*Nuclear War: A Scenario*

By Annie Jacobsen, a very good book.  What would happen if a nuclear weapon actually were launched at the United States?  On the ground?  In the chain of command?  Organizationally and otherwise?  A good book, sadly still of relevance.  Full of drama throughout, and tactically astute.  Excerpt:

Ted Postol is blunt.  “Russian early-warning satellites don’t work accurately,” he says.  “As a country, Russia doesn’t have the technological know-how to build a system as good as we have in the United States.”  This means “their satellites can’t look straight down at the earth,” a technology known as look-down capability.  And as a result, Russia’s Tundra satellites “look sideways,” Postol warns, “which handicaps their ability to distinguish sunlight from, say, fire”

Notably troublesome is how Tundra sees clouds.

It was North Korea who started the whole thing, you can buy the book here.