The Fate of the Earth

by Jonathan Schell

When Jonathan Schell heard all that loose talk about attainment of objectives in a limited nuclear war, it was too much for him. He did what all of us would like to do: he wrote a book. It's very pessimistic. The mere presence of all those weapons is enough to ensure that sometime, somewhere, someone is going to set one off. Schell makes sure all of us know the horrendous possibilities of a nuclear exchange and all the reasons for bringing such possibilities to a halt. Everyone agrees. The question is, how do we get these monsters under control?
A republic of insects and grass
The second death
The choice
Index

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Politics, Philosophy, History, Environment, Journalism

255 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1982

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 3 out of 5]

I went through this period of being interested in the Foundations of Mathematics, and read several books on the subject. If you haven't come across one, they are full of Greek letters and odd-looking formulas. You tend to get the first major revelation round about a quarter of the way through; after a lot of preliminary character development, there is a fanfare of trumpets, and you find out that x + y = y + x, or something like that. I hear a few people at the back scoffing that they knew that already. Yes, but are you quite certain it has to be that way? Why are you so sure?

I was reminded of this when I read Jonathan Schell. In 200 carefully reasoned pages, he explains why it's not a good idea to use nuclear weapons to destroy all life on Earth. In fact, he comes to the conclusion that it's just about the worst idea anyone's ever thought of, and should not be considered under any circumstances whatsoever.

OK, it's always the same people. You knew that too, did you? You're quite sure? Not even to prevent a political system you really hate from being generally adopted? Not even to prevent that system being enforced against the wishes of a large part of the world's population? Not even as a threat, which you probably wouldn't carry out, in order to prevent that from happening?

Right. I see. Well, maybe you should read his book then, shouldn't you?

[Kevin Tole · Rating 5 out of 5]

First Review - 1988
Fascinating book which has lived with me (and I with it and its ramifications) since the publication of the paperback back in the 80s.

The death of Death itself.

Now that we've come up with more than one way to bring about species extinction it seems more than pertinent especially with the turn-the-heat-up of the current American and Russian and Chinese administrations. We appear to have a solemn and as yet unrequited Death Wish. It's now just a question of the speed with which we want to bring it on at.

Reread 2024
It will take some time to assimilate this reread at age 68 rather than 33.

The three sections of The Fate of the Earth originally appeared as separate articles in The New Yorker. They were collated and published in book form in 1982 and received with great praise from every critic. It is a fundamental document on disarmament and nuclear weapons and an insight into thinking at the time of its publication. A second Edition which included Schell’s later book The Abolition was published in 2000 by Stanford University Press.

As a child in the 60s I remember having regular nightmares of nuclear holocaust and visions of mushroom clouds still persist in my dreams. When I first read the book sometime in the 80s it scared the bejaysus out of me. And to a degree it still does. However to some extent the world has moved on. Schell predicted in his original introduction how the book and his conclusions would be received and what its impact would be but he could not have predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, both of which he acknowledges in the opening essay to the second edition. This second edition opening essay is a bit of an eye-opener and throws much light on things I was expecting when reading the last part, The Choice, of the first edition – but more of that later.

What the book investigates through careful ethical and moral thought is the irrationality of nuclear weapons in the face of potential human annihilation and nuclear holocaust merely by the presence of nuclear weapons. Schell is relentless in pressing home his argument. Yet as a species we have managed to shy away from nuclear holocaust, to pull back from the brink achieved in October 1962 with the Cuban missile crisis, and to continue with war, murder of innocents and killing on a level that can well be construed as genocide in diverse places throughout the globe. You only have to consider the behaviour of Israel in the Middle East to see how one sovereign state pursues violence against another in pursuit of what it wishes to define as its own security and sovereignty without the use of nuclear weapons (but with the presence of nuclear weapons underlining it’s aggression) (And I note here that some right wing Israeli politicians have called for the nuking of Gaza). The first two parts of ‘Fate of the Earth’ have a consistency and cogency which is almost beyond argument apart from the fact that humanity did indeed draw back from nuclear annihilation. It is still there. In fact it will never go away. The knowledge of how to make a nuclear weapon once discovered can never be ‘undiscovered’.




My first major thought on rereading this book in the 21st century is that Schell’s concentration on nuclear disarmament and the threat of species extinction through nuclear holocaust has been superseded. We now are aware of the existential threat of Climate Change through global warming which is in itself a property of technological innovation based on fossil fuel economies. If you read the book and replace the threat of climate change for nuclear holocaust then the arguments are just as cogent and pressing and I would argue that the existential threat of climate change is greater than that of nuclear holocaust – in fact, the former may hasten the latter – and not the other way round as Schell identifies in the book.

