Warday

It's been around five years since a limited nuclear exchange between the USA and the USSR devastated both countries. Two friends set out to explore what post-war America is like since the attack, a day known as "Warday." It's a not a pretty picture. The US economy has collapsed into something quite a bit worse than the Great Depression. California and parts of the southwest have more-or-less seceded. Diseases - some traditional and some new - ravage the populace.

The rest of the world seems to have been unaffected by all this, or at least so less affected that the new world powers are the EU and Japan. Their survival appears to be due in part to the fact that they - along withal the other right thinking countries - ignored treaties and sat the war out.

How and why radiation did not travel around the earth and affect the rest of the planet is not mentioned. We do get a somewhat paranoid view of what the USSR might be/could be going through because the USA went ahead and used nasty "purple bombs" on the Ukraine, thus eliminating the area's ability to produce grain. Again, it's a very localized effect.

Rabidly anti-war; not necessarily a bad thing. More rabidly anti-macht-politk. Ultimately, a rather naïve view of world affairs written by two veru good writers, one of whom is grounded in horror fiction...which is what this is.

Warday is a brilliantly structured and written novel written from the authors perspective covering a limited nuclear war and the aftermath. It is done in the fantastic layered format of both a narrative from the authors perspective covering both their Warday experiences, and their journey to visit the post war America, plus inclusion of interviews performed with people they meet in their journey, as well as documents obtained in their investigation. It works so well, and I think something like WWZ would have been so much better if done like this, with an actual underlying narrative.

The book initially came out in the early to mid 80's (cold war era) and is set starting in 1988 (the Warday) and the time after (to 1993), but it still seems pretty relevant and an excellent read. I'm so glad the digital era is seeing the release of a lot of these great classic books, Crossroad Press seems to be doing a lot of these, and I'm so happy to see books from authors I never thought I could hope for audio versions of turn up on audible. And when I get the opportunity to get one free as a review copy, it is a double blessing. I just hope they can release more of Clive Barker's books (such as Great and Secret Show and Imajica), and I'd love to see John Gideon too!

Kevin Pierce is a great narrator, and I'm starting to find his voice becoming synonymous in my mind with nuclear apocalypse books, I've now got so many. I find his voice easy to listen to.

Highly recommended. Keep up the good work, both to Crossroad Press and Kevin Pierce!

"Seriously," Morgan Moore says, "you gotta put a story about what we're doing at the the World Trade Center in your paper. It's worth front page." Another voice: "We pulled over three miles of wire out of the South Tower yesterday." Morgan Moore adds, "We'll be down to the structural steel in three months."

It's 1993 and two best-selling authors, Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka, have arrived at New York City after touring the continent for the first time since the limited nuclear exchange of 1988. They conduct interviews, here with salvage workers, in the manner of a national travelogue. Strieber and Kunetka really were bestsellers, in genre fiction and tech history, well before publishing this future history in 1984. As men they remind me of a kind you met in the Cold War, ferocious anti-communists and free-marketers who yet knew how close we were to, say, the hostage army at Checkpoint Charlie going up in smoke. Their novel reminds me of a model an older friend presented to his general as if he had been ordered to make it, a scale representation of what a one-kiloton blast would do to Worcester, Massachusetts. Now the future such men conjured is well in the past. Schrieber has become a world-class New Age loon. Kunetka is one of those figures from the recent past who has vanished in the transition to Wikipedia. I would like to find him because he seems to be a Viet Nam veteran:

Within thirty-six minutes seven million Americans are dead. One thing to be thankful for is that Warday is nothing like the all-out holocaust predicted to wipe out humanity. At first this makes the much-anticipated armageddon seem like a comparative non-event. The biggest killer after the nuclear war is not radiation. That's only part of it. Instead, it's the crippling effects of EMP, coupled with famine and disease and the lack of medical treatment for those put on triage. Over five years the death toll has climbed dramatically.
Although it proved to be the world's shortest conflict, the after-effects of Warday are more far-reaching and devastating than anyone could have guessed. Two survivors, Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka, unveil the facts about Warday, describing through interviews, polls and statistics how the war has changed so many lives.
If there ever is a nuclear conflict I think it will be small-scale and accidental like the one in this book. The number of false alarms over the years is frightening. Nuclear war could have broken out in 1979 because of a computer malfunction. It nearly fooled the American military into thinking the Russians had launched a nuclear attack on the United States. It turned out a practice tape for testing airforce personnel had been left on one of the backup computer tape drives. Before the mistake was found the Americans were poised to strike. In 1995 a Norweigen weather rocket caused the Russian nuclear command to think the U.S. had launched a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Boris Yeltsin was deciding whether or not to strike back. Luckily he chose not to and the "misunderstanding" was cleared up.
I once saw some photographs of the Russian city Pripyat, which was evacuated shortly after the Chernobyl disaster. It looked just the same as Whitley Strieber's description of the abandoned New York - empty, crumbling and overgrown with vegetation. Pripyat was evacuated nearly 16 years ago and will remain uninhabitable for decades. This makes the writing in "Warday" seem eerily prophetic.
"Warday" is certainly among the best of the anti-nuclear warnings. Especially with all that recent talk about a missile defence shield.

