"Excellent… hair-raising… Command and Control is how nonfiction should be written." (Louis Menand)Famed investigative journalist Eric Schlosser digs deep to uncover secrets about the management of America's nuclear arsenal. A ground-breaking account of accidents, near-misses, extraordinary heroism, and technological breakthroughs, Command and Control explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: how do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them? That question has never been resolved — and Schlosser reveals how the combination of human fallibility and technological complexity still poses a grave risk to mankind.Written with the vibrancy of a first-rate thriller, Command and Control interweaves the minute-by-minute story of an accident at a nuclear missile silo in rural Arkansas with a historical narrative that spans more than fifty years. It depicts the urgent effort by American scientists, policymakers, and military officers to ensure that nuclear weapons can't be stolen, sabotaged, used without permission, or detonated inadvertently. Schlosser also looks at the Cold War from a new perspective, offering history from the ground up, telling the stories of bomber pilots, missile commanders, maintenance crews, and other ordinary servicemen who risked their lives to avert a nuclear holocaust. At the heart of the book lies the struggle, amid the rolling hills and small farms of Damascus, Arkansas, to prevent the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States.Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with men who designed and routinely handled nuclear weapons, Command and Control takes readers into a terrifying but fascinating world that, until now, has been largely hidden from view. Through the details of a single accident, Schlosser illustrates how an unlikely event can become unavoidable, how small risks can have terrible consequences, and how the most brilliant minds in the nation can only provide us with an illusion of control. Audacious, gripping, and unforgettable, Command and Control is a tour de force of investigative journalism, an eye-opening look at the dangers of America's nuclear age.
For my father
This is a book about the effort to control nuclear weapons — to ensure that one doesn’t go off by accident, by mistake, or by any other unauthorized means. The emphasis in these pages isn’t on the high-level diplomacy behind arms control treaties. It’s on the operating systems and the mind-set that have guided the management of America’s nuclear arsenal for almost seventy years. The history of similar efforts in the Soviet Union is largely absent here. Although no less important, such a history requires a knowledge of Russian archives and sources that I lack. Command and Control explores the precarious balance between the need for nuclear weapon safety and the need to defend the United States from attack. It looks at the attempts by American scientists, policy makers, and military officers to reconcile those two demands, from the dawn of the nuclear age until the end of the Cold War. And through the story of a long-forgotten accident, it aims to shed light on a larger theme: the mixture of human fallibility and technological complexity that can lead to disaster.
Although most of the events in this book occurred a long time ago, they remain unfortunately relevant. Thousands of nuclear warheads still sit atop missiles belonging to the United States and Russia, ready to be launched at a moment’s notice. Hundreds more are possessed by India, China, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, Great Britain, and France. As of this writing, a nuclear weapon has not destroyed a city since August 1945. But there is no guarantee that such good luck will last.
The fall of the Berlin Wall now feels like ancient history. An entire generation has been raised without experiencing the dread and anxiety of the Cold War, a conflict that lasted almost half a century and threatened to annihilate mankind. This book assumes that most of its readers know little about nuclear weapons, their inner workings, or the strategic thinking that justifies their use. I hope readers who are familiar with these subjects will nevertheless learn a new thing or two here. My own ignorance, I now realize, was profound. No great monument has been built to honor those who served during the Cold War, who risked their lives and sometimes lost them in the name of freedom. It was ordinary men and women, not just diplomats and statesmen, who helped to avert a nuclear holocaust. Their courage and their sacrifices should be remembered.
Captain Michael T. Mazzaro, the commander, a young officer from Massachusetts with a pregnant wife
Lieutenant Allan D. Childers, the deputy commander, raised in Okinawa, a former DJ in his late twenties
Staff Sergeant Rodney L. Holder, the ballistic missile systems analyst technician, son of a Navy officer, responsible for keeping the Titan II ready to launch
Staff Sergeant Ronald O. Fuller, the missile facilities technician, responsible for the equipment at the launch complex
Lieutenant Miguel Serrano, a trainee studying to become a deputy commander
Senior Airman Charles T. Heineman, the team chief
Senior Airman David Powell, an experienced Titan II repairman, twenty-one and raised in Kentucky
Airman Jeffrey L. Plumb, nineteen and from Detroit, a novice receiving on-the-job training
Sergeant Jeff Kennedy, a quality control evaluator for the 308th Strategic Missile Wing, perhaps the best missile mechanic at Little Rock Air Force Base, a former deckhand from Maine in his midtwenties
Colonel James L. Morris, the head of maintenance at the 308th Strategic Missile Wing
Senior Airman James R. Sandaker, a young missile technician from Evansville, Minnesota
Technical Sergeant Michael A. Hanson, the team chief
Senior Airman Greg Devlin, a junior middleweight Golden Gloves boxer
Senior Airman David L. Livingston, a twenty-two-year-old missile repairman from Ohio with a fondness for motorcycles
Sid King, the twenty-seven-year-old manager of a local radio station
Gus Anglin, the sheriff of Van Buren County
Sam Hutto, a dairy farmer with land across the road from the missile site
Colonel William A. Jones, the head of the force as well as the base commander
Captain Donald P. Mueller, a flight surgeon manning the force’s ambulance
