nuclear-news

When nuclear terrorists strike Business Standard Max Boot   February 8, 2015 

Benjamin E Schwartz
The Overlook Press

Nuclear terrorism has long been a staple of movies and television shows. But typically, Hollywood productions end with the bomb being defused. What would happen if heroes didn’t save the day and the United States experienced the worst 24 hours in its history?

That is the important question Benjamin E Schwartz, a career government official who has worked at the Departments of State, Defense and Energy, sets out to answer in his clunkily titled first book, Right of Boom. (“Right of boom” is government-speak for “after an explosion”.) His analysis begins with a fictional narrative that unfolds in a flat, matter-of-fact tone: “On an otherwise calm and uneventful morning, a small nuclear weapon explodes in downtown Washington, D.C. … The casualty count rises to over a hundred thousand, and the destruction is measured in hundreds of billions of dollars.”…….

……….even if Right of Boom is not the book we need on nuclear terrorism, it can still do some good if it spurs greater study of and conversation about what is arguably our most important and least-understood national security threat.