Annie Jacobsen

Right.

As I explain in the book, and again, as was relayed to me by defense officials –

We can't shoot down ballistic missiles, long-range ballistic missiles, with any kind of certainty or accuracy.

It's not like the Iron Dome or anything like that?

The Iron Dome is almost like terrible for nuclear war, you know, for people to understand how dangerous nuclear war is because the Iron Dome can—

shoot down short-range missiles and mid-range missiles.

So even the U.S.

Aegis systems out on the sea, the Navy systems, shot down some of those Iranian drones.

But they can't shoot down ballistic missiles.

You want like the five-minute or the 30-second ballistic missile lesson because this is what I need.

I write for the layman.

I think part of the reason why nuclear war is not spoken about in the general public is because it's set up to be intimidating.

You'll hear a lot of defense people and analysts using very esoteric language.

And it kind of excludes the average Joe or Jane, Joe or Annie.

So I ask really basic questions like how does a ballistic missile work?

And it's very simple.

That 26 minutes and 40 seconds I told you about.

So there's three phases of a ballistic missile.

It launches.

It has boost phase.