In the spirit of Dr Strangelove and The Atomic Cafe a blackly sardonic people s history of atomic blunders and near misses revealing the hushed up and forgotten episodes in which the great powers gambled with catastropheRudolph Herzog the acclaimed author of Dead Funny presents a devastating account of history s most irresponsible uses of nuclear technology From the rarely discussed nightmare of Broken Arrows 40 nuclear weapons lost during the Cold War to Operation Plowshare a proposal to use nuclear bombs for large engineering projects such as a the construction of a second Panama Canal using 300 H Bombs Herzog focuses in on long forgotten nuclear projects that nearly led to disaster In an unprecedented people s history Herzog digs deep into archives interviews nuclear scientists and collects dozens of rare photos He explores the accidental drop of a Nagasaki type bomb on a train conductor s home the implanting of plutonium into patients hearts and the invention of wild tactical nukes including weapons designed to kill enemy astronauts Told in a riveting narrative voice Herzog the son of filmmaker Werner Herzog also draws on childhood memories of the final period of the Cold War in Germany the country once seen as the nuclear battleground for NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries and discusses evidence that Nazi scientists knew how to make atomic weaponry and chose not to From the Hardcover edition