How did the world become so complacent about nuclear weapons? Eric Schlosser, an investigative journalist, suspects that rational minds cannot quite grasp the reality of their destructive power. He recalls growing up in the 1970s, amid talk of a nuclear Armageddon, and coming to view such weapons as a terrible fiction. He felt differently after witnessing the 1999 launch of a Titan II, the largest intercontinental ballistic missile built by America, at a California air-force base. One moment the silver rocket the size of a ten-storey building stood in its silo, hooked up to hissing, humming support units; the next it was gone, vanishing into the sky. The display profoundly rattled Mr Schlosser, the author of "Fast Food Nation", a bestselling look at the costs of cheap eating. While at the launch he heard of a 1980 accident in which a Titan Ⅱ exploded in its silo, propelling its nuclear warhead to land (without detonating) in a ditch near Damascus, Arkansas. Thus began a decade-long probe into the systems that govern America's nuclear arsenal of nearly 5,000 weapons.
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