Has anyone here read this book?

[buckettgirl]

Fail Safe by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler.

I had to read this book for my Modern World Civilizations class...
I know that this is a fiction book, but it seemed more appropriate to ask about it here than in the other book forum (it didn't really fit with Harry Potter and it is supposed to be based on factual events).

It is set during the cold war. Basically, we accidently bomb Moscow and it goes through everything president tries to do to remedy the situation. The president decided to bomb New York City to prove to Kruschchev that it was an accident so he wouldn't nuke the U.S.

Apparently this is supposed to be based on factual events. Did we really almost accidentally bomb Russia?

Do you think that this scenario is likely to ever happen given our dependence upon machines?

That book was hard to get into, but towards the middle it began to seem to real.
Any thoughts?

on edit: by the way, I'm on 23, so I was not alive for this stuff...

[tx_dem41]

1. Didn't read the book...but its a great movie. N/T

[AllegroRondo]

2. No, but I saw the movie

a classic. I think Henry Fonda played the president.

[Forkboy]

4. Yep...and pre Dallas Larry Hagman was the interpreter

GREAT flick!

[gordianot]

3. One character was supposed to be based on Henry Kissinger.

Before Nixon

One line has always stayed with me. Not an exact quote: If the Jews had met the Nazi's who came to their door with a gun in their hand there would have been no holocaust.

I had a teacher in High School that used that point as a debate. You would never get by with that today.

[OneBlueSky]

5. I read this when it first came out . . .

I was still in high school, so it must have been 1962 or 63 or thereabouts . . .

[yellowdogintexas]

6. read it years and years ago, consumed it is more like it

as I really enjoyed it..couldn't put it down.

Around that same time I read "Seven Days in May" another Cold War Chiller

[AllegroRondo]

7. they did a live TV remake of the movie in 2000

with Richard Dreyfus as the President, and George Clooney as one of the pilots.

[ramapo]

8. Many times

It was one scary book when I first read it. I was in grammar school during the '60s. The movie was excellent also.

We have come close to accidental nuclear war on a number of occasions. The last was during the Clinton administration. Check out this link to learn when and how:
<http://www.nuclearfiles.org/kinuclearweapons/anwindex.html>

That particular scenario was not unlikely for the 1960s. I don't believe it could happen that way today, communications are much more advanced.

That is not to say that an inadvertant or unauthorized launch of an ICBM is impossible. It's not just the US and Russia any longer. India and Pakistan are two scary nuclear powers.