Episode · Behind the Bastards · 2025-12-11
Books mentioned on Part Five: The Men Who Might Have Killed Us All
Robert tells Margaret about the giant meeting the military held to tell everyone how they planned to kill the world. See omnystudio.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Nuclear War
Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen is a meticulously researched work of investigative journalism that examines the catastrophic sequence of events following a theoretical nuclear attack.
Recommended“I actually recommend all the books that I read for this. Annie Jacobson's uh nuclear war a scenario. Um again, I don't entirely agree with kind of some of her panic about North Korea, but it's a it's a pretty good book on the whole about the way the system works today.”
Where to get it
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Blind Man's Bluff
Blind Man's Bluff by Baynard Hardwick Kendrick is a non-fiction book exploring the covert operations and dangerous missions undertaken by United States and Soviet submarines during the Cold War.
Recommended“There's a book called Blind Man's Bluff that's about like all the stuff that he used to do. And all of his like stories are cuz what US and Soviet subs were doing in this period of time was like basically one would try to like playing chicken trying to force the other to surface”
Where to get it
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Command and Control
Command and Control by Eric Schlosser is a meticulous investigative history that examines the dangerously thin margin of error surrounding America's nuclear weapons arsenal, highlighting numerous near-misses and organizational blunders throughout the Cold War.
Recommended“then command and control um among other things talks about a bunch of the different like fuckups and errors that have happened along the way. Um they're all good books.”
Where to get it
