An interesting book

I pulled an old book off my bookcase the other day. It is one I have had for several years but haven’t read. I tend to grab books when I can and keep them on the shelf until I get around to reading them. This one sat around longer than most. (Although there are a few that have been sitting longer) The book in question is Warday by Whitely Strieber and James Kunetka, written in 1984. It is built around the premise that in 1988 there was a limited nuclear war between the USSR and the US. And 5 years later, the two of them set out from Texas to tour the US and write a book about what is going on in the US. Beyond that I’m not going to tell you what happens in the book. Suffice it to say that they researched things really well. They did take a fairly bleak view of how things would work out but it is not unreasonably bleak. I personally think (hope) things would be a bit better than they portrayed it. Not so much in the how things were damaged and the physical effects of the bombs but in the aftermath and how the country reacts to the situation. I am rather surprised that I find myself with the idea that people would be better than that because I generally have a pretty bleak view of rationality, intelligence, and worth of humans in general. We tend to make things bad for ourselves because we are terminally shortsighted as a group. So thinking like that I can see Strieber’s outcome as very likely. But I also have an insanely idealistic view of the US and the system that our forefathers built here. But that is for another post some other day.

Even if you disagree with how Strieber and Kunetka have things turn out the book is a very good reading for viewing the probably physical aftereffects of a limited nuclear war. The talk of how the US Economy is devestated by EMP is really interesting and would be even worse today as so much of our world is "digital". It is, as it should be, a fairly scary scenario. Go buy a book and read off line for awhile.