”A society that systematically shuts its eyes to an urgent peril to its physical survival and fails to take any steps to save itself cannot be called psychologically well.”

We hasten our extinction through our addiction to a carbon-based economy and a system which demands ever increasing growth in a finite environment with limited resources held in balance by delicate mechanisms which can be easily pushed into chaotic, unpredictable behaviour. It is not radiological poisoning of the upper atmosphere we should be extremely concerned with but the increase in greenhouse gases which are heating the planet and driving weather patterns to increasingly extreme and chaotic behaviour by rising energy levels driving those behaviours. The ecosphere is indeed a single living entity and by our historic behaviour we have done our best to destroy the fundamental source of life on this planet. Human survival depends on the habitability of the Earth.


We drew back from nuclear holocaust. We are attempting through various measures to change the inevitability of climate change. We recognise that behaviours in the past threaten the future. Yet speculation is a poor substitute for experience. Experience gives us facts. When we don’t like the results and implications of those experiences we make excuses and rule out the findings as invalid. For humanity to take on the grave nature of the threat, the results must apparently be irrefutable and unignorable for them to be taken as proof of causation. We consistently underestimate potential harm. If the Earth is rendered uninhabitable then all previous forms of death are redundant. We cannot afford to ‘dare’ and underestimate the destruction of the ecosphere.


To say that human extinction is a certainty is as deceptive as saying that extinction can be ruled out. Neither of these positions are of course ‘testable’. Therefore we are forced to make decisions on uncertain information and probability. However the gravity of the outcome effects the choice of action.


What Schell eventually and crucially comes up with in relation to nuclear holocaust (and which I hope to have shown is equally applicable to climate change) is twofold. In order to effect survival what is needed is complete governance system change and Love (John Lennon got there first in 1967 with ‘All You Need Is Love’). He arrives here through a many-staged argument which at times is flawed and open to both debate and misapprehension. It is however important to bear in mind the message and not the messenger. What Schell is intent on is raising the awareness of annihilation against survival. Arguing against some of the stages of his thesis is beside the point as is arguing against the tenor of his delivery (he seems at times like a cross between a Victorian father explaining away the behaviour of his servants and two characters from ‘ Dad’s Army’ – Private Frazer and Lance Corporal Jones – one given to saying ‘Doomed we are – all doomed!’ and the other given to shouting ‘Don’t Panic!’ whilst panicking). I could continue writing this review for many pages - in fact my review could become its own paper, and that is not what this site is about.

It is perhaps enough to say that the power of this book continues to shake and raise important questions on the nature of humanity and the survival of the Earth and its contents.

[Jose Moa]

Textual: "Every person in the world now has in his bones a measurable deposit of radioactive strontium-90 traceable to the fallout from atmospheric nuclear testing."

[Kenneth · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first and perhaps the only book I've ever encountered that addressed the spiritual ramifications of living under the continuous threat of nuclear holocaust. When you're aware that at any moment not only you and your country, but the whole world and the future of humanity could be wiped out without notice, how do you maintain the sort of basic hope for a better tomorrow that motivates you to work towards any but the most shallow and immediate goals? It's a recipe for nihilism.

Schell offered his ideas for a feasible plan to head off nuclear conflict. As it happened, the end of the Cold War put this issue on the back burner, although the Bomb is still much more of a danger than most people realize, either by way of regional warfare, terrorism, or nuclear accident.

But the concerns of this book are as relevant as ever here in the Anthropocene Epoch. If global climate change is indeed an existential threat which we seem incapable of resisting, how do we avoid nihilism and despair? If the punk cri de coeur "No Future" is the literal truth, how do we not just simply give up?

[Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those rare books that captures a moment in time but transcends time to become a classic. It's also a powerful indictment of the cold war arms race. Plus it is impeccably written. Simple and profound.

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a big fan of Jonathan Schell, having long enjoyed his reportage from Vietnam. An extract from this book was published in The Sunday Times in 1982, and it was gripping enough to make me go out and buy the book. I have since made several attempts to read it, but the prospect of total annihilation that Schell paints was so appalling, I found it impossible to finish. Perhaps it is a reflection on my age and changed circumstances, but now nearly 30 years after its publication I was able to finish it.