As a fictional novel skillfully designed to read as nonfiction, Warday is a sort of postapocalyptic Democracy in America. Working on the disturbingly realistic premise that both the USA and the USSR end up destroying themselves in a thirty minute nuclear exchange in 1988, authors Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka tell the story of two writers -- named Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka -- who take a six week journey across the ruins of America to discover what has happened to both the nation and the world at large. What they discover is not some postapocalyptic, science fiction epic of rampaging mutants and struggling survivors but instead a nation that has found itself cut off from the world it once led. Their descriptions of how the loss of communications has left the war's survivors with little to no knowledge of what's happening outside of their own rag-tag communities is disturbingly plausible. They find Americans who -- even as they speak of rebuilding society -- have obviously lost the sense of hope and pride that made their nation great to begin with. It is a grim portrait of a world where medical treatment can only be given to the few who actually have a chance of survival, where children are born with the knowledge of their own eventual deaths, and where Americans are now dependent upon the support of other countries who now regard the former super power with a mixture of pity and contempt.
Warday was written in 1984 and as such, certain details are dated. The USSR is no longer a nation and the already haunting scenes of a ruined New York are made even more poignant when narrator Strieber mentions his amazement to discover that the World Trade Center still dominates the city's ruined skyline. That understood, the book still retains a strong and disturbing power. Its easy to forget that when this book was written, most people believed that an eventual nuclear war with the USSR was not only likely but unavoidable. Hence, this book isn't just a work of a vivid imagination. Instead, its a portrait of a future that many felt was our eventual destiny. As such, there is a sincerity running through the book that overcomes any minor details.
That said, this is not a perfect book and occasionally, some of the author's conclusions (such as that a nuclear war would lead to a general mainstreaming of Wiccans) seem to be hopeful thinking. As well, while Strieber and Kunetka's use of themselves as the main characters is a gimmick that actually succeeds, some of the real-life name dropping was occasionally a distraction (such as gothic novelist Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's intrusive cameo appearance as a private detective in California). While Warday makes it obvious that a nuclear war is not a winnable proposition, the book's final thesis that the only way to avoid war is to get away from identifying one's enemies as evil is one that, perhaps unfairly, loses a bit of its power when one's enemy isn't the USSR but instead the likes of Osama Bin Laden.
Still, this remains a powerful book and -- as we read daily about the efforts of such nations as Iraq and North Korea to develop nuclear weaponry of their own -- a timely warning about a future that we have yet to completely escape.

