Jacobsen's new book Nuclear War arrives today (3/26)

Pretty interesting; heard her on the podcast tour a good bit recently; will be picking this one up.

Once I started reading it, it went quickly. Fair warning: It is quite depressing at times, which is understandable considering the subject matter.

A good podcast with her on Lex Fridman:



I'm not entirely convinced she has all of her facts down, but fundamentally I think she is right. The problem is that in any given year the odds of nuclear war are low. But unless the world disarms a nuclear war is inevitable. And the odd go up every year now that other players are entering the game. And I really don't see any realistic path to disarming the world.

Interesting title...

I came across an interview she did with Dan Carlin on one of his addendum shows. It's from April and still free to download at:

Dan Carlin interview

This is something that Dan Carlin has been talking about for a while and he did an excellent episode of his podcast called Destroyer of Worlds. Somehow Annie Jacobsen just seems like a bit of a lightweight compared to Dan Carlin, though they don't disagree on anything on the topic and I guess my main reservation with her book is that it is a work of fiction. But statistically something like it will happen without a fundamental change. It's actually rather surprising that there hasn't been a nuclear weapon used in war since 1945. Richard Feynman in one of his books mentioned that after the Los Alamos test was successful he entered a very deep depression. Because he looked around and saw that everything around him would inevitably be destroyed by nuclear weapons. He got over that, but in the long run I doubt that he was wrong.