T H E E N D IS A LWAYS N E A R

Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse

to Nuclear Near Misses

DA N CA R LIN

the end is always near. Copyright © 2019 by Dan Carlin Ventures LLC. All rights reserved. Printed in the United

States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written

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FURTHER R E A DING

Want to know more? Here are a few places you can start.

Chapter 1: Do Tough Times Make for Tougher People?

Delbrück, Hans. Warfare in Antiquity. Vol. 1 of History of the Art of War. Translated by Walter  J. Renfroe Jr. Omaha: University of

Nebraska Press, 1990.

Diamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fall or Succeed. New

York: Viking, 2005.

Durant, Will. The Story of Civilization. 11 vols. New York: Simon &

Schuster, 1935–1975.

Gavin, James M. War and Peace in the Space Age. New York: Harper,

1958.

Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 6 vols. 1766–1788. Reprint ed. New York: Everyman’s

Library, 2010.

Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey De Selincourt. New

York: Penguin Classics, 2003.

Hoover, Herbert. The Great Depression, 1929–1941. Vol. 3 of The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover. New York: Macmillan, 1952.

Starr, Chester G. A History of the Ancient World. New York: Oxford

University Press, 1965.

1

Further Reading

Steinbeck, John. “The Dubious Battle in California.” The Nation, September 12, 1936.

— — — . The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Viking, 1939.

— — — . “The Harvest Gypsies.” 7 pts. San Francisco News, October

5–12, 1936.

Xenophon. Anabasis: The March Up Country. Translated by H.  G.

Dakyns. Independently published, 2017.

— — — . Cryopaedia: The Education of Cyrus. Translated by H. G. Dakyns.

CreateSpace, 2012.

Also: Young Frankenstein, directed by Mel Brooks, story and screen-

play by Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder, Twentieth Century Fox,

1974.

Chapter 2: Suffer the Children

Delbrück, Hans. History of the Art of War. 4 vols. Translated by Walter J.

Renfroe Jr. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1975–1990.

deMause, Lloyd. The Emotional Life of Nations. New York: Other

Press, 2002.

— — — , ed. The History of Childhood. New York: Psychohistory Press,

1974.

Shahar, Shulamith. Childhood in the Middle Ages. London: Routledge,

1990.

Chapter 3: The End of the World as They Knew It

Arnold, John H. History: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford

University Press, 2000.

Drews, Robert. The Coming of the Greeks: Indo- European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East. Reissue ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1994.

— — — . The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe ca. 1200 BC. 3rd ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.

2

Further Reading

Fischer, Peter M., and Teresa Bürge, eds. “Sea Peoples” Up- to- Date: New Research on Transformations in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 13th–11th Centuries BCE. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences

Press, 2014.

Givas, Nick, “Rubio Leads Bipartisan Backlash After De Blasio

Quotes Castro Ally Che Guevara,” Fox News, June 27, 2019.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/de- blasio- apologizes- for- che-

guevara- quote- seiu.

Homer. The Iliad. Translated by Caroline Alexander. New York: Ecco,

2015.

Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Emily Wilson. New York: W. W.

Norton, 2018.

Knapp, Bernard A., and Sturt W.  Manning. “Crisis in Context: The

End of the Late Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean.” Ameri-can Journal of Archaeology 120, no. 1 (January 2016): 99–149.

Liverani, Mario. The Ancient Near East: History, Society and Economy.

New York: Routledge, 2014.

Pickworth, Diana. “Excavations at Nineveh: The Halzi Gate” in Iraq

67, no. 1, Nineveh. Papers of the 49th Rencontre Assyriologique

Internationale, Part Two (Spring 2005), pp. 295–316. British

Institute for the Study of Iraq, https://www.jstor.org/stable/

4200584.

Plato. Timaeus and Critias. Translated by Robin Waterfield. Oxford,

UK: Oxford World’s Classics, 2009.

