Mushroom Cloud: Book I of the First Strike Series

Mushroom Cloud, a fact-based historical novel, is the first book ofThe First Strike Trilogy:USA and the Soviet Union are building nuclear arms for a face off in a potential nuclear war in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s."This novel is so important for everyone who cares about nuclear disarmament because as philosopher George Santayana wrote: 'Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.'"~ Melissa Burch, Bestselling & Award Winning AuthorMy Journey Through War and PeaceFor a decade, Dr. Caleb Young, a gifted physicist and chief science officer for the CIA, had shaded National Intelligence Estimates and Rand reports on war gaming. He wanted to thwart the US military's push for a nuclear first strike. Soviet GRU Colonel Oleg Penkovsky had passed information to Young at more than one Pugwash Peace Conference, revealing how inept Soviet capabilities were. A US preemptive strike would destroy the earth's ozone layer.Dr. Young, secretly an Einstein schooled pacifist, felt a personal obligation to prevent a globally destructive nuclear war. However, the realities of US nuclear superiority were progressively becoming harder to manage. By mid-1953, the United States had 1,169 deliverable atomic bombs. It could drop them with 160 B-36 heavy bombers and 350 B-47 medium bombers. The Soviet Union had 120 atomic bombs that could only be delivered to the US by a handful of one-way TU-4A experimental bombers through thousands of F-86 Sabres. By 1962, the US had more than 3,000 thermonuclear warheads and 5,000 tactical nuclear weapons. U-2 flights and Corona satellite images were exposing Khrushchev’s lies about “grinding out missiles like sausages.” The US had a 17-1 advantage in deliverable warheads.The Soviets intercontinental ballistic missiles (only four were verified) took four hours to prepare for launch. US B-52s twos could easily destroy them from fail- safe points with a pair of 20 megaton bombs. Even more ominously, the Thor and Jupiter intermediate range ballistic missiles could deliver warheads in less th