Many impressive late night stories were told by people from the intelligence community, but Vince knows quite a few of them and, as any serious historian, interviewed experts, researched archives and scrolled through declassified documents to find the truth behind utmost secret World War II and Cold War inventions and operations. Brilliant men, inventors and exceptional innovators created some of the well-known and most advanced technology ever build, but it's not about these inventions...
Because at some point, they were asked to come up with solutions that required exceptional out-of-the-box thinking for problems the government desperately wanted solved. And when a nation is desperate, any solution, I really mean any solution, is justified and approved.
A cat, turned into a listening device (yes, I wrote turned into, not wearing), recruiting one-armed trappers with a pilot license as stay-behind forces, swarms with thousands of pebbles with electronic eyes in space, waiting to bump into Soviet ICBMs, or using nuclear power as agricultural machinery or fly around nuclear reactors and many many more stories.
Because at some point, they were asked to come up with solutions that required exceptional out-of-the-box thinking for problems the government desperately wanted solved. And when a nation is desperate, any solution, I really mean any solution, is justified and approved.
A cat, turned into a listening device (yes, I wrote turned into, not wearing), recruiting one-armed trappers with a pilot license as stay-behind forces, swarms with thousands of pebbles with electronic eyes in space, waiting to bump into Soviet ICBMs, or using nuclear power as agricultural machinery or fly around nuclear reactors and many many more stories.
The book contains many implausible ideas, some are just terrible, awful or plain dangerous. And the worst of all... they are all true. And they worked, sort of, or not quite. Fortunately, at some point, some guy said nah, too crazy, too dangerous or too mad, and the plan was scrapped. Vince not only found the history, organisations and men behind these unbelievable plans, but also brings these stories in such an entertaining, colourful and sometimes hilarious way.
However, although you might dismiss these sometimes bizarre ideas at first glance, you cannot turn a blind eye for how desperate these solutions were needed, the era and circumstances that - almost - justified those ideas, and how brilliant and innovative some of those solutions were.
This book will make you chuckle at almost every page but will also astonish you with fascinating ideas, far ahead of their time, that would actually work, but for some reason never left the drawing board. Brilliant ideas, brilliantly told by Vince.
This book will make you chuckle at almost every page but will also astonish you with fascinating ideas, far ahead of their time, that would actually work, but for some reason never left the drawing board. Brilliant ideas, brilliantly told by Vince.
To get a taste of the book, listen the interviews with Vince Houghton at the Spy Museum's SpyCast and at Cold War Conversations.
Nuking the Moon by Vince Houghton, ISBN 0525505172
Nuking the Moon by Vince Houghton, ISBN 0525505172
More book reviews on my website.
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