A Nuclear Family Vacation: Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry

by Nathan Hodge, Sharon Weinberger

In A Nuclear Family Vacation , husband-and-wife journalists Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger hit the road to explore the secretive world of nuclear weaponry. Weaving together first-class travel writing and crack investigative journalism, the pair pursues both adventures and Why are nuclear weapons still on hair-trigger alert? Is there really such a thing as a suitcase nuke? And which nuclear power plants are most likely to be covers for weapons programs? Their itinerary takes them from the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan to the U.S.'s own top-secret "Site R," opening a unique perspective on the world's vast nuclear infrastructure and the international politics at play behind it.
Sharon Weinberger is a national security reporter focusing on science and technology issues. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post Magazine , Wired , Nature , Discover , and Slate, among other publications. She is also the author of Imaginary A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld

Genres: Nonfiction, Travel, Science, History, War, Military Fiction

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Cav · Rating 3 out of 5]

"What happens when a war ends, but the warriors don’t go home?"

A Nuclear Family Vacation was a fun read at times, but ultimately, it did not meet my expectations. I love reading about The Atomic Age and pretty much everything related, so I put this one on my list when I came across it. Unfortunately, despite fielding such interesting subject matter, the writing was a bit too flat and dry for my tastes. The book begins with the quote above.

Co-authors Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger are married, and are both journalists. Nathan Hodge is a Washington, D.C.-based writer who specializes in defense and national security. Sharon Weinberger is an American journalist and writer on defense and security issues.

Nathan Hodge:

Sharon Weinberger:


The book opens with a decent intro, and I was excited to see where the authors would take the writing. The premise of the book sounded fun, and I had high hopes.

Although there is quite a lot of interesting content here, I found the delivery of it to be lacking. I am admittedly extremely picky on how readable I find my books, and my reviews are always very heavily weighted towards this criteria.

The quote from the start of this review continues:

"...One summer, we decided to tour those Cold War nuclear battlefields, the places where atomic combat never took place. That trip led us further into the world of nuclear weaponry, a complex with global reach. Eventually our trip took us to destinations in five countries and ten U.S. states."

In this quote, the authors talk about the inspiration for writing this book:

"The idea of a nuclear family vacation first occurred to us in early 2005, around the time of year when many families begin thinking about trips to Disneyland or the Jersey Shore. We faced the same dilemma as any married couple: how to see some new sights, visit family, and have fun, all in the space of a few short weeks. During our discussions, we hit on the somewhat whimsical idea of a “nuclear family vacation,” a trip to key nuclear weapons sites. Conveniently enough, these sites were located in proximity to assorted family members: a cousin in Los Alamos, birthplace of the atomic bomb, an aunt in Las Vegas, near the site where nuclear weapons were once set off on a regular basis, and a brother in northern California, not far from the lab that physicist Edward Teller built.."

They talk about how long it took to put together the source material for the book in this bit of writing:

"This is a travelogue comprising just over two years of vacations, not two years of solid travel, meaning that every vacation day we got, we went, well, someplace nuclear. While our friends went to Florida, Crete, or the south of France, we waited in lines for visas, begged the U.S. Army to let us into a secretive base in the middle of the Pacific, or poked around in underground silos where the keys to nuclear Armageddon were locked in little boxes. Just like some real vacations, there were trips that didn’t go quite right; there were momentary regrets, and even the occasional argument. In other words, it wasn’t always fun, and sometimes—when we actually arrived where we were going—we in¬ deed wished we were somewhere else, even back at home. But like on all memorable vacations, the good outweighed the bad, and we came back a bit richer than when we left. And after all, how many vacation itineraries allow you to see Iranian yellowcake?"

After the invention and deployment of the first nuclear bombs in the Second World War, the stage was set for a Cold War between the Western powers and communist Russia. The two nations embarked on a decades-long arms race, and stockpiled an insane amount of apocalyptic, civilizational-ending weapons.
They write:

"In 1966, the United States had a staggering 32,193 weapons in its stockpile. By 2006, the exact number of deployed warheads was classified, but it was estimated to be around 6,000 and dropping. Despite the consolidation of nuclear facilities and the decline in the number of weapons, the cost of maintaining the nuclear stockpile has not decreased. In 2006, the United States spent $6.61 billion on the nuclear weapons complex. In 1984, that amount (in 2006 dollars) was $6.34 billion. In other words, the United States is spending today about the same amount of money on nuclear weapons that it was at the height of the Cold War."