The state of international relations has undoubtedly changed. The end of the Cold War has removed some of the urgency from the threat, but the weapon stockpiles remain, so it has not gone away totally.

When I think back to the height of that period of confrontation, of crisis after crisis, I am reminded of a lovely line from the Grateful Dead,

"That last good morning sunrise, will be the brightest you've ever seen..."!

[Martha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book pretty much as soon as it was published in 1982. It was a time when there were actually conversations among supposedly lucid people - people in power - about how to plan and survive a nuclear exchange between the Cold War superpowers. His portrait of the aftermath is jarring even now, when we all think we know everything and are practically blase about the horror we as a species can bring upon ourselves.

[Kazen]

A couple hundred pages to state the obvious - a large scale nuclear war would be a bad thing, and could easily lead to the extinction of humans and perhaps the collapse of the Earth's entire ecosystem. A random quote for flavor:

It might be well to consider for a moment the novel shape of the mental and emotional predicament that the nuclear peril places us in - a predicament that exists not because of a psychological failing or the inadequacy of the human mind but because of the actual nature of the thing that we are trying to think about. Strange as it may seem, we may have to teach ourselves to think about extinction in a meaningful way....

I would have given up much earlier but I went through the trouble of tracking down a physical copy so I was reluctant. No idea how this earned the blurbs plastered all over the cover of my edition.

[A.A. Armstrong · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot totally finish reading this book ... I got through half of it ... I get the point... having worked as a Military Intelligence civilian Officer... I read enough to know more about nuclear war than I did in 77 when I worked at planning for one aspect of WW3 ... we made maps .. nuclear target maps ... I can't say what was on the maps or where we got our data from ... but it helped us (Canada) prepare for WW3, which I was told would happen within 3 years. The trauma from that job lingers with me today .... which is the primary reason why I did not finish the book ... but I thought I should present some kind of review anyways.
This book confirmed that all my nightmares about nuclear war were well founded.
Schell was a war correspondent for part of his career, and he knew from that .... we sure as hell don't need a nuclear war.
The Science, and philosophy and politics, and madness of nuclear war are all covered in this book.
I think this book succeeded in making sure that the first Cold War didn't become hot ... if more people read this book today ... particularly military persons in the nuclear weapon countries, then maybe fewer of our leaders would flirt with the idea of making the current cold war become hot.
In the end I guess we are all in the Hands of God.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in the 1980s, this book is divided into two parts. The first is a through scientific examination of what the results would be from the (at the time) current state of megatonnage in nuclear bombs stocked by the US and the USSR. The second part gets into a whole lot of philosophical stuff that was a bit more difficult for me to wade through. The first part was chilling enough. Schell makes the excellent point (among many others) that our entire experience of atomic bombs are the two dropped on Japan in 1945. They were miniscule by today's standards. So should all of our nuclear fury be released now, there would be no survival. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were devastating and somewhere near 200,000 people died. Between the immediate destruction and the lingering effects of higher megatonnage today, Schell makes you truly wonder whether anyone would survive. Even the cockroaches would be hard pressed.

[Evan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a best-seller back in the early '80s. It speculated on the likely effects on humanity and the planet in the event of nuclear war. I remember at the time being blown away by the book (no pun intended, seriously). It was a page-turner, well presented and lively, with plenty of supporting facts to back its assertions. At the time, I probably would have rated it five stars, but, honestly, I can't remember anything in it anymore except the notion that the roaches would survive, which is something that has since become a bit of a cliche that everyone knows. Shed of its Cold War gravitas, it might be a bit of a relic, not that nukes or the mischievous people who love them have really gone away.

(KevinR@Ky)

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

I grew up in the '80s; for me, that was synonymous with the expectation of dying in a nuclear war. Read this if you want to know what that was like.

"As human life and the structure of human existence are seen in the light of each person's daily life and experience, they look impressively extensive and solid, but when human things are seen in the light of the universal power unleashed onto the earth by nuclear weapons they prove to be limited and fragile, as though they were nothing more than a mold or lichen that appears in certain crevices of the landscape and can be burned off with relative ease by nuclear fire."

[Greg Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty stunning look at the devastation that would be wrought by a nuclear holocaust. You can see why it was such an immediate sensation on release.

Roughly divided into three sections, the first—on the physical destruction due to nuclear weapons—is the best and scariest depiction of those events I've read, both finely-written and scarily-detailed. The middle section—where he impresses on the larger consequences of a human extinction—is probably twice as long as it needs to be, almost feeling like he's doing donuts in the parking lot. But it is pretty convincing how nuclear annihilation, even if it doesn't feel imminent in the same way as in crises like the Cuban Missile Crisis, is still necessarily just moments away and can't help but infect the rest of life with a subterranean dread and sickness.

