This is the way the world will end, this is the way you will end, unless

the long version

(From back cover) If you read no other book this year, read this one -- before it is too late. This book will shock you, terrify you, anger you, goad you to action. You may have thought you've heard it all before, but you haven't. Do you really know what a nuclear war would mean? The lucky ones, millions of them, will be vaporized at the moment of explosion. Millions upon millions more will die more slowly, and infinitely more painfully -- from radiation poisoning, horrible burns, virulent diseases, contaminated food and water (or none at all). If any survive the attack and its aftermath, radiation will still kill them in the end, with cancer, and they will have bequeathed the seeds of horrible mutations and diseases to their children. There is no escape. There are no non-combatants in a nuclear war. Shelters will not save you. Distance from strategic or population centres will not help you avoid the radioactive cloud. To talk of a survivable nuclear war is lunacy. And yet the major powers, already possessed of arsenals sufficient to blow up the world twenty times over, continue their insane and suicidal stockpiling of more and bigger weapons, while they talk less and less of disarmament and not at all of peace. Even more frightening is the very real possibility that the nuclear threat will be fulfilled by accident, or by some madman, or by a terrorist group. The options are clear: the proliferation of nuclear weaponry must be stopped or the earth will be destroyed and humanity will die. This book will force on your imagination the reality of the problem; but all is not lost --not yet -- and this book will also offer you some suggestions for the solution. Act on these suggestions now. If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.