The formatting of the book was well done. The chapters are separated according to the geographic locations they visited. They are:
• A Visit to the Nevada Test Site
• Travels Through New Mexico’s Nuclear Landscape
• Exploring the Future of Nuclear Weapons at Sandia and Livermore
• Uncovering the Secrets of Uranium Production in Tennessee
• Searching for Strategery in Nebraska
• Visiting Missile Silos in the Great Plains
• The Rebirth of Site R, the Government’s Secret Nuclear Bunker
• Huntsville’s Space Odyssey
• Vacationing in the Marshall Islands
• Promoting Nuclear Tourism in Kazakhstan
• In Search of Russia’s Secret Nuclear Cities
• Nuclear Junketeering in Iran
• Epilogue: Next Year in North Korea

********************

A Nuclear Family Vacation was a decent book, although I found the writing a bit slow more often than not.
I would still recommend it.
3 stars.

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll admit to being a fan of atomic kitsch, and in the decade between when I bought this book and when I finally read it, it's moved from non-fiction to its own kind of history of the Bush era. America's atomic history and present is scattered and hidden behind security fences. While some parts, like the Trinity test site, are more-or-less publicly accessible, with tours available if you're willing to follow government rules, other places, like Hanford or the Pantex Assembly Plant, are both fairly radioactive and "go-fuck-yourself" classified.

The people that Hodge and Weinberger talk to are proud of their role in national security, but also profoundly adrift. When this book was written, in the doldrums of the Bush era, everyone was scrambling for a bit of the agile, networked, counter-terrorism related money pipe. Nukes were both dowdy and tremendously expensive. There are some good laughs here, with half-empty "innovation centers" next to national labs experiencing bureaucratic collapses. My favorite part of the book was the tour of Kwajalein, a South Pacific atoll instrumented as a test range for ICBMs, and home to some of the purest forms of Homo Defensus Contractorus imaginable. A single missile shot at Kwaj costs about $100 million. Of course, it's not just beer sodden Americans there. Thousaunds of Marshall Islanders lead a tenuous existence, blasted off their islands by 1950s testing and subsisting on very unequal US aid. It's a hard life in the South Pacific.

A Nuclear Family Vacation doesn't have answers for question of what to do with the expensive and fail-deadly white elephants of the nuclear weapons complex, but it's an interesting look at them at a particular moment in time.

[Bon Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah, the incredible paradox of cold war and the whole deterrent paradigm. So you're investing billions into amassing weapons of mass destruction and the whole infrastructure around it, which, almost every single unit of it, has interesting feature of having practically inherent obsolescence. This means it's getting outdated and obsolete as you build it, but what can you do. There's no going back because, well, too many said billions and man hours are already invested. And when it's finally put in place, all new and shiny but relic of another time, you proceed to invest more billions just to keep it going.

For instance, there are so called missileers. That's the crew that sits in some underground hole, ready to fire and unleash mayhem upon receiving an order. The primary function of them and the whole system is to DETERR other nuclear powers to attack and send their nuclear missiles because if they do, they'll have similar swarm of death heading their way to completely ruin their day. But if one nuclear power ever attacks another, deterrent has obviously failed. So in that case, is there really no sane person in the whole chain of command, including missileers as final button pressers, who would think that doubling the nuclear cataclysm, thus turning it into complete armageddon for whole humanity, isn't exactly the best course of action?

That's catch 22 if I ever saw one.

[Stephen Curran · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book about about a couple that decide to visit various places of the world associated with nuclear weapons. Not a very mainstream read but if Armageddon is of interest to you, have a read of this one.

[themacinator · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 2006, 15 years after the end of the Cold War, according to "A Nuclear Family Vacation," and I have no reason to doubt their numbers, the United States spent essentially the same amount of money- $6.61 billion dollars- on the nuclear complex as in 1984, during the height of the Cold War. Part of that money funds "missileers": Air Force officers who sit underground awaiting orders to launch nuclear weapons. Two at a time, they sit strapped into chairs awaiting orders to follow a procedure and simultaneously turn two keys that, when turned, "launch their missiles toward enemy targets." In other words, there is no red button for the president or any other government official to press. They give an order, which travels down a chain of command to two lowly, and apparently young, officers do the deed. These officers rotate in shifts underground, and as Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger write, "It was hard to imagine that keeping young, educated, and highly trained Air Force personnel locked underground was really the best use of resources. If nothing else, it struck us as terribly unimaginative. Nuclear deterrence did not always exist, and it seemed somehow odd to think that it always would."

