Mutually Assured Destruction: My Review of David Mace's "Fire Lance"

 I somehow stumbled onto the sci-fi novel “Fire Lance” in High School. It may have played a small role in me moving towards the left during those years (when I was 16 I became a member of the Rocky Mountain Peace (and Justice) Center at least partly because of their position on nuclear weapons). I’ve read it 2-3 times since then, most recently a couple of weeks before this post was published.

It was written in 1986 by a British sci-fi writer named David Mace. I read one of his other books but I didn’t like it very much (Fire Lance is one of my favorite books). It’s one of my favorite books because it’s both politically progressive and reminds me of the centrist/centre-right author Tom Clancy who often wrote about the military (I might go into more detail about this in a future post, but between 1989 and 2009 about 70% of the fiction I read was by Clancy and people like him- since 2009 it has gone down to about 1/4 of the novels I read).

Fire Lance is about a nuclear war between the USSR and the US. It’s not clear when in the future it takes place, but I think maybe it’s supposed to be about 10-20 years in the future from the author’s perspective in 1986. It’s pretty vague about the political situation that became a shooting war. It started with satellites in space going down and then there was some conventional action in Europe, and then it went nuclear. Some large majority of each side’s nuclear arsenal is used before they stop.  Around the same time they stop, nuclear winter sets in. Although almost the entire book takes place on a US naval vessel where they have no idea what it’s like on land outside the underground American command centers (i.e. Cheyenne Mountain), at one point a soldier who spent weeks at the beginning of the war outside those command centers talks about what that was like in the aftermath of such a total nuclear war. The breakdown of society and the freezing conditions that would be part of a nuclear winter are well illustrated.

Both the President and Vice-President are killed and the “government” is made up of the military and national security bureaucrats, all unelected. After the conventional war is over and the nuclear war winds down, they spend their time debating whether or not to start things up again with the Soviets. Before the story starts the “soft-liners” or “‘no more war’ people” in the places like Cheyenne Mountain are eliminated and the debate shits to those who want to wait and see what the Soviets do, and on the other side those who want to start the war again immediately. One of the only significant military units still capable of attacking the USSR is the Vindicator, a futuristic surface ship with a small number of offensive jets and Anti-Submarine Warfare helicopters and the Fire Lance system- hundreds of nuclear armed cruise missiles.

One of the two main characters is David Drexel, a British national working for the US government on national security matters. Although he’s primarily a survivor and bounces between the two factions in the US “Government,” he also has some good progressive commentary about American politics and foreign policy. He criticizes us for supporting totalitarian anti-Communist governments and on a related note for enforcing a foreign policy that is pro-life when it comes to abortion.

The other main character is the Vindicator’s Commanding Officer Captain Richard Bedford. He’s pretty non-political and doesn’t side with either faction. But after learning that the Fire Lance attacks his ship is making on the USSR are not in response to recent nuclear attacks by  the Soviets, he tries to stop the series of missile launches after the first third are launched. A hardliner shoots him for this. The second in command takes over and finishes the three-part series of launches partly because he's a technocrat and partly because the hardliner brought a squad of elite Army soldiers with him and the new CO wants to avoid further bloodshed on the ship. Bedford has some good thoughts about the need to stop the nuclear war.

There’s some interesting scientific commentary about whether or not life on Earth will survive a nuclear winter. Drexel says that the radioactive dust in the atmosphere that blocks out the sun won’t go away but at some point will come down- which I assume means human survivors would be breathing it and it would get into our water. If what Mace has Drexel say is accurate, that can’t be good. I’m also uncertain of this next thing, but it might be true. Drexel says that the radioactive dust in the atmosphere will also destroy the Ozone Layer and that means that undiluted UV rays will get through and destroy almost all life on Earth.

At the end, the Vindicator, once thought to be unstoppable, is stopped by various Soviet attacks and is abandoned. At the very end, as the survivors use life rafts to get to a frozen island nearby, it’s clear that they’re all going to die. If what Drexel said about the ozone is right, everyone is going to die. Overall it’s meant as a very damning illustration of nuclear war.

