Tad Daley’s Apocalypse Never: Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World (Rutgers, 2010) is a spirited, ringing call for nuclear weapons abolition, including why it is imperative and how it can be achieved. According to Daley, a former member of the international policy department of the Rand Corporation, as well as a former speech and policy writer for members of Congress, he did not intend to create an academic work for scholars, nuclear experts, and policy wonks. Instead, he sought to write a book for ordinary folks, people who would come away ready and willing to bring an end to the danger of nuclear annihilation.
Through colorful writing and a convincing argument, Daley accomplishes this task quite nicely. If nuclear weapons are not abolished in the near future, Daley contends, nuclear catastrophes are likely to erupt in any (or all) of the following ways: nuclear terrorism, accidental atomic apocalypse, nuclear crisis mismanagement, and intentional use of nuclear weapons.
Daley maintains that the best way to accomplish nuclear abolition is by transforming the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) into a nuclear abolition agreement. He suggests that civil society and nonnuclear nations join together to insist that nuclear nations move the issue to the top of their agendas.
Concluding this informative, insightful and powerful book, Daley argues that abolishing nuclear weapons is probably the single most important task the human race can pursue right now to ensure our long-range survival.