Eve of Destruction

The inside story of our dangerous nuclear world

John Hughes-Wilson

• Publisher: John Blake
• Year: 2021
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781789463385
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

'It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler's crowd or Stalin's did not discover this atomic bomb. It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered' ­- US President Harry S. Truman

Truman evidently understood the terrifying power of atomic weaponry, but no one could have realised its full potential when he ordered the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Those military attacks, along with the disasters at the Fukashima and Chernobyl nuclear reactors, might immediately spring to mind at the mention of nuclear destruction, but the vast majority of the events recorded in this book are entirely unknown to most people. This book records the facts - many of them still shrouded in secrecy - which show a worrying truth: we have teetered precariously on the brink of Armageddon far more frequently than the general public realises.

Since that first and last atomic war in 1945, there have been a terrifying number of nuclear accidents and mishaps, from the careless or accidental to the genuinely intentional and only narrowly averted. Despite the catastrophic nature of any nuclear conflict, we have come to the very borders of such a situation ten times since the 1960s. Most people know about the Cuba Missile Crisis, and a few about Operation Able Archer in 1984, which, if anything, was even more frightening than Cuba, but there have been eight other occasions that might easily have toppled over into outright war. These were potential conflicts; but there have been other accidents, such as the reactor meltdown at the nuclear generating plant at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, in 1979, or the 'Palomares Incident' in 1966, when a USAF B-52 bomber crashed after a mid-air collision, dropping four hydrogen bombs on Spanish soil . . .

Eve of Destruction is a warning from history - recent history. It is a call to sit up and listen, and to take note of the very real danger of nuclear catastrophe. It is a timely and important book because, after all, the future of our planet has to concern us all.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1. Atoms
• 2. Ruthless Rays: Radiation – Silent but Deadly
• 3. Oops! Some Early Accidents
• 4. Some Early Military Near-misses
• 5. Balls-up at Bikini
• 6. The French Foul-up
• 7. Stop Digging! Civilian Engineering
• 8. The Nuclear Navy
• 9. All at Sea: Russia’s Terrible Record
• 10. The Kursk Catastrophe
• 11. Manna from Heaven? Lost Bombs
• 12. Fireworks Can Be Dangerous
• 13. Radiation Is Really Bad for Your Health
• 14. You Can’t Brush Nuclear Under the Carpet
• 15. Britain’s Dirty Secret: The Windscale Fire
• 16. The World Held Its Breath: Cuba 1962
• 17. The Real Cuban Missile Crisis – At Sea
• 18. Exercise Able Archer 83
• 19. Some Civilian Nuclear Disasters
• 20. Chernobyl – The Worst so Far
• 21. Eastern Enigmas: China, India, Pakistan – And Israel
• 22. Japan in the Dock
• 23. Japan’s Nuclear Nightmare: Fukushima
• 24. False Alarms
• 25. The Sum of All Fears: Terrorists with a Nuke
• 26. Future Uncertain? Summary and Conclusions
• Appendix: Nuclear-armed Countries with Weapons-grade Highly Enriched Uranium, and Countries with Nuclear Power
• Notes and Sources
• Index
• Plates