"Warday" is a mock-documentary account of two writers journeying across America, several years after a limited nuclear war. The fictional war was fought between the U.S. and Russia, and destroyed New York, Washington, and San Antonio, Texas. The authors recount their memories of The Day when the war happened, and describe numerous survival scenarios in the context of limited nuclear war.
This book is only a fictional account -- of course, the authors can't be expected to have thought of every tiny detail. They can't be expected to generate an absolutely flawless vision of a nation struggling to recover from limited nuclear war. That said -- they sure do give it a heck of a good shot!
Many books of this nature are filled with science-fiction garbage, such as post-nuclear mutants with super powers. Sometimes, picking up a book like this, one might expect the basic science to be compltely ignored, in favor of dramatic tension, or character development. Not that those elements are lacking here, but Streiber and Kunetka (a respected science journalist) clearly did a great deal of research to create scientifically plausible guesses about how things really might be. The book includes fictional interviews with fictional post-nuclear war economists, schoolteachers, junior high students, military officials, and others. These "interviews," in my opinion, are some of the real strengths of the book. Reading this, you feel like you're a fly on the wall in a high security think tank, watching officials game out all the ramifications of each sub-component of a hypothetical post-nuke scenario.
My copy of this book contains rave reviews inside the front cover, by such eminent government figures as Congressman Ed Markey (Democrat, from Mass.), Senator Ted Kennedy (Democrat, from Mass.), and Senator Mark Hatfield (Republican, from Oregon). If you don't want to listen to me, listen to them. They seem to feel that Streiber and Kunetka made a serious effort to come to grips with some of the most important issues of a limited nuclear war, in this book.
I'd like to stress here that this book is about some of the possible ramifications of a LIMITED nuclear war. It doesn't get into nuclear winter, or other effects of an all out nuclear war. In these days of smaller scale "dirty bombs," etc, this book could help us visualize what is probably right around the corner. It can help to assuage future panic, by addressing it in advance. This book portrays some extremely ugly events, and makes me wish to high heaven I lived in the 19th century, or any time when we didn't need to worry about such horrendous scenarios. Still, the fact is that these events can and will take place, so it's better to do whatever we can to head off our own panic. If we panic, we make things worse for everyone. Reading this book is a small step you could take, in the right direction.
I would also like to recommend the 1984 British BBC TV-movie "Threads," which takes a similar approach to delineating the events surrounding a far more serious nuclear war. "Threads" even gets into issues of nuclear winter, which are not necessary to worry about in the event of smaller scale wars, such as the one portrayed in "Warday." "Threads" is available by credit card from the British the store.com sister corporation.
If you're trying to get better informed, I would like to recommend the non-fiction books "Planet Earth in Jeopardy: Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War," by Lydia Dotto, and "The Cold and the Dark" by Paul Ehrlich and Carl Sagan.
This book is really scary, but you should probably read it. Two miserable thumbs up.

I first read "Warday" when it came out circa 1984. It had a tremendous impact on me then. I recently re-read it after a long hiatus, and I discovered that the novel has lost none of its punch.
In "Warday" the US and the old Soviet Union fight a limited atomic war. Russia is more or less completely destroyed, but not before its atomic weapons wreak havoc on the United States, destroying New York City and many other locations. The effects of the Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) destroy virtually all of America's electronic infrastructure, right down to automobiles and toasters, and the nation's industrial and agricultural back is broken.
In the aftermath, America's "allies" led by Great Britain step in to fill the gap left by the sudden demise of American power. The UK aid mission to the USA is the real ruler of the country, and America more or less ceases to exist as a unified country. The standard of living plummets, people are hungry, and the future is bleak.
The story is told in the form of a semi-documentary. Two reporters decide, five years after "Warday" (the war only lasted a portion of a single day) to tour the country, interview citizens, and find out the true state of the nation. Their findings are depressing, and have a nightmarish authentic quality that is hard to describe. It is very difficult to read this novel and not come away from it with the conviction that nuclear weapons are simply too terrible for use, and that their possession by rogue states is simply unacceptable. This is one of those rare books that changed my basic thinking on an important subject.
All this having been said, the one flaw in "Warday" in my opinion is that it deliberately sets out to overstate what the effect would be of the scenario set out by the authors. Just as Germany and Japan pulled themselves out of devastation after World War II, I have zero doubt that the American people would do the same under the horrific conditions portrayed in "Warday." In "Warday" the authors show an America that is flat on its back, out for the count, and not recovering. I believe that America is made of sterner stuff. This in no way takes away from the fact that "Warday" is utterly convincing as regards the notion that atomic weapons are too dangerous ever to be used again.
This book gets five stars for its imagination and the impact that it has on the reader. Its characterization is pretty nominal, but for once this adds, rather than detracts, from the novel. This is a story about America under a terrible, unthinkable scenario; not about individual people. The authors pull it off brilliantly, and this book has every bit as much impact today as it did when it was published in 1984.

Warday is not melodrama. You feel as if the authors' post apocalyptic cross country research is almost clinical. It therefore creates, through its fiction, a realistic, informative examination of a limited nuclear war. Along with the study of effects came 'observations' about the reactions and resilience of the populations involved. The book definitely presented a more down-to-earth and even hopeful perspective of armageddon. I'm glad I read it.

