I am not an expert in this topic. Therefore, I need books like this to help keep me informed. This book was very helpful to me.

The book is really very concise, and very digestible, considering its subject matter. I want to let you know that this volume describes the aftermath of a MAJOR nuclear exchange. Not that any nuclear exchange could ever be called "minor," but this book deals with an all-out, total, full scale war scenario. It tries to take a scientific look at what the effects of a full scale exchange between the former Soviet Union and the U.S. might have been like. The effects postulated here, for the most part, are VASTLY worse, for the planet as a whole, than what could happen in a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, for example. Still, the old weapons are still out there, and it might be worth getting a copy of this to stay informed. We never know what the future may bring.

In chapters that average only about ten or eleven pages, the author walks us through many relevant scenarios. Chapter One is sort of an intoduction, laying the groundwork for later discussions. It helps us understand exactly what a "megaton" is, for example, by comparing megatonnage to the firepower employed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This chapter also describes the computer modeling used in these forecasts; the basic idea of "nuclear winter" and how it might be brought about; and related issues such as fallout, EMPs, catastrophic damage to the ozone layer, and chemical disturbances in the Earth's atmosphere resulting from dispersal of chemical-laden smoke. Uncertainties in the computer models are also discussed. Chapter Two provides an overview of the world's nuclear arsenals, as of 1985. It talks in some detail about "targeting strategy" at the time, and about the possibility of escalation, etc. Chapter Three goes into the immediate effects of a nuclear exchange -- firestorms, shock waves, etc. Chapter Four sounds odd at first glance -- it is entitled "Smoke and Dust." But in the reading of the chapter, we are led to understand the huge significance of smoke and dust in nuclear war scenarios. They are every bit as important to understand as actual fallout. The huge amounts of smoke and dust released by urban explosions would be expected to remain in the atmosphere for some time, blocking out the sun, and leading ultimately to the nuclear winter sceario. Chapter Five goes into more detail, about nuclear winter issues affecting climate and weather. Chapter Six helped me to understand the damage to our ozone layer, which would stem from war of this nature. It also goes into problems which would arise from the release of huge quantities of toxic gas, from attacks on chemical plants, manufacturing centers, refineries, etc. Chapter Seven is about what most of us would expect from a book like this -- radiation and fallout. Chapter Eight is mostly about the way plants would probably respond to war. I mean "plants" as in living components of the biosphere which undergo photosynthesis, not automobile manufacturing plants, for example. The basic message of this chapter is that MANY plants would perish in the sunless months after a major nuclear war, with predictable effects upon our atmosphere. Chapter Nine takes this issue one step further, and discusses problems which would be expected to arise in the realm of agriculture. This chapter helps make it clear that famine would be at least as severe a problem, after a nuclear war, as radiation would be. Not only would the post-war economic chaos make modern agrochemicals impossible to come by, but most plants would simply be killed by summertime frosts, radiation, and lack of sunlight. In an all-out war, these problems would mean the death of MOST people who had survived the initial blasts and radiation fallout. Chapter Ten is about broader ecosystem responses to nuclear war, and gets into problems that would arise in the animal kingdom, oceanic ecosystems, etc. Chapter Eleven is about the human response to all this, and gets into likely psychological problems, economic effects, disruptions in communications, famine, and responses to global, severe cold weather.

Another book which you might want to know about, which goes over a lot of the same territory, is Carl Sagan and Paul Ehrlich's "The Cold and The Dark." It, too, is a detailed survey of scientific forecasts of nuclear winter.

Lydia Dotto created "Planet Earth in Jeopardy: Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War" at the behest of the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment, (SCOPE), in 1986. It is intended to reach a popular audience, but should not be considered to be "dumbed down." Still, if you are interested in finding the original, highly technical reports which provided the background scenarios for this book, look for "The Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War," which is a two volume set. The first volume is subtitled "Physical and Atmospheric Effects," and the second volume is subtitled "Ecological and Agricultural Effects." These two volumes came out in 1985, under the imprint of John Wiley and Sons. The main authors of that report were T.P Ackerman, P.J. Crutzen, M.A. Harwell, T.P. Hutchinson, M.C. McCracken, A.B. Pittock, C.S. Shapiro, and R.P. Turco. It is a distillation of research conducted by hundreds of scientists, all over the world, over a period of many years.

While recognizing that these studies are, (thank God), essentially speculative in nature, it is good to at least be aware of what these scientific speculations are. I don't understand why so few people are aware of this important book. Please get a copy, and ask your neighbors, friends, co-workers and family to get copies as well.

I had to do a research paper on sleep recently, and I picked out this book as one of my sources. I'm glad I did. Dotto's use of personal anecdotes made the book easy to follow instead of dry and detached like some scientific books. It also made a great reference for citation. Dotto's command of the language, while not superb, is ideal for the context and content of her book.