Countdown
The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
For fans of Oppenheimer, a riveting investigation into the modern nuclear weapons landscape.
Nuclear weapons are, today, as important as they were during the Cold War, and some experts say we could be as close to a nuclear catastrophe now as we were at the height of that conflict. Despite that, conversations about these bombs generally often happen in past tense.
In Countdown, science journalist Sarah Scoles uncovers a different atomic reality: the nuclear age’s present.
Drawing from years of on-the-ground reporting at the nation's nuclear weapons labs, Scoles interrogates the idea that having nuclear weapons keeps us safe, deterring attacks and preventing radioactive warfare. She deftly assesses the existing nuclear apparatus in the United States, taking readers beyond the news headlines and policy-speak to reveal the state of nuclear-weapons technology, as well as how people currently working within the U.S. nuclear weapons complex have come to think about these bombs and the idea that someone, someday, might use them.
Through a sharp, surprising, and undoubtedly urgent narrative, Scoles brings us out of the Cold War and into the twenty-first century, opening readers' eyes to the true nature of nuclear weapons and their caretakers while also giving us the context necessary to understand the consequences of their existence, for worse and for better, for now and for the future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"The United States is currently in the middle of a giant nuclear modernization program, reinvesting in its atomic infrastructure like it hasn't in decades" to keep up with the "modernization of China's and Russia's weapons," according to this evenhanded investigation. Science journalist Scoles (They Are Already Here) sheds light on how those within the nuclear establishment view America's efforts to update its arsenal. She profiles such figures as Tess Light, a physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory who monitors for possible foreign nuclear detonation tests and believes her work helps ward off conflict by ensuring nuclear treaties are obeyed, even as her colleagues at the lab upgrade America's nuclear weapons in preparation for their possible deployment. Interrogating opponents of the nuclear program, Scoles discusses the work of activist Marylia Kelley, who formed a watchdog group that "investigates the health and environmental effects" that the Lawrence Livermore lab in Livermore, Calif., has on those who live nearby. Scoles capably addresses the tension between these camps, providing nuanced portraits of nuclear scientists that find most "are neither hawks nor total doves." Scoles's measured final analysis occupies a similar middle ground, suggesting that upgrading America's nuclear weapons probably does discourage other countries from using theirs, even as doing so threatens to "foment a never-ending arms race." Readers on both sides of the debate will find much to ponder.
