Showing titles in Weapons & Warfare

The virus now known as Stuxnet was unlike any other piece of malware built before: Rather than simply hijacking targeted computers or stealing information from them, it proved that a piece of code could escape the digital realm and wreak actual, physical destruction—in this case, on an Iranian nuclear facility.

In April 1986 a series of explosions shook the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Flames lit up the sky, and radiation escaped to contaminate the land and poison the people for years to come. While officials tried to hush up the accident, Svetlana Alexievich spent years collecting testimonies from survivors - clean-up workers, residents, firefighters, resettlers, widows, orphans - crafting their voices into a haunting oral history of fear, anger and uncertainty, but also dark humour and love.

The rapid evolution of radio and radar systems for military use during WWII, and devices to counter them, led to a technological battle that neither the Axis nor the Allied powers could afford to lose. The result was a continual series of thrusts, parries, and counter-thrusts, as first one side then the other sought to wrest the initiative in the struggle to control the ether.

Stalking the Red Bear, for the first time ever, describes the action principally from the perspective of a commanding officer of a nuclear submarine during the Cold War - the one man aboard a sub who makes the critical decisions - taking us closer to the Soviet target than any work on submarine espionage has ever done before. This is the untold story of a covert submarine espionage operation against the Soviet Union during the Cold War as experienced by the commanding officer of an active submarine.

On the morning of August 2, 1990, Iraqi armored divisions invaded the tiny emirate of Kuwait. The Iraqi Army, after its long war with Iran, had more combat experience than the US Army. The Kuwaitis had collapsed easily enough, but the invasion drew fierce condemnation from the United Nations, which demanded Hussein's withdrawal. Undeterred by the rhetoric, the Iraqi dictator massed his forces along the Saudi Arabian border and dared the world to stop him.

From master storyteller and historian H. W. Brands comes the riveting story of how President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur squared off to decide America's future in the aftermath of World War II.

In Countdown, science journalist Sarah Scoles uncovers a different atomic reality: the nuclear age's present. Drawing from years of on-the-ground reporting at the nation's nuclear weapons labs, Scoles interrogates the idea that having nuclear weapons keeps us safe, deterring attacks and preventing radioactive warfare. She deftly assesses the existing nuclear apparatus in the United States, taking listeners beyond the news headlines and policy-speak to reveal the state of nuclear-weapons technology.

By the Sword is an epic history of sword fighting - a science, an art, and, for many, a religion that began at the dawn of civilization in ancient Egypt and has been an obsession for mankind ever since. With wit and insight, Richard Cohen gives us an engrossing history of the world via the sword.

The second Nagorno-Karabakh war—fought between Armenia and Azerbaijan between September 24 and November 10, 2020—was the first war in history won primarily by unmanned systems. This forty-four-day war resulted in a decisive military victory for Azerbaijan. Armenia was outfought, outnumbered, and outspent and lost even though they controlled the high ground in a mountainous region. The fact that Azerbaijan won the war is not extraordinary. What is exceptional is that this was the first modern war primarily decided by unmanned weapons.

In the closing months of the Second World War hundreds of thousands of Japanese, mostly civilians, died. American planes were beginning to run low on plausible targets when it was decided to use two atomic weapons in a final flourish to try to end the war. Richard Overy’s remarkable book rethinks how we should regard this last stage of the war and the role of the bombs. The popular view that bombing worked in this case has now to be set in a broader context of what was happening in Japan in the months before surrender. The easy equation ‘bombing equals surrender’ is no longer viable.

The stories of hibakusha - Japanese for atomic bomb survivors - lie at the heart of this compelling minute-by-minute account of 6 August 1945 - the day the world changed forever as the Enola Gay dropped its payload over Hiroshima, ushering in the nuclear age. These survivors and witnesses, now with an average age of over 90, are the last people alive who can still provide us with reliable and detailed testimony about life in Hiroshima before the bombings.

How to keep you and yours safe from the perils of the modern world. In today's increasingly hostile climate, people are anxious about how to keep themselves safe. Chris Ryan is an expert in dangerous situations, and here he tells you how to keep yourself and your family safe from the perils of modern urban life.

It's 1942 and the Nazis are racing to be the first to build a weapon unlike any known before. They have the physicists, they have the uranium, and now all their plans depend on amassing a single ingredient: heavy water, which is produced in Norway's Vemork, the lone plant in all the world that makes this rare substance. Under threat of death, Vemork's engineers push production into overdrive. For the Allies, the plant must be destroyed.

A comprehensive study of the missile system that formed a critical component of the United States' nuclear arsenal. The Titan II ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) program was developed by the United States military to bolster the size, strength, and speed of the nation's strategic weapons arsenal in the 1950s and 1960s.

The successes of the German Blitzkrieg in 1939-41 were as surprising as they were swift. Allied decision-makers wanted to discover the secret to German success quickly, even though only partial, incomplete information was available to them. The false conclusions drawn became myths about the Blitzkrieg that have lingered for decades.

They were told as little as possible. Their orders were to go to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and report for work at a classified Manhattan Project site, a location so covert it was known to them only by the mysterious address: 109 East Palace.

July 1967: At the Moscow Air Show, the Soviets unveiled six new state-of-the-art aircraft. From among this lineup of new fighters and interceptors stood the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 - purportedly capable of outrunning and outmaneuvering any aircraft in NATO’s inventory. Yet even before its public appearance in Moscow, the MiG-25 had been a grave concern for Western analysts.

For 30 years, Hamish has served and volunteered in conflict zones around the world. As the army's foremost chemical weapons expert, he built a unique first-hand understanding of how to prevent attacks and train doctors on the frontline - saving countless lives in the process. After suffering near-death experiences time and again, Hamish discovered he had a ticking time bomb in his own chest: a heart condition called sudden death syndrome that could kill him at any time. But with a new awareness for the fragility of life, he fought harder to make his count.

In this comprehensive guide to the most widespread conflict in contemporary history, Vladislav Zubok traces the origins of the Cold War in post-war Europe, through the tumultuous decades of confrontation, to the fall of the Berlin Wall and beyond. Drawing on years of research and informed by Zubok’s three decades in the USSR followed by three decades in the West, The Cold War paints a striking portrait of a world on the brink.

Everything you think you know about war is wrong. War is timeless. Some things change - weapons, tactics, leadership - but our desire to go into battle does not. We are in the midst of an age of conflict: global terrorism, Russia's resurgence and China's rise, international criminal empires, climate change and dwindling natural resources. The stakes are high, and we are dangerously unprepared. As a former paratrooper and military contractor, Sean McFate has been on the front lines of deep state conflicts.