Whole World on Fire

More about the book

The book delves into the U.S. government's longstanding oversight in nuclear war planning, specifically its failure to account for fire damage from nuclear weapons despite historical evidence from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Lynn Eden explores how organizational frameworks limited the military’s understanding of nuclear firestorms, leading to an underestimation of nuclear weapon destructiveness. Through a blend of organization theory and historical analysis, the narrative reveals how a focus on precision bombing created gaps in knowledge and nearly led to a pivotal shift in nuclear strategy during the 1990s.