Free The Pentagon's Brain by Annie Jacobsen

weapons that [will] kill 50 million people that need not have been killed.”
    President Eisenhower was determined to bring about a testban, but he was also determined to ensure that the Soviets could not and would not cheat. In sending Lawrence on his behalf, Eisenhower knew that the Soviet scientists’ intentions would be under intense scrutiny. For the first time since Castle Bravo, there was a sense of hope in the air.
    Meanwhile, at ARPA, Herb York was about to get to work on the Vela programs. Vela would soon become ARPA’s second-biggest program after Defender, which was ARPA’s colossal effort to advance antiballistic missile technology. Vela was a joint effort with the Atomic Energy Commission, the Air Force, and later NASA to advance sensor technology so the United States could certify that no nuclear weapons were being detonated in secret. Vela Hotel developed a high-altitude satellite system to detect nuclear explosions from space. Vela Uniform developed ground sensors able to detect nuclear explosions underground, and produced a program to monitor and read “seismic noise” across the globe. Vela Sierra monitored potential nuclear explosions in space.
    So much rested on the success of the Geneva Convention of Experts. Putting an end to nuclear weapons tests would slow the arms race and dramatically reduce the chances for all-out nuclear war. But could it be done?

CHAPTER FOUR
Emergency Plans
    F or Herb York, the sense of hopefulness that followed him back home from Puerto Rico did not last long. Shortly after the president announced his plans for a nuclear test ban, a twenty-two-page secret document called “The Emergency Plans Book” arrived on York’s desk at the Pentagon. Its classified contents were nothing short of apocalyptic. They would remain classified for the next forty years. When, in 1998, the Defense Department learned that an author named L. Douglas Keeney had discovered a copy of “The Emergency Plans Book” inside a declassified U.S. Air Force file at the National Archives, the Pentagon immediately reclassified the report. Keeney made public the contents of the copy he had come across, but the original document remains classified.
    For defense officials, “The Emergency Plans Book” served as the “only approved guidance to departments and agencies” regarding what to expect before, during, and after a Soviet nuclear attack on U.S. soil. Issued by the Office of Emergency Planning, a federal agency whose function was to coordinate and control wartime mobilization activities, the book was not a hypothetical war game.It was official protocol. To those familiar with its contents, it would become known as the Doomsday scenario.
    The scenario begins on a hypothetical “D-Day” in the not-so-distant future. Because of the inadequacy of U.S. capabilities at the time, the first strike comes as a surprise. Soviet sleeper cells have managed to “emplace by clandestine means” several hydrogen bombs inside the continental United States, and these weapons are the first to explode. Thermonuclear war has begun.
    In quick succession, Soviet submarines swarm the Eastern and Western Seaboards, firing nuclear missiles at dozens of inland targets. At roughly the same time, the Soviets launch a catastrophic air attack against the United States using bombers and fighter jets. The U.S. Air Defense Command destroys a substantial portion of the attacking swarms, but at least half of the Soviet aircraft are able to fire off their tactical nuclear weapons before being shot down. The opening salvo comes to a climax as hundreds of incoming ICBMs, launched from the Soviet Union, reach the U.S. mainland. The majority of these nuclear-armed missiles are able to outfox the Army’s Nike-Ajax missile batteries and strike military and civilian targets across the nation. In less than one hour, 25 million Americans are dead.
    The Soviets have all but decapitated U.S. military installations, write the authors of