised on the brink of nuclear war. This shadow looms over the residents of a small town in Kansas as they continue their daily lives. Dr. Russell Oakes (Jason Robards) maintains his busy schedule at the hospital, Denise Dahlberg prepares for her upcoming wedding, and Stephen Klein (Steve Guttenberg) is deep in his graduate studies. When the unthinkable happens and the bombs come down, the town's residents are thrust into the horrors of nuclear winter.

2-hour, 7-minute video

At 89 Seconds To Midnight: The Doomsday Clock Now 'Closest It Has Ever Been To Global Catastrophe'

The latest update to the Doomsday Clock was unveiled in Washington, D.C. on January 28, 2025. (Photo: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)

"Blindly continuing on the current path is a form of madness."

By Jessica Corbett
Common Dreams (1/28/25)

Highlighting the threat posed by nuclear weapons, the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, the potential misuse of biological science, and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on Tuesday moved the Doomsday Clock "from 90 seconds to 89 seconds to midnight—the closest it has ever been to catastrophe."

The Bulletin was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and University of Chicago scientists involved with the Manhattan Project. The clock was launched two years later, as a symbol of how close the world is to apocalypse due to nuclear arms. The Science and Security Board now considers various threats with its annual updates.

"The purpose of the Doomsday Clock is to start a global conversation about the very real existential threats that keep the world's top scientists awake at night," explained Daniel Holz, a University of Chicago professor who chairs the board. "National leaders must commence discussions about these global risks before it's too late. Reflecting on these life-and-death issues and starting a dialogue are the first steps to turning back the clock and moving away from midnight."

The clock announcement came just over a week after the return of Republican U.S. President Donald Trump, whose country has a sizable nuclear arsenal.

"Long-standing concerns about nuclear weapons—involving the modernization and expansion of arsenals in all nuclear weapons countries, the build-up of new capabilities, the risks of inadvertent or deliberate nuclear use, the loss of arms control agreements, and the possibility of nuclear proliferation to new countries—continued or were amplified in 2024," notes The Bulletin's statement on the clock. "The outgoing Biden administration showed little willingness or capacity to pursue new efforts in these areas, and it remains to be seen whether the Trump administration will seize the initiative."

China, Russia, and the United States "have the collective power to destroy civilization," so they also "have the prime responsibility to pull the world back from the brink," according to The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

The other eight nations with nuclear weapons are China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia, and the United Kingdom. The statement points out that "against the backdrop of Russia's continuing war against Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended compliance with the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), and Russia's Duma voted to withdraw Moscow's ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty."

While the United States and Russia have the most nukes, "China's nuclear arsenal has grown to about 600 warheads, and China may also now be deploying a small number of warheads on missiles during peacetime," the statement says. Additionally, "Iran continues to increase its stockpile of enriched uranium" and "Kim Jong Un recently declared his goal was to 'exponentially expand' North Korea's nuclear arsenal in coming years."

Along with detailing "extremely dangerous trends" on the nuclear front, the statement spotlights "devastating impacts and insufficient progress" in terms of climate. As board member and Princeton University professor emeritus Robert Socolow summarized Tuesday: "2024 was the hottest year on record. Extreme weather and other climate events—floods, tropical cyclones, extreme heat, drought, and wildfires—devastated societies, rich and poor, as well as ecosystems around the world."

"Yet the global greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change continued to rise. And investments to adapt to climate change and cut fossil fuel emissions were way below what is needed to avoid the worst impacts," he added. "There were formidable policy headwinds globally: Particularly worrisome, electoral campaigns showed climate change to be a low priority in the United States and many other countries."

The board's statement also lays out "daunting biological threats," including emerging and reemerging infectious diseases, proliferation of high-containment laboratories, artificial intelligence involvement in research and development, and weapons programs.

AI acceleration

Artificial intelligence also features prominently in the statement's section on "disruptive technologies," which warns that "increasing chaos, disorder, and dysfunction in the world's information ecosystem threaten society's capacity to address difficult challenges, and it is clear that AI has great potential to accelerate these processes of information corruption."

The tech section also states that "the growing presence of hypersonic weapons in contested regional theaters substantially increases the risk of escalation," and "there is a growing belligerence among the United States, Russia, and China in space."

Those three countries, the statement stresses, "have the collective power to destroy civilization," so they also "have the prime responsibility to pull the world back from the brink, and they can do so if their leaders seriously commence good-faith discussions about the global threats outlined here."

"Blindly continuing on the current path is a form of madness," the document declares. "It is 89 seconds to midnight."

In anticipation of the clock update, Dr. Robert Dodge from Physicians for Social Responsibility and nuclear activist Talia Wilcox pointed to some recent progress in a Tuesday opinion piece for Common Dreams, writing that "there is great hope arising from the international community as the fourth anniversary of the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons."

"The timing of this Doomsday Clock unveiling could not be more critical," the pair wrote, acknowledging Trump's expressions of "concern about the existential consequences of nuclear war throughout his public life" and urging him to seize "one last chance to make the ultimate deal for the future of humanity."

Meanwhile, in a Monday piece for Common Dreams, Danaka Katovich, CodePink's national co-director, argued that "doom isn't good enough to get us to where we need to go."

"At CodePink, we've created a Peace Clock to give us ways not to just move away from doom, but to bring us closer to the kind of world we want to see," she explained. "It's something that's been within our sight a thousand times. We have to sprint toward it."

Link to story

NEEDED REALITY & SPIRITUAL CHECK: Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot”

Become Human (6/23/23)

5-minute video

For The Love Of Humanity & The Planet, We Better Hope This Isn’t True…

“I think we have convinced Vladimir Putin that we are utterly unreliable; we are deceitful. We have drug the EU and NATO into that deceit and unreliability and I think he has made a conscious decision — I'm almost positive he's made — that Russia will have to fight NATO eventually, or some facsimile thereof.
“I don't think he thought it was imminent. I think now he thinks in his lifetime — in his time as the leader of Russia — he may have to fight NATO.”

— Col. Larry Wilkerson, Dialogue Works podcast, Trump’s Move Fails As Putin And China Unite (1/29/25)

[Editor’s Note: This an extremely insightful interview on a number of cascading crisis points. — MT]