The last chapter harkens back to some of the immediate-post-WWII literature I've read, except informed by the subsequent 3+ decades of Cold War. Schell convincingly argues that in order to destroy the threat of nuclear weapons, we must strike at the root of national sovereignty that underlies the mutual annihilation. While the threat of war has been used to ensure national sovereignty for centuries, nuclear arms have irreversibly placed ultimate victory outside of the realm of possibility.

In much of his discussion about the societal and psychological effects of looming annihilation, it's unreal how easily and accurately it transposes onto our modern feelings of doom due to climate change.

[Matthew Mandarino · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5 The nuclear predicament may not be at the forefront of the average person’s thoughts anymore (as compared to the Cold War), but the peril of self-extinction, even when consciously dormant, is just as likely to occur.

“Hence, in the months after a holocaust there would be no activity of any sort, as, in a reversal of the normal state of things, the dead would lie on the surface and the living, if there were any, would be buried under-ground.”

“In one sense, extinction is less terrible than death, since extinction can be avoided, while death is inevitable; but in another sense extinction is more terrible-is the more radical nothingness-because extinction ends death just as surely as it ends birth and life. Death is only death; extinction is the death of death.”

“And when, far more ridiculously, politicians let us know of their desire for a "place in history," it is not only their swollen vanity that invites anger but their presumption in trying to reserve a place in a history whose continued existence their own actions place in doubt.”

“For if we try to guarantee our safety by threatening ourselves with doom, then we have to mean the threat; but if we mean it, then we are actually planning to do, in some circumstance or other, that which we categorically must never do and are supposedly trying to prevent-namely, extinguish ourselves.
This is the circularity at the core of the nuclear-deterrence doctrine; we seek to avoid our self-extinction by threatening to perform the act.”

[John McNeil · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got it this for $2 at a bookstore in Nairobi and it had me getting existential like never before. Emailed my nuclear weapons prof from Brown about it bc it had me goin crazy.

Really great read about nuclear weapons. Goes from a detailed explanation of the physics of them to moral and philosophical arguments as to why it’s incredibly stupid that they still exist. Given how old it is it was interesting to read his predictions and hopes for the future.

Think everyone should read this given the fact that we all exist in a world with nuclear weapons, and really think every politician should.

[Peter Landau · Rating 5 out of 5]

We forget so many horrible things that people have done. They fade in time. Eighty years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Jonathan Schell’s writings keep the evil of atomic warfare in the forefront of our minds.

[John Frederick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book shortly after it was published in 1982. Schell's ability to make the incomprehensible understandable for non-nuclear physicists is a notable accomplishment. Because of the readability of the book, we can understand how and why nuclear annihilation is possible and why we should be horrified that it is. The second part of the book reflects on the prospects, not just of mass extinctions, but of the extermination of the human species. Despite being nearly 40 years since I first read it, the horrid scenarios and grim possibilities remain unnerving.
That part of the book reflects more upon the possible extinction of mankind and, in some ways, is more depressing than the hard scientific analysis in the earlier parts of the book. Schell makes many profound reflections on this front. "When an entire community or an entire people is destroyed, most of those who would mourn the victims, or bring perpetrators to justice, or forgive them, or simply remember what occurred, are themselves destroyed." While cooler heads have prevailed to this point in time, the possibility lingers on a distant horizon of madness. Such a possibility had not existed before the Nuclear Age.
Schell believes we must disarm, not just nuclear weapons but all devices of war. He feels strongly that the future of the species trumps national interests and we must come to international agreement that disarmament is the only way to prevent a nuclear holocaust. I fear, particularly in light of the the international trend toward nationalism and the horribly inhumane acts being perpetuated at this moment, that such a dream has become only more elusive since the book was first published.
Schell's writing style (page-long paragraphs, half dozen line-long sentences, sometimes redundant points) may make some readers crazy. I had to reread more than a few passages. But his profound reflections are worth every rambling sentence and endless paragraph. One measure of a classic work is one which remains relevant (indeed crucial) long after it is originally written. This is one such book.

[Mark Valentine · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a primer on extinction, an extended meditation on nuclear annihilation, and an outstanding example of how creative nonfiction should be written, Schell's book serves as the resource for intelligent, moral response. I read my copy with a pencil--underlining and noting.

