Nuclear War: A Scenario is a 2024 nonfiction book by American journalist Annie Jacobsen. It outlines a timeline of a hypothetical first strike against the continental United States by North Korea.[1][2]
Content
The book covers standard US military protocol in the event of a nuclear first strike against the United States. It particularly highlights launch on warning as a dangerous and potentially catastrophic policy of nuclear armed nations, and concludes that any nuclear conflict has the potential to end in near-total human extinction.[3]
The book is structured to show a minute-by-minute breakdown from multiple perspectives of a scenario in which North Korea attacks Washington, DC in a surprise attack with a Hwasong-17ICBM and Diablo Canyon Power Plant with a Pukguksong-1SLBM, destroying both completely and causing a nuclear meltdown. In response, the United States launches dozens of LGM-30 Minuteman ICBM missiles at North Korea, which must travel over the Arctic circle and Russia to reach its targets. Misunderstanding this as an attack on Russia, the Russian military launches a counterattack on the United States and NATO-allied states. After the scenario unfolds, a nuclear winter engulfs the planet, and renders the Northern Hemisphere uninhabitable.[3]
Adaptation
In April 2024, it was announced that production studio Legendary Entertainment purchased the rights to adapt the book into a film, with Canadian director Denis Villeneuve set to direct.[4]
Public reception has been relatively good, with the book holding a 4.54 out of 5 rating on Goodreads, and 4.6 out of 5 on Amazon.[5]
Barry Gewen, in the New York Times, said of Nuclear War: A Scenario that "Jacobsen, the author of “The Pentagon’s Brain,” has done her homework. She has spent more than a decade interviewing dozens of experts while mastering the voluminous literature on the subject, some of it declassified only in recent years." However, he does raise a question, stating that "If she favors abolishing nuclear weapons altogether, she owes it to her readers to say so, and then explain how it could be done. How do we get from here to there?"[2]
Interviewing Jacobsen herself, Kathy Gilsinan of Politico writes that "Nuclear war would be bad. Everyone knows this. Most people would probably rather not think through the specifics. But Annie Jacobsen, an author of seven books on sensitive national security topics, wants you to know exactly how bad it would be."[6]
In a more mixed case, Steven Poole of The Telegraph praises the book for its factual basis and research, but criticizes the prose as being "overblown", remarking that "In terms of style, Nuclear War appears to have been written for those who find the novels of Dan Brown too sophisticated. Pulp-thrillerish one-sentence paragraphs abound." However, he concludes on a positive note, appraising it as "a more accessible and deeper compendium of the unsettling facts about nuclear history, planning, and devastation[...]".[7]
In contrast, Peter Huessy of Global Security Review has an almost entirely negative appraisal of the work, remarking that "Although there are additional areas where Jacobsen incorporates inaccurate information into her scenario, the point is clear. Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario would be far more accurately titled, Nuclear War: A Novel or Nuclear War: Disarmament Propaganda".[8]