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PU-239

electricliterature.com

This was pretty good, and not as bleak as I would have guessed given the subject matter and having read On The Beach by Nevil Shute.

It's tangential, but I hate "On the beach". Nevil Shute is a great writer. And he's technical too (he has a degree in aeronautical engineering). His other books are great. And this book is great too, except ...

Except that the book could have the subtitle "The greatest giving up story ever told".

First, the scenario of spiked nukes is not technically accurate; you'd need as much cobalt as we mine in 100 years to achieve that type of effect.

Second, even if the radioactive cobalt poisoned the lands, it would have done nothing to the oceans. Oceans contain billions of tons of uranium for example. But it's too dilute. A few thousand tons of cobalt would have not moved any needle.

So, you have a nuclear submarine and some other naval assets. It could have been a great Noah's ark story. But Nevil Shute was not interested in a Noah's ark story, he was interested in the story where there is no human alive after a nuclear war. Science be damned. I simply could not read the last 50 pages or so.

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I read this book many years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it - in my opinion the movie did a good job as well, however I've found it increasingly difficult to find via online services (and even finding it on the high seas was rare, but perhaps that's changed)

When I read it my partner at the time was from an exUSSR country and validated the feelings of hopelessness, grift, and expectations of the future matched a lot of the personal experiences of people at the time

The empire was collapsing on itself. USSR occupied nearly 1/6 of the total landmass, it had on the ground every imaginable element in the periodic table and yet it was not a self sustained developed country. Large part of it was corruption and constant stealing on every level possible, but also the fact that all of its economy was managed by what comes effectively down to a large Excel sheet - completely top down.

Gorbachev tried to turn it around and failed. Fortunately he was a great man because he had a lot of humility and he allowed to fall it apart gracefully (relatively speaking). This gave freedom (from Russians) to many nations, yet too many of them are still imprisoned within Russian Federation (the name is a hint - it's not Russia but a federation of many nations) and I think of it as a great tragedy, especially now, when mainly the minority nations are sent to kill Ukrainians and to get killed instead of Russians.

> he was a great man because he had a lot of humility and he allowed to fall it apart gracefully

Source?

> On 10 January Gorbachev addressed the Supreme Council, demanding a restoration of the constitution of the USSR in Lithuania and the revocation of "all anti-constitutional laws".[9] He mentioned that military intervention could be possible within days. When Lithuanian officials asked for Moscow's guarantee not to send armed troops, Gorbachev did not reply.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_Events

True, and this is why I added "relatively speaking". There was also Tbilisi massacre and the situation was very much on the edge also in Latvia and Estonia, but it all could have been much, much worse. He could have used brutal force and drowned all these independence movements in blood like was done in Budapest and Prague previously. Most importantly he accepted the withdrawal of Soviet armed forces from East Germany that eventually led to withdrawal of Russian occupation forces from all Russian occupied republics (except from less autonomous occupied territories on Russian SFSR).

I was remembering this story vaguely today out of the blue. I'm pretty sure I got to know it via some HN discussion (or was it Reddit, in better days?).

After taking a while to remember the details, I was surprised to see it hasn't been submitted (but mentioned in comments).

Thank you for your impression of the book, maybe I'll order it now.

I was confused by this comment at first, because this post includes the "Poo-239" short story, the I realized it was an excerpt from a collection of stories entitled "Pu-239 and othe Russian Fantasies".

It's readily available online [1], just picked it up as that first excerpt was a great read. I particularly enjoyed the description of the laissez-faire attitude adopted by plant operators over years working in the same environment. Reminded me of my first tour as a merchant marine cadet and hearing an engine room alarm that sent my heart to my throat, but was all but ignored my the seasoned engineers. I'd quickly learn how frequent false alarms were. It's an interesting art differentiating between false and true alarms when all alarms sound identical. You really must deeply know a plant to do it effectively to realize a true anomaly. It's about context and learning the 'pattern of life' of the plant to sense what's truly abnormal.

1. https://www.amazon.com/Pu-239-Other-Russian-Fantasies-Kalfus...

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