Robbins, Manuel. Collapse of the Bronze Age: The Story of Greece, Troy, Israel, Egypt, and the Peoples of the Sea. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse,

2001.

Shaw, Garry J. War & Trade with the Pharaohs: An Archaeological Study of Ancient Egypt’s Foreign Relations. Barnsley, UK: Pen and

Sword Archaeology, 2017.

Starr, Chester G. A History of the Ancient World. New York: Oxford

University Press, 1965.

Tainter, Joseph. Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge University

Press, 2007.

3

Further Reading

Van De Mieroop, Marc. A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000–323 BC. 2nd ed. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2006.

Wiener, Malcolm H. “Causes of Complex Systems Collapse at the End of

the Bronze Age,” in “Sea Peoples” Up- to- Date: New Research on Trans-formations in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 13th–11th Centuries BCE, edited by Peter M. Fischer and Teresa Bürge. Vienna: Austrian

Academy of Sciences Press, 2014.

Also: Planet of the Apes, directed by Franklin J.  Schaffner, story by

Pierre Boulle, screenplay by Rod Serling and Michael Wilson,

Twentieth Century Fox, 1968.

Chapter 4: Judgment at Nineveh

Durant, Will. Our Oriental Heritage. Vol. 1 of The Story of Civilization.

New York: Simon & Schuster, 1935.

Farrokh, Kaveh. Shadows in the Desert: Ancient Persia at War. Oxford,

UK: Osprey Publishing, 2007.

Ferrill, Arther. The Origins of War: From the Stone Age to Alexander the Great. Rev. ed. New York: Routledge, 2018.

Frahm, Eckart. A Companion to Assyria (Blackwell Companions to the

Ancient World). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley- Blackwell, 2017.

Gavaghan, Paul F. The Cutting Edge: Military History of Antiquity and Early Feudal Times. New York: Peter Lang, 1990.

Healy, Mark. The Ancient Assyrian. Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing,

1992.

Olmstead, A. T. History of Assyria. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,

1923.

Roux, Georges. Ancient Iraq. 3rd ed. London: Penguin, 1993.

Saggs, H. W. F. Everyday Life in Babylonia and Assyria. New York: Put-

nam, 1967.

Xenophon. The Persian Expedition. Translated by Rex Warner. New

York: Penguin Classics, 1950.

4

Further Reading

Chapter 5: The Barbarian Life Cycle

Barbero, Alessandro. Charlemagne: Father of a Continent. Translated

by Allan Cameron. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

Collins, Roger. Early Medieval Europe, 300–1000. 3rd ed. New York:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Delbrück, Hans. The Barbarian Invasions. Vol. 2 of History of the Art of War. Translated by Walter J. Renfroe Jr. Rev. ed. Omaha: University

of Nebraska Press, 1990.

Dennis, George T., trans. Maurice’s Strategikon: Handbook of Byzan-tine Military Strategy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania

Press, 2001.

Durant, Will. The Age of Faith: A History of Medieval Civilization— Christian, Islamic, and Judaic— from Constantine to Dante, AD 325–1300. Vol. 4 of The Story of Civilization. New York: Simon &

Schuster, 1950.

— — — . Caesar and Christ. Vol. 3 of The Story of Civilization. New York:

Simon & Schuster, 1944.

Einhard. The Life of Charlemagne. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan

Press, 1960.

Fell, Christine E., and David M. Wilson, eds. Northern World: The His-tory and Heritage of Northern Europe. New York: Harry N. Abrams,

1987.

Ferrill, Arther. Fall of the Roman Empire: The Military Explanation. London: Thames & Hudson, 1986.

Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Em-pire. 6 vols. 1766–1788. Reprint ed. New York: Everyman’s Library,

2010.

Gregory of Tours. The History of the Franks. Translated by Lewis

Thorpe. London: Penguin, 1974.

Heather, Peter. The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

James, Edward. The Franks. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1988.

