Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

This book was an interesting but ultimately slightly boring look into America's nuclear weapons and how close they are to destroying all of us. Ben really highly recommended this book, so perhaps my expectations were too high, but I did find the technical descriptions to go on (and on) just a little too long. And though Schlosser is often talking about life-and-death scenarios, his descriptions are often bloodless, erring on the side of being technically perfect but then ultimately losing a sense of urgency.

It's certainly true that Scholsser's exposé reveals that it's really only a matter of time before one of these thousands of nuclear weapons that we keep in our possession for no real discernible reason is bound to either accidentally explode or fall into the hands of a crazy person charged with its care or simply undergo a severe technical failure. (Terrifyingly, some of these weapons are stored at an Air Force base just an hour from my hometown.) It does seem that, precisely for this reason, the Untied States has backed way off of its threat of actually using them -- it's hard to imagine Obama or even someone more warmongering eager to set these off. It's less clear if other countries have learned this lesson. Schlosser warns that these weapons cross borders more easily than their safety protocols do, and the risk of improperly handled nukes is very bad news.

Still, I'd say Schlosser more or less halts his tale with the Reagan administration, something I found surprising given his thoroughness in the rest of the book. In the years since Reagan, we've signed a new nuclear treaty, and I'd love to see Schlosser talk about nuclear weapons in the context of today's warfare, which has shifted slightly to be more about terrorism and counter-terrorism. We know that nuclear weapons still factor into those threats, but I would've loved Schlosser to talk about how the Pentagon contextualizes that.

Still, I learned a lot.