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From: inc@fluke.UUCP (Ensign Benson, Space Cadet)
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: Re: _War Day_ Any opinions?
Message-ID: <583@tpvax.fluke.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 26-Apr-85 18:42:03 EDT
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Posted: Fri Apr 26 18:42:03 1985
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> Has anyone read the book _War Day_, by  Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka?
> What did you think of it?

I have just started _Warday_ and am finding it to be pretty easy reading and
very gripping. Contrary to some of the offhand remarks made in this
newsgroup about the book, though, I think the scenario is plausible.

Someone expressed doubts that the war would only affect three cities, and
assumed from this that only three *bombs* were involved. Not at all. There
are several references in the early chapters to "the New York Pattern",
which refers to the fact that the city was blasted with several simultaneous
devices. In fact, I also recall that there are a few references to
high-altitude detonations specifically to create the EMT storm.

I am only up to the very first part of the trek that the two heroes will be
making, but so far, this war seems eerily real. The most stark scene I have
ever read is the blast over Queens as experienced in Manhattan. It doesn't
seem at all improbable that instead of the global thermonuclear destruction
that just about everyone expects we'll have instead a limited atomic war.

In my opinion, "plausibility" really doesn't even matter; apparently one of
the themes of the book is going to be the fragility of our complex society.
You can't demonstrate that with all-out holocaust ala' _The Day After_.

-- 

			       Ensign Benson
			       -Space Cadet-

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