5

Further Reading

Lendon, J. E. Empire of Honour: The Art of Government in the Roman World. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Riche, Pierre. Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne. Translated by

Jo Ann McNamara. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,

1978.

Suetonius. The Twelve Caesars. New York: Penguin Classics, 2007.

Tacitus. Agricola and Germania. New York: Penguin Classics, 2010.

Ward- Perkins, Bryan. The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Wells, Peter S. Barbarians to Angels: The Dark Ages Reconsidered. New

York: W. W. Norton, 2009.

Wickham, Chris. The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages, 400–1000. New York: Viking, 2009.

Williams, Hywel. Emperor of the West: Charlemagne and the Carolin-gian Empire. Reprint ed. London: Quercus, 2011.

Chapter 6: A Pandemic Prologue?

Barry, John M. The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pan-demic in History. New York: Viking Penguin, 2004.

Bostrom, Nick, and Milan M. Ćirković, eds. Global Catastrophic Risks. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Docherty, Campbell, and Caroline Foulkes. “Toxic Shock.” Birming-ham Post (UK), October 4, 2003.

Durant, Will. The Age of Faith: A History of Medieval Civilization— Christian, Islamic, and Judaic— from Constantine to Dante, AD 325–1300. Vol. 4 of The Story of Civilization. New York: Simon &

Schuster, 1950.

Kolata, Gina. Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It. New York: Farrar, Straus

and Giroux, 1999.

Littman, Robert J. “The Plague of Athens: Epidemiology and Paleopa-

thology.” Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine 76, no. 5 (October 2009):

456–67.

6

Further Reading

McCullough, David. “There Isn’t Any Such Thing as the Past.” Inter-

view with Roger Mudd in American Heritage Presents Great Minds of History 50, no. 1 (February/March 1999).

McNeill, William H. Plagues and Peoples. New York: Doubleday, 1977.

Orent, Wendy. Plague: The Mysterious Past and Terrifying Future of the World’s Most Dangerous Disease. New York: Free Press, 2004.

Rosen, William. Justinian’s Flea: The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire. New York: Viking Penguin, 2007.

Sebelius, Kathleen. “Why We Still Need Smallpox.” New York Times,

April 25, 2011.

Svensen, Henrik. The End Is Nigh: A History of Natural Disasters. Lon-

don: Reaktion Books, 2011.

Thucydides. The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War. Touchstone ed. New York: Free Press, 1998.

Tuchman, Barbara. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978.

Chapter 7: The Quick and the Dead

For more information about the atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the

end of the Second World War, see the Atomic Heritage Foundation

website: https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/little- boy- and- fat- man.

Baruch, Bernard. Speech before the first session of the United Nations

Atomic Energy Commission, Hunter College, New York, June 14,

1946.

Blight, James G., and Janet M. Lang. The Armageddon Letters. Lanham,

MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012.

Bobbitt, Philip. The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.

Bostrom, Nick, and Milan M. Ćirković, eds. Global Catastrophic Risks. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Bradley, John. World War III: Strategies, Tactics and Weapons. New

York: Crescent, 1982.

Brands, H. W. What America Owes the World: The Struggle for the Soul

7

Further Reading

of Foreign Policy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,

1998.

Cameron, Rob. “Police Close Case on 1948 Death of Jan Masaryk—

Murder, Not Suicide.” Radio Praha Broadcast Archive, June 1, 2004.

https://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/police- close- case- on

-1948-death- of- jan- masaryk- murder- not- suicide.

Cirincione, Joseph. Bomb Scare: The History & Future of Nuclear Weapons. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

Codevilla, Angelo, and Paul Seasbury. War: Ends and Means. 2nd ed.

Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2006.

Compton, Arthur Holly. Atomic Quest: A Personal Narrative. 1956.

Crane, Conrad C. American Airpower Strategy in World War II: Bombs, Cities, Civilians, and Oil. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press,

2016.

