A Big Book about a Big Topic

The older I get the fewer books I read.  I say this with real sadness, because one of the great great pleasures of life is to read.  When I was in grade school and high school, my dad would drive me to the Carrick branch of the  Carnegie Library about every two or three weeks.  There I would wander around and take out (FREE!) four to eight books.  Some I would read, some I would return and check out again to read later, some I just perused.  But the opportunity to read, especially in the slow summer months, was pure delight for me.

I especially like big books.  That is to say, long books.  One of my long ago achievements was to read the two volume biography (published 1955) of James Cardinal Gibbons by Msgr. John Tracy Ellis--all 1,600 pages of it.  Gibbons was a great Catholic churchman and a great American.  Another was the "magum opus" of theologian Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith.  I determined that it took me one hour to read just ten pages of his dense, translated-from-the-German, theological prose.  That's 45 hours for a 450 page book.  And, I remember, there were no typos, not one, in the entire volume!

On a lighter note, I have read all 21 novels by John D. MacDonald of his Fort Lauderdale beach bum character Travis McGee about six times.  And I am making my way this summer through the "alphabet series" by Sue Grafton of Santa Teresa private investigator Kinsey Milhone.  I'm up to "R is for Richochet."

A more recent big, and important book, is Eric Schlosser's Command and Control:  Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety.  Schlosser first came to national and international attention with his Fast Food Nation (2001), an expose of the fast food industry.  But this is an incredible achievement.  In one book, he manages to capture with detail and engagement the personal effects of "the Damascus Accident," in the Titan II missile complex in Damascus, Arkansas, on September 18, 1980, the science of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems, and the "science" of preventing an accidental detonation of a nuclear devise by their handlers, the military branches of the United States.  I say "science," in quotes, because the key word in the long book title is "illusion."  We thought--we still think--we (the United States military and the United States government) control these weapons.  Schlosser shows us otherwise.

The most chilling quote comes near the end of this tale.  After forty years of SIOP (Single Integrated Operational Plan) which governed nuclear weapon policy for the U.S.A., General George Lee Butler managed to end "mutually assured destruction" as the one political response to any attack on our country.  He said in 1991, "With the possible exception of the Soviet nuclear war plan, this [SIOP] was the single most absurd and irresponsible document I had ever reviewed in my life.  I came to fully appreciate the truth...we escaped the Cold War without a nuclear holocaust by some combination of skill, luck, and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion."

Butler can say this, after he learned of the long long list of "broken arrows," code word for accidents with nuclear weapons, over the decades since the first detonation of a nuclear weapon in the New Mexico dessert on July 12, 1945.  The list is frightening in the extreme.  Schlosser received a copy (through the Freedom of Information Act) of one document "Accidents and Incidents Involving Nuclear Weapons" from 1957 to 1967.  It ran 245 pages.  There were missiles accidentally released from fighter planes, missiles crushed in the elevator of an aircraft carrier, two missiles which fell out of a B-52 and landed in the backyard of a South Carolina family as they were enjoying a barbecue, missiles burning in Greenland and the United Kingdom, and safety problems galore.  Another report, detailing the period from 1950 to 1968, offered at least 1,200 "significant" incidents and accidents with nuclear weapons.  

The book personalizes this history of nuclear craziness with the real life stories of ordinary Air Force technicians, and what happened when one man dropped a wrench down a 9 story silo against the thin skin of a missile--which caused the Titan II rocket fuel to explode 15 hours later in the Arkansas countryside.  One died, several were severely injured, and the credibility of our military and political leaders fell again.

The author also describes the almost impossible "always/never" demand which nuclear weapons bring:  they must always work when they are launched or fired; they must never work when stored, transported or carried in time of peace.  

This history affects each one of us.  Though the Cold Ward ended a generation ago, we live in a world of too too many nuclear weapons.  Schlosser reports that today the United States has approximately 4,650 nuclear weapons.  About 300 are assigned to long-range bombers, 500 deployed atop Minuteman III missiles, and 1,150 are carried by Trident submarines. Anther 200 are stored in various NATO countries, and another 2,500 are stored in reserve, near Albuquerque, New Mexico.  We will spend about $180 billion (with a "b") over the next 20 years to maintain these nuclear weapons, run our weapon laboratories, and upgrade our uranium-processing facilities--and hope we never have to use them.

One nuclear weapon on the face of the earth is too much.

But we are not alone.  Russia has about 1,740 deployed strategic nuclear weapons and perhaps 2,000 tactical weapons.  France, Great Britain, China, Israel, possess nuclear bombs.  North Korea and Iran aspire to join that club.  That terrorists desire to possess these frightening weapons is not just the stuff of paperback writers. 

   
Schlosser maintains an admirable level of objectivity to this account.  He backed up his writing with 130 dense pages of notes and bibliography.  Only at the end of the book does he break his reserve and admit his fears--which should be ours.

"Right now thousands of missiles are hidden away, literally out of sight, topped with warheads and ready to go, awaiting the right electrical signal.  They are a collective death wish, barely suppressed.  Every one of them is an accident waiting to happen, a potential act of mass murder.  They are out there, waiting, soulless and mechanical, sustained by our denial--and they work."