The President Had Ninety Seconds: A Thermonuclear Holocaust Awaited

The President Had Ninety Seconds: A Thermonuclear Holocaust Awaited is a fictional account of actual events set toward the end of the Cold War era. The US and the USSR had completed the largest buildups of nuclear weaponry in history. While the US was the only nation in history to have used nuclear weapons against an enemy, all the nations on earth feared a repeat of the massive destruction, loss of life, and long-term results of the release of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, to end World War II. Nevertheless, the missile warning systems deep within the granite caverns of NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain complex rang out its alarms four times between November 1979 and June 1980. Each alarm announced missile attacks on the US more than a thousand times greater than the earlier attacks on Japan. As the warning systems projected the location and time of impact for each of the 250 nuclear missiles launched against us, the president's missile warning telecon was convened. With only a few minutes left before the missiles began to strike, NORAD's senior director recapped the situation for the president. Once the missiles began to hit; no capability would remain for nuclear retaliation. Our nuclear strike force would be eliminated while still on the ground. The senior director announced over the telecon, "Mr. President, we now have ninety seconds to approve nuclear retaliation, or our arsenal will be destroyed on the ground." The President Had Ninety Seconds: A Thermonuclear Holocaust Awaited.