Okay, here's the lowdown. On October 27, 1988, the US and the Soviet Union engage in a limited nuclear exchange. Shortly before the exchange began, the Soviets detonated 4 EMPs above the US, disabling all technology in the US and leaving it vulnerable to attack. Three US cities are destroyed, New York City, Washington D.C., and San Antonio. Military bases are hit as well. In the aftermath, the US is reduced to Third-World status, as a mutated flu epidemic and famines caused by nuclear fallout blighting farmland seems ready to devour the remnants of the USA. The undamaged regions of the US form breakaway states. These "nations" ban all migration from the other regions,dubbing those who manage to enter "illegal immigrants". Other nations smugly give "humanitarian" aid in exchange for economic and even territorial concessions(like ceding Los Alamos to Japan and the entire state of Alaska to Canada). The novel proper focuses on two journalists touring Ameriaca, or more appropiately, what's left of America, to research the effects of the catastrophe. The novel reads like a documentary, as the reporters interview citizens, read fictional government files, and trie to access the West Coast.

I recommended this book. While the basis of its setting are no longer plausable, the aftermath of the exchange certainly is.Read it when you have the chance.

Two journalists, childhood friends both in real life and in the book, journey across an America that has been partly but not totally devastated by a limited nuclear attack. Some regions are uninhabitable, most have reverted to a plague-ridden substistence economy, and a few--like California--are thriving. But the concept of American nationhood has broken down: California and other "haves" have erected police states with strict barriers that keep the "have-nots" off their territory. The Mexican-Americans and native Americans in the southwestern states have formed their own nation that rejects the vestiges of the United States, while the white governor of Texas will not recognize the secession and is prepared to resist it, by force if necessary. The Federal government still exists: it has moved to Los Angeles, and operates out of the bottom floors of a building that it shares with a Californian human-services agency, so whether you can rely on the Bill of Rights depends on which floor you are on. But the political stories are not the book's real strength, which is the human interest with which the authors portray the everyday lives of everyday citizens in a changed world.

While the book is an interesting read and an interesting take on a limited scale nuclear war, I think it would have been a lot better had it been a limited non-nuclear war that lasted a couple years and destroyed several cities. The reason for this is they got everything wrong. The near space EMP attacks would have severely damaged the atmosphere's ability to protect from solar radiation and more importantly is there were many many megatons of bombs exploding on the ground (this is said explicitly in the book). This would have put many cubic miles of highly radioactive material and soil into the atmosphere and most of the northern hemisphere would have suffered a long nuclear winter and radiation all over the northern hemisphere carried by the westerlies and the Jet-stream. There were also hundreds of warheads that went up with the minuteman missiles. These missiles have up to 2 dozen warheads of 315KT each and all of them made it out of the silos. The total number of megatons on the US was in the hundreds (over 100 just on NYC and DC). They missed all of the secondary effects of nuclear power-plants failing, chemical accidents and all kinds of accidents from loss of the power grid. Oil refineries would have caught fire all water service would have stopped all over the country without a grid.
Maybe if they had set the war in 1987 and the new book being written in 2007, 20 years later instead of 5 would have been more realistic. With 1/2 the bombs (all in the 2digit megaton range) exploding at ground level, even 20 years might not be enough. Certainly 5 years after such an attack, the Northern Hemisphere would be substantially colder and all of this was known at the time the book was written. Though the research was sloppy, it's still a somewhat unique take on a semi post apocalyptic vision. I would recommend it.

I agree with Rick Harper. This book has a Leftish bent to it. The fictional war was our fault for deploying Star Wars. We got what we deserved for scaring the pants off the Soviets. Now, the world is safe with enlightened countries like those of Europe and Japan controlling things. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Typical Leftist/Radical dogma.
Fortunately, this bias is just an undercurrent and doesnt overwhelm what is otherwise an excellent book. The research is quite good. They make an compelling case for a nuke war cut short by Soviet and US command/control systems being fried by electo-magnetic pulse. The conjecture of a post war world is also believable as is their conjecture about day to day life in post war America.
Fortunately, those days seem to be behind us. Still, this is a wonderful book for those that like to wonder about the what ifs!

Before I start this review, the twelve year old in me has to confess that Warday is my "most favorite book of all time!" Being a child of the '80s, I possess a special relationship with nuclear weapons and their role in the end (or at least the royally screwing up) of the world. Blame it on Reagan or Nightline or the The Day After, but I've been fascinated with nuclear weapons and their use for as long as I can remember. Warday's fiction-as-non-fiction style leaves it as still the best book on the subject. After six readings over the years, if I could give it ten stars, I would do so without hesitation.