Nuclear weapons move beyond the zone of deterrence and into extinction. Therefore, Schell argues, they should not be considered warfare anymore. Rather, and here is his solution, the only sane response to their existence lies in their elimination from stockpiles. Their existence should show us that negotiation and diplomacy is the only deterrent to warfare that nation-states need. Abstinence, long and short.

I read this looking for his insight on two pressing problems: the likelihood that North Korea has entered the realm of armed nations and how might I transfer Schell's wisdom in coping with the eventual doom and extinction be viewed in the slow-cooking destruction eminent with Anthropogenic Climate Disruption. For the first, I see NK as just one more nation making the mad dash to destruction so that it can have its place at the table of doom; for ACD, the solution should be the same: Abstinence from carbon products.

With this in mind, like Kafka, I believe that "there is an infinite hope, just not for us."

[S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

sad but true, I took my time reading this book, I put all else aside to read it, and true, many of us will not see the future.
Example:
A nuclear powered ballistic missile submarine is the most destructive machine that was ever created. It can remain submersed and invisible for six months, then within minutes it can surface and shower any landmass on the planet with multiple independently targeted thermonuclear warheads. Once airborne these warheads are virtually unstoppable! They will reenter the atmosphere traveling at 12,000 mph to their target. Each individual submarine can deliver enough nuclear ordnance to destroy an entire continent.
This "creature" can silently lurk off our costs and unleash extension on us so fast when we realize what has happened we will be on the other side of the continuum!

No one creates a weapon that they eventually don't use
Richard Cœur de Lion.

We will see a nuclear holocaust if we all do not play our part in developing "the better man"
a man that is understanding of the miracle of human Life!

someone asked me about Aliens? If they are out there why would they want to contact us?
we are still on the verge of genocidal extension of ourselves.

[Jim3e8 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book greatly depressed me. By the end, the author has proved that eliminating the threat of nuclear holocaust involves total global disarmament, the end of national sovereignty and the wholesale remaking of the politics of the world. The author was hopeful in 1982, and in the immediate aftermath the popular consciousness was stirred and we began the first steps toward disarmament. The problem is that once a threat recedes a bit, humans always forget; we can’t sustain the level of abject fear across multiple generations that is necessary to accomplish this purpose. Now 36 years later, it’s clear we are still doomed.

[John Youngblood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Schell describes the cognitive dissonance of life in a world in which we live with the knowledge of our own extinction hanging over our heads, yet pretend that life is jolly. He details the events of a nuclear Armageddon, and suggests a way out of the plunge toward the abyss. Chilling and confrontational.

[Frank Ashe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully argued piece against a very ugly outcome. The prose is magnificent, which enhances the fear and disgust it evokes.

I have not yet seen a similar piece of writing for our current (2016) predicament of global warming.

[Clifford Wollum · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great read about Atomic power.

[Brent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tough reading...very insightful, meaningful, and thought-provoking...

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Great read. Worth the effort. Nuclear dilemma. Atomic warfare. Timeless. The theme is awesome. Written in 1982.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very hard read, and based on my date started & date finished, a very slow read. I almost immediately gave up on it after reading only a few pages, but persevered.

The whole premise of the book is the extinction of the human species by nuclear annihilation. I know, I know, why read such a book. But it was cited in Dinesh D'Souza's book "Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader" and it intrigued me.

The book was published in 1982, but the subject matter is as apt as 43 years ago; perhaps more so considering the state of the world right now.

The author's conclusion is that the proliferation of nuclear weapons is the main reason keeping any country from using them, &, thus, is the best safeguard against mutual destruction. He still does, however, advocate for the elimination of all weapons of mass destruction & also conventional weapons to assure the continuance of the human species. On that, I will not hold my breath.

[Miles Isham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frequently mentioned by Marty in Einstein’s Monsters, I thought I’d give this a try. Released in the early eighties, it’s fascinating to consider if Schell’s predictions of what would happen if we failed to address the threat of extinction by nuclear weapons (spoiler, we didn’t) came to pass. So, did apathy in the face of the end of our species result in the crazy times we are going through? Now we have the added joys of self-inflicted destruction by climate change is the bomb still warping our lives? I don’t know. I can only promise to unilaterally disarm if I am elected prime minister.

[Belle Meade School]

355.021

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

A difficult book to read, poorly edited, and terribly grim, but a book that is necessary.

[Macy Hare · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book. Maybe a bit too smart for me. Made me a little scared but I now need to go and stop the nuclear bombs