Weapons of Mass Destruction

ebook / ISBN-13: 9781780223773

Price: £5.49

ON SALE: 29th December 2011

Genre: Society & Social Sciences

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A history of weapons of mass destruction from the First World War to the Gulf War – and beyond.

‘Describes the world we live in, the evils we have to fight’
CONTEMPORARY REVIEW

‘The list is endless, the facts mind-boggling, the potential horror terrifying – a compelling page-turner’ GUN MART

When Tom Lehrer sang ‘We’ll all go together when we go’, the world was gripped by fear of nuclear holocaust: the ultimate endgame of every Cold War powerplay. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the threat was assumed to have gone away. But Libya, Iraq, Iran and North Korea are building weapons of mass destruction. The next live Scud missile launch could signal the next Hiroshima.

Robert Hutchinson investigates the history of weapons of mass destruction, from biological warfare during World War I to the atomic weapons of World War II and the Cold War. He reveals that Russia did indeed build the ‘Doomsday’ nuclear missile system featured in DR STRANGELOVE, but not until the 1980s: and it is still switched on! Chemical weapons remain the ‘poor man’s nuke’. And as the attack on the Tokyo subway demonstrated, weapons of mass destruction are now available to terrorist organizations as well as ‘rogue’ nation states.

Reviews

A timely and shocking book that retraces the grim history of weapons of mass destruction. Robert Hutchinson cuts through the technical jargon to explain why these weapons, be they nuclear, biological or chemical, pose such a deadly threat to us all - today more than ever ... An astonishing book that offers a real glimpse of Pandora's Box *****
EYE SPY
The list is endless, the facts mind-boggling, the potential horror terrifying - a compelling page-turner
GUN MART
The book is both historical and analytical ... [the author] admits that his book makes "grim reading" but however grim it describes the world we live in, the evils we have to fight
CONTEMPORARY REVIEW
Hutchinson paints an alarming picture of just how the world could end... The book offers a good overall history of the subject... and provides some splendid nuggets of oddity... A good, readable guide to a very unpleasant subject
FORTEAN TIMES