Dallek, Robert. An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963. New

York: Little, Brown, 2003.

Dobbs, Michael. One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War. New York: Alfred A.  Knopf,

2008.

Donovan, Hedley. Roosevelt to Reagan: A Reporter’s Encounters with Nine Presidents. New York: HarperCollins, 1985.

Dunnigan, James F. How to Make War: A Comprehensive Guide to Modern Warfare in the 21st Century. 4th ed. New York: Harper

Perennial, 2003.

Durant, Will, and Ariel Durant. The Lessons of History. New York: Si-

mon & Schuster, 1968.

Dyer, Gwynne. War: The Lethal Custom. Reading, UK: Periscope, 2017.

Eden, Lynn. Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge and Nuclear Weapons Devastation. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.

Einstein, Albert. Letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Au-

gust 2, 1939. Available via the Atomic Heritage Foundation, https://

www.atomicheritage.org/key- documents/einstein- szilard- letter.

“Fissile Material Basics.” Institute for Energy and Environmental Research,

2019. https://ieer.org/resource/factsheets/fissile- material- basics/.

8

Further Reading

Forrestal, James. The Forrestal Diaries. Edited by Walter Millis. New

York: Viking, 1951.

Fursenko, Aleksandr, and Timothy Naftali. One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964: The Secret History of the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.

Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History. New York: Penguin

Press, 2005.

— — — . We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Oxford, UK: Ox-

ford University Press, 1997.

Gavin, Francis J. Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age. Reprint ed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012.

Gray, Colin S. War, Peace and Victory: Strategy and Statecraft for the Next Century. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990.

Greene, Jack C., and Daniel J. Strom, compilers. Would the Insects Inherit the Earth? and Other Subjects of Concern to Those Who Worry About Nuclear War. Oxford UK: Pergamon Profession, 1988.

Hachiya, Michihiko. Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Phy-sician, August 6–September 30, 1945 (Fifty Years Later). Translated

by Warner Wells. 2nd ed. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina

Press, 2011.

Holloway, David. Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994.

Howard, Michael. The Invention of Peace: Reflections on War and Inter-national Order. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000.

Kahn, Herman. On Thermonuclear War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1960.

Kaku, Michio, and Daniel Axelrod. To Win a Nuclear War: The Penta-gon’s Secret War Plans. Boston: South End Press, 1999.

Kaplan, Fred. The Wizards of Armageddon. Stanford, CA: Stanford

University Press, 1983.

Kennedy, Paul, ed. Grad Strategies in War and Peace. New Haven, CT:

Yale University Press, 1991.

Kennett, Lee B. A History of Strategic Bombing: From the First Hot- Air Balloons to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. New York: Scribner, 1982.

9

Further Reading

Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich. Khrushchev Remembers. Translated by

Strobe Talbott. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970.

Kozak, Warren. LeMay: The Life and Wars of General Curtis LeMay. New York: Regnery, 2009.

Lilienthal, David E. The Atomic Energy Years, 1945–1950. Vol. 2 of The Journals of David E. Lilienthal. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.

Martel, William, and Paul L. Savage. Strategic Nuclear War: What the Superpowers Target and Why. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 1986.

McNamara, Robert S., with Brian VanDeMark. In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. New York: Times Books, 1995.

Poundstone, William. Prisoner’s Dilemma: John von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb. New York: Doubleday, 1992.

Schlosser, Eric. Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damas-cus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety. New York: Penguin Press,

2013.

Sekimori, Gaynor, trans. Hibakusha: Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tokyo: Kosei, 1989.

Sherry, Michael S. In the Shadow of War: The United States Since the 1930s. 2nd ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.

Shiotsuki, Masao. Doctor at Nagasaki: My First Assignment Was Mercy Killing. Tokyo: Kosei, 1989.

Southard, Susan. Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War. New York: Viking

Penguin, 2015.

