[DOWNLOAD] "Risks of Unintentional Nuclear War" by Daniel Frei ~ Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Risks of Unintentional Nuclear War
- Author : Daniel Frei
- Release Date : January 01, 1983
- Genre: Politics & Current Events,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 4504 KB
Description
There is a growing public concern about the possibility of a nuclear holocaust triggered off unintentionally by error, miscalculation or simply by accident or mischief. Ever since the beginning of the nuclear era, people have been concerned about what the popular film “Dr. Strangelove” presented as a horror fiction of a system of strategic deterrence getting out of control and confronting mankind suddenly with a Doomsday nightmare: a mad colonel ordering an unauthorized missile launch, an unfortunate officer pushing the wrong button, signals on a radar screen reflecting a group of geese mistakenly interpreted as attacking missiles.
The mere existence of nuclear weapons caused many people to think about their inherent risks. Doubts as to the safety and control of these systems never ceased to be expressed although it seemed in the late 1960s and the early 1970s that arms control agreements were contributing to the establishment of a deterrence system less prone to the risk of becoming inadvertently destabilized.
In addition, large segments of the American public felt alarmed by the trauma of a surprise attack out of the blue which seemed theoretically feasible after 1957, when the Soviet Union launched the first satellite and became the first Power to achieve an intercontinental ballistic capability. The late 1950s and the early 1960s were virtually dominated by a kind of “nuclear fever” (Mandelbaum 1981:219). In the meantime this “nuclear fever” has become universal.
In the contemporary world and in the foreseeable future the arms race has developed a new momentum, and the relative stability is thus seriously challenged. This gives renewed cause for fearing the outbreak of unintentional nuclear war. “Thinking the unthinkable” has again become the preoccupation not only of concerned scientists but of a large concerned segment of the general public as well. Reports about accidents and incidents involving nuclear weaponry — called “broken arrows” and “bent spears” — receive increasing attention, and the same can be said about scenarios based on events such as the failure of radar equipment and computers of early warning systems, the occurrence of false alarms, mechanical failures, malfunctioning of safeguards, theft by terrorists, unauthorized launching of missiles and the like (cf. e.g., Newsweek, 5 October 1981; Der Spiegel, 23 June 1980). The titles of books such as Nuclear Nightmares (Calder 1980), Apocalypse (Beres 1980), World War against One’s Will (Lutz 1981) are indicative of a growing mood created by the disquieting prospects offered by the future of nuclear weaponry. More importantly, many people have doubts about the reliability and credibility of the deterrence system, and many people also feel anxious about the possibility of a “probe” through the launching of a surprise attack.