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  • Eve of Destruction

  • The Inside Story of Our Dangerous Nuclear World
  • By: John Hughes-Wilson
  • Narrated by: Saul Reichlin
  • Length: 13 hrs and 50 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (20 ratings)

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Eve of Destruction

By: John Hughes-Wilson
Narrated by: Saul Reichlin
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Summary

This audiobook records the facts - many of them still shrouded in secrecy - which show a worrying truth: we have teetered precariously on the brink of Armageddon far more frequently than the general public realises.

'It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler's crowd or Stalin's did not discover this atomic bomb. It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered.' ­(US President Harry S. Truman)

Truman evidently understood the terrifying power of atomic weaponry, but no one could have realised its full potential when he ordered the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Those military attacks, along with the disasters at the Fukashima and Chernobyl nuclear reactors, might immediately spring to mind at the mention of nuclear destruction, but the vast majority of the events recorded in this audiobook are entirely unknown to most people. This audiobook records the facts - many of them still shrouded in secrecy - which show a worrying truth: we have teetered precariously on the brink of Armageddon far more frequently than the general public realises.

Since that first and last atomic war in 1945, there have been a terrifying number of nuclear accidents and mishaps, from the careless or accidental to the genuinely intentional and only narrowly averted. Despite the catastrophic nature of any nuclear conflict, we have come to the very borders of such a situation 10 times since the 1960s. Most people know about the Cuba Missile Crisis, and a few about Operation Able Archer in 1984, which, if anything, was even more frightening than Cuba, but there have been eight other occasions that might easily have toppled over into outright war. These were potential conflicts; but there have been other accidents, such as the reactor meltdown at the nuclear generating plant at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, in 1979, or the 'Palomares Incident' in 1966, when a USAF B-52 bomber crashed after a mid-air collision, dropping four hydrogen bombs on Spanish soil....

Eve of Destruction is a warning from history - recent history. It is a call to sit up and listen and to take note of the very real danger of nuclear catastrophe. It is a timely and important audiobook because, after all, the future of our planet has to concern us all.

©2020 John Hughes-Wilson (P)2020 Bonnier Publishing
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History
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What listeners say about Eve of Destruction

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Interesting topics

I have knowledge on some events described, but this book did add extra information and context. Narration volume did jump around a lot, sometimes even mid-sentence. If you can get past that, it is worth a listen.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Soberingly interesting.

A must read for anyone in places of power. A hopelessly sobering read for the majority of us humans not consumed by power & control. This book lays bare the double edge sword of our nuclear world and should be read in schools.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Frightening.

It's real, it's frighteningly real. It's controlled by people like you and me, people who can make errors.

It's also available, to those that have the means, to terrorists and factions that don't care a jot for humanity.

It is, the destroyer of worlds......

This book shouldn't be read to scare, it should be read to educate and help future generations understand the need to protect others from such unholy power.

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Good listen with new material not common knowledge

It was a page turner for sure. the author tried to go through it logically and it was generally well laid out. I got a little lost at some stage but considering it was some well known topics the author kept me wanting to know more.

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Good audiobook

Excellent book and well read but some funny pronciations of place names but they don't take away from the book and its serious history

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