Nuclear War The Aftermath

Aims to demystify aspects and effects of nuclear weapons so that civil and military defence planners have a reasonable idea about the scale and magnitude of disaster that will follow a nuclear attack. As a natural corollary, the book examines the type and nature of post-attack disaster management operations that may have to be launched following a counter-value strike.

From the John Holmes Library collection.

Written by world-renowned scientists, this volume portrays the possible direct and indirect devastation of human health from a nuclear attack. The most comprehensive work yet produced on this subject, The Medical Implications of Nuclear War includes an overview of the potential environmental and physical effects of nuclear bombardment, describes the problems of choosing who among the injured would get the scarce medical care available, addresses the nuclear arms race from a psychosocial perspective, and reviews the medical needs--in contrast to the medical resources likely to be available--after a nuclear attack. "It should serve as the definitive statement on the consequences of nuclear war."--Arms Control Today

“[A] seasoned national security professional and gifted writer” offers an in-depth analysis of what might happen after a nuclear attack on US soil (Matthew Kroenig, author of Exporting the Bomb). In the parlance of disaster preparedness, “right of boom” refers to the terrifying moments after a crisis hits. In Right of Boom, national security specialist Benjamin Schwartz examines what could happen after a nuclear explosion takes place in the United States—the event that many experts have acknowledged as the greatest single national security threat we face. While many assume such an attack would automatically trigger a globally devastating exchange of nuclear attacks, Schwartz demonstrates that the realities are far more nuanced and complex. Hypothesizing an explosion in downtown Washington, DC, Schwartz maps out the likely ramifications while going deep into history to explore the limited range of options available to a commander in chief. Drawing from his experience as an analyst at the Departments of Defense, State, and Energy, Schwartz offers a fully panoramic view of a terrifyingly real possibility. “Should be required reading.” —The Washington Free Beacon

In riveting and revelatory detail, Aftermath documents the ways in which wars have transformed the terrain of the battlefield into landscapes of memory and enduring terror: in France, where millions of acres of farmland are cordoned off to all but a corps of demolition experts responsible for the undetonated bombs and mines of World War I that are now rising up in fields, gardens, and backyards; in a sixty-square-mile area outside Stalingrad that was a cauldron of destruction in 1941 and is today an endless field of bones; in the Nevada deserts, where America waged a hidden nuclear war against itself in the 1950's, the results of which are only now becoming apparent; in Vietnam, where a nation's effort to remove the physical detritus of war has created psychological and genetic devastation; in Kuwait, where terrifyingly sophisticated warfare was followed by the Sisyphean task of making an uninhabitable desert capable of sustaining life. Aftermath excavates our century's darkest history, revealing that the destruction of the past remains deeply, inextricably embedded in the present.

Ranging across fiction and poetry, critical theory and film, comics and speeches, Race, Ethnicity and Nuclear War explores how writers, thinkers, and filmmakers have tackled the question: Are nuclear weapons white? Paul Williams addresses myriad representations of nuclear weapons: the Manhattan Project, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear tests across the globe, and the anxiety surrounding the superpowers' devastating arsenals. Ultimately, Williams concludes that many texts act as a reminder that the power enjoyed by the white Western world imperils the whole planet.