53 pages • 1 hour read
Annie JacobsenNuclear War: A Scenario
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 5: “The Next 24 Months and Beyond (Or, Where We Are Headed After a Nuclear Exchange)”
Part 5, Chapter 1 Summary: “Day Zero: After the Bombs Stop”
Cities across America have burned to ash, and forest fires consume rural areas. The constant burning produces so much soot that it rises into the atmosphere and blocks the sun. The resulting condition is a “nuclear winter,” a massive plunge in global temperatures lasting as long as 10 years. The earth’s ecosystem would suffer incalculable damage, and human beings would fight off bitter cold, ubiquitous radiation poisoning, and fellow citizens for a share of the meager remaining resources. Drastic reductions in rainfall would destroy agriculture, and there would be no way to distribute any preserved food. Clean water will be equally rare, poisoned by both radiation and billions of corpses. Countless species of plants and animals will go extinct, becoming nothing more than a fossil.
Eventually, nuclear winter will soften, but the ozone will be so depleted that life on the earth’s surface will be all but impossible, driving whatever is still living underground. New sunlight will bring about new species of insects, many carrying disease. There is no way to know if humanity will survive.
Part 5, Chapter 2 Summary: “24,000 Years Later”
In more than twice the time it took for human civilization to develop, the world is still a radioactive hellscape. To illustrate what this world might look like, Jacobsen relates the hypothetical narrative to a historical story from 1994, when an archeologist named Klaus Schmidt examined a site in Turkey. There was no visible sign of anything except a lone tree atop a hill. Schmidt realized the hill was manmade and found ample evidence of an ancient civilization beneath it, proving that hunter-gatherer humans had more advanced levels of existence and skills than previously thought. Yet, no one lived there, and given the condition of the items, it appears that there was a sudden, mysterious disaster. Likewise, Jacobsen shows that human beings will leave behind relics of an amazing civilization, which in a sudden moment will come to a hideous end. However, because “all present-day knowledge will be gone” after a nuclear war (297), the remaining humans will never know how the world’s leaders destroyed themselves and humanity through nuclear warfare.
Part 5 Analysis
In this final section, Jacobsen adopts a long-term perspective on the themes explored throughout the narrative, including examining The Burdens of History from a broader viewpoint. She reflects on a historical event 66 million years ago, when “an asteroid struck Earth and shut out the sun” (297), obliterating 70% of life forms on Earth. Jacobsen employs this example and draws a parallel between this ancient catastrophe and the potential aftermath of nuclear war in the present. She illustrates that, while many species die, new ones evolve, and Earth will continue to support life. This comparison underscores the idea that while human civilization might face extreme destruction, especially in the event of a nuclear attack that instigates global retaliation, the planet itself can endure. The example of the archaeological dig, however, serves as a metaphor for humanity’s struggle to learn from its errors. The scale of such cataclysmic events often obscures the evidence of past mistakes, making it difficult for future generations to fully grasp or learn from them.
As the narrative concludes, Jacobsen presents a critical lesson she believes must be learned: “It was the nuclear weapons that were the enemy of us all. All along” (297). Here, Jacobsen highlights that without acknowledging and addressing the inherent dangers of nuclear weapons and refusing to acknowledge The Fragility of Deterrence and its material implications for humanity, governmental actors may repeat the same past mistakes. As a work of nonfiction that integrates a hypothetical scenario to underscore many of its points, Jacobsen imbues the work with a final cautionary reflection, emphasizing that the lessons from history, if not heeded, could lead to repeated cycles of destruction.
