Annie Jacobsen

And from both sides of the aisle, because people now are beginning to realize if nuclear war begins, it doesn't end until there is a nuclear holocaust.

And it happens so fast.

There is no quickly going to your secret bunker you have.

And also, unless he happened to be there in the exact moment when all of this went down.

We are hunter-gatherers again.

In the words of Carl Sagan, who is the author of Nuclear Winter.

But I think what's also crazy to your point about 1945 is like when this was all set up, when the nuclear arsenals were beginning – and I take the reader through it really quickly because I want them to just get to what happens at nuclear launch –

I mean the book is really about nuclear launch to nuclear winter.

But the buildup is fascinating because first of all, it happened so incredibly fast and it happened under incredibly secret classified terms.

So there was no like outside opinion.

And originally, nuclear war was set up to be fought and won, which itself is absurd.

And we know that now.

So the rules of the game have fundamentally changed.

And yet the systems are all the same.

That's what's, I think, the most dangerous component of today versus, let's say, 1952 when the thermonuclears began.

So the system of nuclear war, this idea that – well, OK.

So let's start with some basic facts.

There's a nuclear triad.

You know what that – OK.

So triad, really simple, three.