The USSR launches a limited nuclear strike against the USA. Things get
worse.
This is not a technical book. It has a thin scrim of research
over what the author clearly regards as psychological realism, but
which merely serves to make every character thoroughly unsympathetic.
One feels that if Prochnau had been writing about the Peace Corps or
some charity for giving kittens to photogenic orphans there'd have
been just as much of a bad taste left in the mouth.
The thesis, apart from "nuclear wars are a bad thing" (not perhaps the
most contentious of ideas, though it's presented as such here), is
that pushing the Soviet system economically would provoke them into
launching a nuclear attack rather than allowing themselves to fall
apart.
Oh, and that nuclear weaponry uniquely among human endeavours turns
anyone who has the slightest connection with it (i.e. everybody in the
book) into a messed-up headcase. Yeah, Prochnau's a journalist all
right.
The two major narrative threads deal with the surviving command
structure (with some question as to just who is in command) and the
crew of a B-52, the only one to get away from its base before the
missiles hit, en route to Russia. The latter is fractionally more
interesting, and therefore comes to an end well before the book does.
The book was the basis for the TV movie
By Dawn's Early Light, which
is better for several reasons: it's shorter, it's less pretentious,
and it includes Rebecca de Mornay.
Long book, short review: don't bother.
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