"A Nuclear Family Vacation" is a journey through an entire system that seems both unimaginative and odd. Hodge and Weinberger, a married couple, decided to spend their vacation time over the course of two years doing something rather imaginative: going somewhere they both of them wanted to go, which turned out to be "key nuclear weapons sites." Some of these were more accessible than others, and it seems that almost all of them were made slightly more accessible by the author's journalism credentials, and as the vacations piled up, Hodge and Weinberger realized they were learning more about the nuclear complex than they thought they would at the outset: the Cold War might be over, but as the numbers I gave at the start prove, the nukes aren't gone. Entire labs, even mini-cities, are devoted to the general upkeep and storage of nuclear weapons: both their maintenance and safety, and ensuring that they still work, without testing them. I learned more about the Bikini Islands than I have ever heard before, but only in the most literal, physical sense. "A Nuclear Family Vacation" is a travelogue, which is a slightly strange way to present the information in the book, but it really is possible that Hodge and Weinberger didn't set out to write a book, and it really is a readable, if slightly motley book. On the other hand, for dorks like me with a true pacifist, anti-nuke bent, the information falls slightly short: I kept waiting for More, and the travelogue genre doesn't really allow for that. Perhaps the book is most successful in this way, as a travelogue with a twist that leaves you searching for more.

[Benjaminxjackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

As someone who grew up in the final years of the Cold War, I found this book to be an entertaining read. I had considered doing a similar kind of trip, but just to the Trinity and Las Vegas nuclear test sites.

The descriptions of the missile silo crews, the scientists, and the other people involved were great. The description of the beleaguered Kazakh diplomat in the wake of the movie Borat was great. I also liked the chapters on the Marshall Islands and the visits to the former Soviet Union.

Probably the most important part of the book is the epilogue, in that the authors summed up what they had learned. "There is no leadership with respect to the world's most powerful weapon, a frightening prospect given the current state of affairs."

The other powerful statement was that "considering nuclear war was a serious business. Today, that discussion has largely be abdicated by our top intellects."

There is some interesting history in the book as well. The book says that U.S. diplomats are advised from even informally recognizing Iranian diplomats at cocktail parties abroad. (This is insane.) It also says that a high-level overture from Tehran to the U.S. sent through the swiss in 2003 was reportedly ignored by the White House. And we wonder why we have all these troubles.

I have two critiques of the book: one heavy and one light.

The heavy one is that the themes of those quotes should have been set out more clearly in each chapter. The chapters build up to those conclusions, but they feel episodic. It is like each chapter was written as a magazine article first. Those are powerful, important statements for people to know, and I wish they had been put in better context.

The light one is that there should have been more pictures. The descriptions of each place made me want to see them. A photo of Kwajalein in the South Pacific, of the One-Eyed Baby in Kazakhstan, and one of the Greenbrier resort would have been great.

This book would be a good read for anyone interested in foreign policy, nuclear weapons, and their history.

[Jeff Jellets · Rating 5 out of 5]

A splendid journey through missile silos, secret cities, clandestine government labs and sundry other places that glow-in-the-dark!

Husband and wife authors Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger may have written the quintessential travelogue on the world of nuclear weapons. Wry, witty and always fascinating, the authors traipse from Trinity, New Mexico -- the site of America’s first successful nuclear test -- to Kazakhstan – where Sacha Baron Cohen’s comedic character Borat seems to have caused the country about as much grief as Semipalatinsk, the Soviet equivalent to the U.S. Nevada nuclear testing site. The tour is amazingly illuminating, spanning some 70 years of atomic weapons development, and takes the reader to more than a few destinations that most average Americans probably never even knew existed.

Part of this book’s success is indeed its ability to decode the amazingly complex world of the “nuclear complex” and connect, like numbered dots in a child’s coloring book, government labs, secret cities, manufacturing centers, test sites, and nuclear launch sites into a bigger picture. But more importantly, authors Hodge and Weinberger bring an expert blend of place, personality, science, history and folklore to the subject that avoids the trap of stale, cold war, strategic analysis and instead opens the door to the culture of the nuclear complex, which is filled with strange locales, quirky characters, and plenty of oddities. That’s not to say that Hodge and Weinberger don’t tackle the more serious issues – such as why the U.S. still has nuclear weapons and where we have them pointed – but there’s refreshingly little sermonizing.

As tour guides go, one couldn't ask for better than Hodge and Weinberger, and the trek into the semi-secret world of the atomic is worth every step. A Nuclear Family Vacation is as much a trip into the weird, as it is a trip into history. But the blend is so well done that it easily satisfies both cravings.

[Robu-sensei · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this book offers many surprising and fascinating insights into the current state of nuclear weaponry—especially outside the USA—I felt it was a bit too heavily weighted toward policy, as opposed to science. Although the authors bill themselves as nuclear "tourists," however, their journeys would not have been possible without their credentials and connections as reporters. On the other hand, combining their unusual access to semi-secret nuclear sights with their independence of the US government (among others), the husband-and-wife teams provides us a unique perspective on America's Cold-War nuclear legacy.