Three other things I like about it:

1) As I sort of already said, I like the stuff about how the military works and how the Soviets try to stop them.
2) At one point the ship is very close to Ireland and the Captain considers as likely the idea that the Irish would be very hostile to his ship. He thinks- “It wasn’t Ireland’s war. It was Ireland’s planet.”
3) At one point when US military spending is described by the author, the defunding of social programs is mentioned as something that allowed that military spending to be increased.

It’s 314 pages long. I do recommend it for any progressive who enjoys stuff about the military.  You might be able to find it at a used book store but your best chance is probably a library or Amazon (if it becomes ethical to buy from Amazon).

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I wanted to offer some thoughts about nuclear war.

Although I believe that any movement towards a nuke-free world is positive, I DO focus mostly on the US. We started it, and I’m an American. For multiple reasons I would like to see the US change it’s foreign policy in a progressive way and gradually reduce it’s conventional military. It should, towards the very beginning of this process begin getting rid of it’s nukes. As that process is going on, they should negotiate with almost every country on Earth to form a new global alliance. This global alliance should be about a global response to any use of nuclear weapons, where the guilty party will be shunned. I would support getting rid of American nukes right away but I think it would be very difficult for a majority of politicians here to support that outside the context I just described.

Tom

 

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 UPDATE 6/30/22

A friend suggested I read some stuff by a CU-Boulder scientist named Brian Toon. I read a CPR article about his work on nuclear winter and watched a TED Talk he did on the same topic. I then exchanged a few emails with him. I read another article about his work on nuclear winter.

The CPR article is here. The TED Talk is here.

 

As far as the ozone layer, here's what I read in the novel: "Now Ozone is particularly susceptible to chemical degradation, especially by nitrogen containing compounds- and there'll be an awful lot of those in the dust veil, because you get such nitrogen compounds in the smoke produced by combustion.”

Above I wrote: "I’m also uncertain of this next thing, but it might be true. Drexel says that the radioactive dust in the atmosphere will also destroy the Ozone Layer and that means that undiluted UV rays will get through and destroy almost all life on Earth."

I am not sure how much I screwed up (the "dust veil" is the radioactive dust in the atmosphere (actually, although I confirmed that the book says the veil is radioactive, Toon sounded less sure about that, like maybe it's not radioactive)).

Although I wasn't going to ignore that part of the book (the part about humans surviving nuclear winter), I also tried to make it clear that I and the book are not great sources of scientific information (some of what Toon wrote in his emails I didn't totally understand). But Brian Toon IS a great source of scientific information. If you read the two items above and want more, he forwarded to me two articles as attachments that I can forward to you. Let me know.

I'm not saying I have done a great job of this so far, but the more I think about it, the more I think we need to encourage awareness about this issue.

Tom

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UPDATE 7/1/22

One last thing from Prof. Toon:

There are 4 sorts of radioactivity in a nuclear war.  There is prompt radiation released when the bomb goes off.  This would kill a lot of people near ground zero, but they likely die first from blast and fire.  Second if there is a ground burst radioactive isotopes will attach to dust lifted from the ground.  The dust is relatively large and so it falls out fast (hence the name fallout).  This fallout can make a  strip of radiation hundreds of miles long downwind of the explosion.  Anyone in that who doesn't shelter for a week or so is potentially in trouble.  Ground bursts go after things like missile silos so most bombs are air bursts.  The isotopes from these will not attach to large dust particles so they will float around in the air until they get rained out, likely in a week or two.  By the time they reach the ground the radioactivity level will have fallen and so exposure will not be very dangerous.  For instance this happened from a Nevada test, which resulted in a radiation dump in a rain storm in upstate New York.  No one has looked at the rainfall frequency and the deposition of the radiation on the ground so the odds of radiation poisoning are not clear.  Generally the military says don't worry, no one will be hurt.  The forth type of radiation is long lived isotopes that can take decades to decay.   These isotopes explain the 1963 nuclear test ban treaty.  Kids teeth and bones were picking up this radiation.  Generally however, it is believed that this radiation is not much above the natural levels.  So again the military says don't worry.