Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

 

Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser is a frightening book.  Schlosser shows us how closely we have come to major accidents with nuclear weapons and/or accidental nuclear war.  The takeaway is that we have been very lucky – and that our luck could easily run out.

The nature of complex and dangerous systems is that they are so closely tied together, their systems so intertwined that even a simple error can lead to a cascade of critical events. These kinds of accidents are hard to anticipate or control. This book is a series of case studies of this dangerous phenomenon.