[Bryan Whitehead · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book disappointed me. For starters, the title implies that the work is a travel guide to destinations with some connection to something nuclear (most likely weapons). However, many of the places the authors visit aren’t open to the public. Instead, Nathan Hodge (who writes for Jane’s and other prestigious publications) and Sharon Weinberger (who has a similarly impressive résumé) use their working press status to get into places the public can’t go and talk to people who wouldn’t give you or me the time of day. Their subject is fascinating stuff, and they write reasonably clearly. It just turned out to be less of a fun “vacation” and more of a journalist’s teeny peek behind closed doors.

[B_rodger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly, even though this is a very informative and well-reported book, marks off for the title and design. I was expecting more of a travel book with some personality, and this book is absolutely not that. But it still scratched my ongoing nuclear itch — the chapter on the Marshall Islands in particular was fascinating. Thumbs up if you’re interested in in-depth looks at the worldwide nuclear complex; a big meh if you want rollicking travel.

[Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

My kiddo was studying Russia in school, they had to do a topic on an era. She chose the Cold War Era (before all the current events) and we found loads of interesting material. It became a rabbit hole I fell down looking for resources she could use to do her report and project (she's 12 and we had to request a lot of things through the library.)

Interesting read!

[Stephen Yoder · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't believe it took me this long to take this book down from the shelf to read it. Of course, the timing couldn't be better, in many ways, what with Obama having recently made the atomic deal with Iran and then Trump saying the he wants to bulk up our own nuclear weaponry (to what end? to attack whom?).

One thing I really enjoyed about Nathan & Sharon's writing in this book are the times where they let silence hang in the air after they ask a particularly thought-provoking question. Or, at the very least, I enjoyed how they portrayed these difficult moments. It seems as though there were plenty of them going around in this industry where billions are spent to maintain weapons . . . which no one actually believes will ever be used. . . but they have to be ready! And then there are all the scientists and previous investments in nuclear weapons design. . . so *more* people should become nuclear weapons designers, right? At whom will we aim those new weapons? The ICBMs in our western plains states are still there, hundreds & hundreds of them, in silos, being manned by various crews. And just what is the purpose of their mission underground, now that the Soviet Union has been Former for quite some time now?

I loved the premise of visiting these far-flung locations just to get a fresh look at the insanely contradictory decisions made during the Cold War, many of which have only slowly been reversed. Cheyenne Mountain-->built for millions of dollars by digging tons & tons of rock out of a Colorado mountain. . . and obsolete the moment it was built by the increasing megatonnage of Russian ICBMs. The Greenbriar bunker-->created at the cost of millions, dug deep into the Earth. . . but once it was made it would have taken 6 hours for both houses of Congress to even make it from DC (if the roads were clear). Time for Russian missiles to have turned DC into dust? Oh, about 30 minutes. Even if they could have made it there in time, would those congressmen have been willing to leave their wives behind to die in a nuclear holocaust? Poppycock.

So much folly, so hidden from view. I love it that this book brings that folly to the forefront.

Oh, yeah--and the chapters about Iran and Russia & Kazakhstan were really quite entertaining as well.

[Haiko Van Der Leeuw · Rating 3 out of 5]

What sounded like an interesting book turned out to be a boring flyer.

[DW Rowlands · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fairly interesting--though far more outdated than when I originally purchased it--book on the US's nuclear weapons facilities in the first decade of the 21st Century.

[Marianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, but I thought there would be some dark humor to it. Not as much as I thought so it rates only okay.

[George Grant · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dated

[Ivy]

I was dizzy with excitement when I saw this book, and I actually bought it in hardback (I was tipsy after an early-afternoon soiree with white wine and oysters down on the waterfront, so I was caught up in some kind of dandy boho whirlwind of excess).

Anyway, I loved it because I love nuclear weapons, but I find the title and jacket description EXTREMELY misleading. I thought it was billed as a road-trip/vacation narrative by people who are fascinated by nuclear history and visit various landmarks of nuclear tourism. Rather, the authors are a pair of international journalists, and while they do visit a vast array of nuclear tourism destinations, their journalist credentials allow them all kinds of access and interviews. These are all interesting, but to me, that's not tourism, that's journalism. Quibbles? Perhaps I am just jealous that I don't get to fly into Dubrovsk for the day to interview gruff post-Soviet scientists. But I also found it oddly and non-geographically organized, which distanced it further from a travelouge. Why not just call it an overview of nuclear disarmament?

