Red Alert

Before you start to read this book it might be a good idea (especially if you are under thirty years old) to do a little reading about 1958 in an almanac or encyclopedia supplement for that year. For those of us who as elementary school students, were taught to turn our desks to the window and cower behind it, or hide in the halls; this could have been a true story. There were more than one or two scares in those days that could have led to a "Nuclear Exchange". Of little note today is that SAC (the Strategic Air Command) had air fleets of B-52s armed and in the air from the 1950s until the early 1990s. During that time there were many 'incidents' that could have triggered a 'bombing' should there not have been numerous "failsafes" that kept this from happening. One of the major protections was the 'red phone' lines directly between the US President and the General Secretary of the USSR. While Kubrick decided to turn this into a satire, most of what happens in the book does happen in the movie, without the comedy. What prevented this disaster from actually happening was that 'Plan R' was NEVER a scenario that was approved for use by the Joint Chiefs. One of the reasons that no one person (except for the President) could order a strike was to prevent some one going off the deep end and ordering a nuclear strike. In most cases it took two or more people to arm a missile and fire it. The 'Minuteman' sites were set-up so that one person couldn't turn both keys at once and the two men in the silo were armed so as to able to shoot each other should it become necessary to stop any attempted launch. This is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the tension that existed between the two superpowers in the fifties and sixties and how lucky we were that nothing happened. The idea of "MAD", mutually assured destruction, was enough to keep even the most fanatical nationalist from starting something that no one could win. Zeb Kantrowitz

Like others, the printing errors annoyed me, but the story is so compelling that I soon overlooked them. As tense as "Fail Safe" if not more, and nothing like "Strangelove" other than the surface details. Completely gripping, the story moves forward like a juggernaut to it's chilling yet believable ending. One of my favorite cold war novels. For those of us who remember "duck and cover" exercises in elementary school, this is a must read.

This original story of a US Airforce base commander issuing a preemptive nuclear attack on Russia was adapted by Stanley Kubrick and Terry Southern for their film version released as "Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb". In spite of its campy title Kubick and Southern added dark comedy to Peter George's cold war thriller. It has been reported that George was not particularly fond of this rendition of his novel, but he collaborated and eventually condoned it, however grudgingly. The novel is much more serious and has the technical aspects of Kubrick's version such as the message scrambler CRM 114 and Russia's Doomsday Machine. This reprint, in spite of annoying misprints throughout the text still grips the reader in the tension of a nuclear holocaust. Definitely worth reading if you love the movie. Be aware that Kubrick changed all the characters' names into double entendres, there is no Dr. Stranglove in the novel, and the ending is quite different from the movie. A must read for "Strangelove" fans.

Red Alert (originally published as Two Hours to Doom in Gt Britain) is an excellent book: gripping, tense, written in good, economical, and forceful language, and (to this very civilian layman, at least) marvellously realistic. I can see why Stanley Kubrick bought the film rights to this little novel: its storyline alone is well worth the price of admission, and with Kubrick and Terry Southern's collective imagination working it up to the screenplay for Dr. Strangelove, it could not miss as a film. Peter Bryant/Peter George did exceedingly well with this book and it remains an excellent read. My only criticism is that the current edition issued for sale has not been sufficiently proofread and edited: there are some typos and omitted words in the text. If the present publishers would amend these minor flaws, this little book would be that much better to read, very good as it is anyway. The Cold War may be over, but this story set in the late 1950s is still a cracking good read. Nothing like a thoroughly good and credible Cold-war thriller to fire the imagination and to get the blood racing. A five-star+ rating.

This book places the reader at the center of the Cold War as it becomes hot. Taut prose, suspense and written by someone with a military assessment background. this book makes "Failsafe" look like a exercise of Fifth graders. BUY IT!