Fortunately, I am not a doomsday prepper. Because after reading Nuclear War: A Scenario, it was blindingly transparent how useless any prepping would be if nuclear fallout were to occur. Perhaps prepping would be better put to use in a scenario like the movie 28 Years Later, but because I do not live in the UK, that situation would never occur here in the States because we highly respect science and the usefulness of vaccinations. I digress. To read Nuclear War is to place yourself in situations you never imagined before—Jacobsen’s book reads like a horrifying thriller providing the reader with a recurring thought: What would I do in this situation? More importantly, what could I do in this situation? In his book Sapiens, the brilliant historian Yuval Noah Harari describes the nuclear warhead as the most important scientific discovery ever, bar none. Oppenheimer and his team manifested a killing machine so effective it was supposed to end all wars. Vietnam and the Iraq War would say otherwise.

There are some obvious outcomes from nuclear war occurring: radioactive wasteland; millions (maybe billions) dead; and the impotent collapse of all governmental structure. But Nuclear War treats those consequences as mere rookie material, like completing your first 10-day streak on Duo Lingo. Jacobsen tunnels so deeply into other results that would stem from nuclear fallout that she must be living in a state of constant fear—how else can someone research a topic so in-depth and not become saturated in that reality? For me, the aspect of the book that stuck the most is America’s and Russia’s defense systems: both are embarrassingly weak. True, the more we transfix our defense budget on defending against nuclear war the more it maintains its place on the forefront of our minds; just like hosting a military parade to showcase peace creates an inverse of the intended effect. But America possessing only forty missiles designed to attack an incoming swarm of nuclear warheads could be considered criminal negligence. And I will not even begin to describe Russia’s broken missile monitoring system—I will only say that if a computer consistently mistakes a nimbus with a spiraling death missile, it’s only a matter of time before a trigger-happy comrade accidently begins the end of the world. Hopefully my tone captures the importance of Nuclear War: our current systems are not built to protect against mankind ending life as we know it. Good thing the United States boasts a Secretary of State and a Secretary of Defense with impeccable credentials coupled with a level head to act as a bureaucratic bulwark against other powerful nations, or ourselves, from pressing the big red button.