[Paul McBride · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and informative book regarding atomic tourism. It was a little light on some spots, and unfortunately a little dated (obviously not the fault of the authors). After reading the much newer book Command and Control if is easy to see how once the Cold War ended America did not and still doesn't know what to do with their nuclear arsenal. The plans if you want to call them that for using nuclear weapons if it ever came to that against the USSR were ridiculously scary. Some targets were targeted with up to 10 warheads. That being said what I think is now scary is that because the USA and Russia don't test these weapons anymore we don't really know if they still work (if you are against these type of weapons you probably think this is good and don't care if they work) but we also don't now really what happens in their non use like how they break down and is this so thing we need to be concerned about. There are still a lot of plutonium pits out their not to mention missiles and bombs. Are we opening ourselves up to a catastrophic nightmare?

[Peter Sprunger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very informative but a bit repetitive. Their main thesis is that the weapons complex is looking for an identity in the post Cold War era. They make this evident at every site they visit. This is the main downside to the book; each chapter seems to have the same message but at a different location. As an experimental nuclear physicist I am familiar with the national labs in the U.S. (Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, and Livermore) and reading their experiences at those labs was very interesting for me. However, I had a hard time getting into the rest of the book.

[Smellsofbikes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent. Written by a staff writer from Slate and one from Wired, and the writing style is very similar to both. The idea was to visit as many of the world's nuclear weapons sites as possible, and they did an excellent job, touring Los Alamos, Livermore, Oak Ridge, a number of missile silos, Cheyenne Mountain, a huge abandoned Soviet underground test site in Kazakhstan, and even a tour inside an Iranian uranium concentration site. It has a lot of depth and detail and is entirely worth reading.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

A married couple (journalists) travel the United States (and a few places abroad) doing what they refer to as "nuclear tourism". They learn firsthand nuclear history of the US and a few other countries, and get access to some pretty interesting stuff. And, because it is about the nuclear situation at home and abroad, it is ever so slightly unnerving.

I had a blast reading it, and since the book is a few years old now, I'm dying to know what, if anything, has changed or evolved since they wrote it.

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The husband-wife authors of this heavily-researched 2006 book explore the world of nuclear bombs. They use irony and sarcasm in good measure.

In an interesting chapter on the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, they quote a 2005 speech by nuclear physicist Richard Garwin in which he warns that there is an “almost 100 percent chance” a U.S. city will be struck by a nuclear bomb in the next ten years. Good-bye. OVER AND OUT. Wait a minute . . . ten years has come and gone. Pleasantville, PA is still here !! Whew.

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not really a travel book per se, since you can't actually visit most of these places if you aren't a reporter. But the "vacation" metaphor is really just an excuse for a portrait of the American nuclear weaponry ecosystem (plus a few others). Readable, informative and (usually) insightful - definitely a worthwhile read for anyone with an interest in Cold War history or an interest in where nuclear policy goes from here.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I expected this to be an eccentric travel book, or perhaps a history book, but it turned out to be a treatise on the current state of nuclear politics. I feel like I have an unusually strong background in national security issues, but fortunately this title is also very accessible to any reader with a nagging curiosity about the world nuclear apparatus.

[Barb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had no concept about the nuclear establishment before reading this book. I felt completely removed from the productions, storage, plans.
I enjoyed the relationship of the authors, that they were traveling during breaks from work do complete the research for the book. I could understand what they were describing.

[Nick Black]

I've heard this is not so great a book, but I'm hoping to do the whole nuclear safari thing next summer, and ought read it I suppose...from the library. It's high time I figure out how the GT library works; I've got a list of about 1300 DOI's I've accumulated over the years I need pull one of these days anyway....

[g0rd0 · Rating 3 out of 5]

These authors were definitely on vacation when they wrote this book. Granted they were visiting secret high security locations but they rarely got past the lobby and then only to the visitors museum guided by a official spokesperson who dodged all questions. The book did take me to places I'd never known before but I was disappointed at the depth of the tour.

[Kelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

All I can say is that anyone who finds this book to be the slightest bit "dry" has clearly never been forced to read an IAEA technical manual. And no, the book isn't perfect - a visit to Pantex would have been far more interesting to read about than the visits to Russia and Iran - but it is a great deal of fun...which is not something that can often be said of nuke books.

[Devon · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favorite section was about folks who work in missile silos. Some parts were a bit on the dry side, but it was mostly interesting. Worth a read if you're hoping to be able to hold your own in conversations about nuclear weaponry.

[Philip Hollenback · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first part of this book is a pretty entertaining travelogue about the nuclear weapon industry in America. The second part details similar activities in other countries.

One weakness is the stuff in other countires is pretty vague, as is to be expected. Still, definitely worth a read.