The Fire of the Gods Series

On July 16, 1945, the 'Trinity' Test effectively brought about the transformation of the 'American Prometheus' into the 'Destroyer of Worlds' along with an expedited dawn of the nuclear age as the Laws of Physics were successfully reappraised by the Homo Sapiens. However, the initial premise and the hopeful promise of the creation of a 'Super Weapon' to end all wars has remained more or less a chimera for humanity even after 7+ decades of its genesis.   The dawn of the nuclear age; following Trinity and the subsequent atomic bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki; unleashed the Cold War-era with nuclear weapons effectively becoming the 'Hanging Sword of Damocles', as famously described by JFK, with the possibility of a potential nuclear catastrophe by accident, miscalculation or madness staying as a very real possibility throughout and the extinction of Homo Sapiens from planet Earth, just a matter of seconds, which fortunately was somehow averted on multiple occasions and humanity, somehow, managed to survive.   Part 1 of this multi-part book series focuses on the evolution of atomic age from its genesis at Los Alamos during World War II till 1960. It covers the subsequent spread of nuclear weapons to Soviet Union and other regional powers based in Europe, namely, the U.K. & France and the transition from nuclear to thermonuclear age for the mankind against the backdrop of Cold War; based on recently declassified documents by the CIA , the U.S. State Department, KGB (after the end of Cold War in the 1990s decade) and other international agencies; thereby, unraveling multiple, tightly-held secrets and lesser known facets of the nuclear age in the process...    Marx had said long ago, "History repeats itself twice, first as tragedy and second as farce." The tragedy of the atomic age is way behind us, in form, of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. However, let's brace up for the farce now...   P.S. The limited time special price for this e-book is to support Nuclear Threat Initiative's (NTI) latest 'Make Nuclear Weapons History' Campaign and in the wake of  Oppenheimer movie's 7 Oscar Wins...

Part 2 of this series analyses as to how, after the transition from nuclear to the thermonuclear weapons, the focus across superpowers shifted towards miniaturization of nuclear warheads and development of novel and difficult to detect & track strategic nuclear delivery vehicles (SNDVs), which witnessed the emergence of ICBMs and SLBMs, after nuclear-tipped torpedoes, thereby, further increasing the risks of nuclear warfare manifold while also reducing the reaction times considerably. The same was underscored by the 1962's Cuba Missile Crisis with the world having almost, nearly reached a nuclear apocalypse with the end of civilization being just seconds away. The recently declassified documents unravel as to how dangerously close the world had come to the verge of that. However, it paved the way for realization of the need for mutual cooperation and multiple treaties to check dangerous nuclear escalations, atmospheric testing & further proliferation.   The detonation of a nuclear weapon by China, a developing nation, in 1964 marked the onset of the nuclear weapons age in Asia, further underscoring the need to check nuclear proliferation which ultimately led to the creation of the NPT regime. However, unabated development of nuclear weapons and delivery systems across both sides had ensured, by the end of the highly dangerous decade of 1960s, that thousands of megatons-worth of thermonuclear warheads were deployed atop ICBMs and SLBMs by the two superpowers, capable of and just a single misudgement & miscalculation away from annihilating each other , as well as Earth, many times over in just a matter of minutes...the critical minutes to midnight which were critical and were to make the ultimate difference between the continued sustenance of life and the end of civilization on Planet Earth forever...   In hindsight, it's purely a miracle that mankind survived that Nuclear Sword of Damocles for decades..

The Book-3 of the series; based on recently declassified documents by the CIA , U.S. State Department, KGB after the end of Cold War and other international agencies; takes-off at the onset of the 1970s decade, when, after having developed deployed thousands of ICBMs & SLBMs armed to the teeth with megaton-class thermonuclear warheads, both the U.S. as well as the U.S.S.R; were faced with the urgent need to invest billions of dollars towards the development & nationwide deployment of Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Systems to protect themselves against each other's ICBMs & SLBMs.   The Soviets, incredibly, had deployed around 1,000 heavy ICBMs hosting a massive & insane 6,000+ megatons worth of thermonuclear warheads, collectively posing an existential threat to U.S. homeland as well as NATO allies while the U.S. had a clear overmatch in Heavy Bombers and SLBMs over the Soviets. The cost of development of a comprehensive ABM System to secure the entire U.S. had been pegged at $40 billion in the mid-1960s, equivalent of almost $400 billion today, which, still would have sparked another arms race between them. Both the superpowers, however, chose to instead negotiate to mutually limit the scope of the threat and shake hands which paved the way for détente and arms control agreements under SALT-I in 1972, a groundbreaking event, followed by the Helsinki Accords in 1975, which briefly altered the course of the Cold War but eventually proved to be decisive in ending it by empowering  ordinary people as well as citizens across both sides... The highlights of the analysis include:- 1. How the outbreak of a potential, limited nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union at the onset of 1970s decade would have led to a loss of at least 100 million lives across each side, which was almost half of the entire population of each nation, back then? 2. How a potential, limited nuclear war between the two sides would have wiped out almost 1 billion people from the face of Earth collectively, which was almost a third of the world's entire population back in the late 1960s? 3. How further development of the R-36/SS-09 ICBM by the Soviet Union briefly altered the overall strategic balance of power & nuclear first strike advantage in favor of the Soviet Union through the 1970s? 4. How CIA salvaged & recovered the wreckage of a lost Soviet nuclear-powered submarine, equipped with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles and torpedoes, from 16,000 ft in a clandestine, top-secret operation under the prying eyes of the Soviets in 1974? 5. How U.S.' courting of China and nuclear saber-rattling in the India-Pakistan war of 1971, in direct support of the latter, directly led to India's atomic detonation in 1974 and develpment of nuclear weapons?