Stern, Sheldon. Averting ‘The Final Failure’: John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis Meetings. Stanford, CA: Stanford Uni-

versity Press, 2003.

— — — . The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory: Myths Versus Reality. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012.

— — — . The Week the World Stood Still: Inside the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005.

Thomas, Evan. Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World. New York: Little, Brown, 2012.

US Congress. The Effects of Nuclear Weapons. Washington, DC: US

Congress Office of Technology Assessment, 1959.

10

Further Reading

Van Creveld, Martin. Technology and War: From 2000 BC to the Pres-ent. New York: Free Press, 1991.

Webster, Donovan. Aftermath: The Remnants of War: From Landmines to Chemical Warfare— the Devastating Effects of Modern Combat. New York: Pantheon, 1996.

Whitfield, Stephen J. The Culture of the Cold War. 2nd ed. Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Wills, Garry. Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State. New York: Penguin Press, 2010.

Zaloga, Steven J. The Kremlin’s Nuclear Sword: The Rise and Fall of Russia’s Strategic Nuclear Forces, 1945–2000. Washington, DC:

Smithsonian Books, 2002.

Zubok, Vladislav, and Constantine Pleshakov. Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Krushchev. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 1996.

Chapter 8: The Road to Hell

Biddle, Tami Davis. “Air Power and the Law of War,” in Laws of War,

edited by Michael Howard, George Andreopoulos, and Mark Shul-

man. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994.

Carey, John, ed. Eyewitness to History. Reprint ed. New York: William

Morrow Paperbacks, 1997.

Cowley, Robert, ed. Experience of War: An Anthology of Articles from MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. New York:

W. W. Norton, 1992.

Crane, Conrad C. American Airpower Strategy in World War II: Bombs, Cities, Civilians, and Oil. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas,

2016.

Deighton, Len. Blood, Tears, and Folly: An Objective Look at World War II. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.

Douhet, Giulio. The Command of the Air. Translated by Dino Ferrari.

Center for Air Force History. Originally published in 1921 under the

auspices of the Ministry of War. Reprint ed. CreateSpace, 2015.

11

Further Reading

Dyer, Gwynne. War: The New Edition. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2005.

Dyson, Freeman. The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940–1945. New

York: Columbia University Press, 2008.

Edoin, Hoito. The Night Tokyo Burned: The Incendiary Campaign against Japan, March– August, 1945. New York: St. Martin’s, 1989.

Ferguson, Niall. The War of the World: Twentieth- Century Conflict and the Descent of the West. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.

Friedrich, Jörg. The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940–1945. Trans-

lated by Allison Brown. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.

Giangreco, D. M. Hell to Pay: Operation DOWNFALL and the Invasion of Japan, 1945–1947. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2017.

Grossman, Dave. On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. Reprint ed. New York: Back Bay Books, 2009.

Hopper, Bruce. TK

Howard, Michael, George Andreopoulos, and Mark R. Shulman, eds.

The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World. New ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.

Kennett, Lee B. A History of Strategic Bombing: From the First Hot- Air Balloons to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. New York: Scribner, 1982.

Knell, Hermann. To Destroy a City: Strategic Bombing and Its Human Consequences in World War II. New York: Da Capo, 2003.

Martin, Douglas. “Thomas Ferebee Dies at 81; Dropped First Atomic

Bomb.” New York Times, March 18, 2000.

MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History 2, no. 4 (Summer 1990).

Obit. Directed by Vanessa Gould. 2016. (Documentary about the New York Times obituary section.)

Salmaggi, Cesare, and Alfredo Pallavisini. 2,194 Days of War: An Illustrated Chronology of the Second World War. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1993.

Truman, Harry S., diary.

Wells, H. G. The War in the Air. Originally serialized in The Pall Mall Magazine, 1908. Reprint ed. CreateSpace, 2013.

Ziegler, Philip. London at War, 1939–1945. New York: Knopf, 1995.

12