The brilliant thing about Warday is just how truly plausible the nuclear exchange scenario is. Whereas most writers would have taken the traditional "Soviet Union invades some neighbor and general chaos ensues" route, Strieber and Kunetka instead ignite the East-West confrontation with a Soviet sneak attack and immediate US response, creating a war that burns itself out quicker than a struck match. Written during an era when warplanners seriously contemplated the notion of a "winnable" nuclear war, Warday perfectly illustrates these plans while at the same time showing the utter foolishness of them. The ramifications of such suicidal thinking forms the central tenet of the book, and Strieber and Kunetka -- the novel's main characters -- have a front row seat to the resulting trials, tribulations, and redemptions.

Warday is a basic travelogue. Five years after the world changed, the two authors set out to ascertain the state of the country. They travel the length and breadth of the United States and document the paranoia, the despair, and the hope of its remaining people. Even though Warday is a work of pure fiction, it feels so unbelievably real that you'll find yourself checking the newspaper headlines for Strontium 90 reports for days after finishing it. No aspect is left unexplained; everything from scattered US and Soviet forces to such minor details as the mappable pattern of the missed strike on New York City is described. The lack of any plot holes greatly contribute to it reading like non-fiction.

However, the book is not without its flaws; I guess a half dozen inspections will reveal cracks in even the most well-crafted creations. Strieber and Kunetka are not Hemingway and Steinbeck. A handful of pages of clunky editorialized passages may leaves your eyes either rolling or glazing over at times. Luckily, though, the authors keep these pages to a minimum and usually let the details tell the story. In a similar vein, so many of the interviews conducted in the book sound as if they are coming from the same voice. A little more variety of character would have added another layer of realism that probably would have left the reader 100% immersed in the action. The only other aspect that tends to draw the reader out of the story is one common to most vintage science fiction works: the lack of plausible tech. In Warday, Great Britain and Japan have access to wondrous gadgets which seem impossible today, making it even less plausible that they would be in existence 15 years ago (and after a nuclear exchange and ensuing economic meltdown, no less). But, like reading classic sci-fi where the characters still use payphones, it's kind of the price of admission and is not something that should bother you for very long. In fact, if you don't go looking for most of these decidedly minor criticisms, you'll never even notice them during your first couple of readings.

Even though I've read Warday multiple times, every time I do I'm unbelievably sad to see it end. Despite the authors really leaving few questions, I still want more. If that's not enough reason to label a book your "most favorite of all time," I don't know what is. Truly, I cannot recommend this book any more highly.

This is a fascinating portrait of the United States after a limited nuclear war. The use of actual living people and genuine neighborhoods made this book closer to realism than would be comfortable, which I really enjoyed. I loved it until the very end when it got sort of preachy, but considering the subject matter it's an understandable route for the authors to take.

On October 27, 1988, the United States and the Soviet Union fight a "limited" nuclear war. Washington, DC, and San Antonio are vaporized. New York City is left in ruins. Electromagnetic pulses wipe out computers and electronic car ignitions. Radiation sickness is followed by famine and a flu epidemic. Five years after Warday, two writers tour what was the United States to assemble this documentary of life after the war, weaving together interviews, government documents, and the chronicle of their travels.

The possible consequences of nuclear war are presented convincingly and in detail, in an understated, journalistic style that makes the book quietly frightening.

(Other good stories of the aftermath of nuclear war: "Alas, Babylon," "On the Beach," and "Riddley Walker.")

Another reviewer was right, there really is nothing to compare this book to. It details the journey of two journalists in a post nuclear US.
The level of detail is impeccable, as is the way the book goes to lengths to show the human side of the war. The "interview" sections of the book were great, letting each person give their own experience of the war and aftermath is thought provoking.
Whether you like the post-apocalyptic genre or not, you should give this book a chance. It's fiction, but not sci-fi by any stretch of the imagination. Very much a "What if?" book. It stays with you.

I only stumbled upon this great post-apocalyptic novel in my university library quite by accident. Knowing Streiber's later bizarre works on UFOs and alien abductions, I expected in this book another sanguine piece of sensationalistic journalism mixed with half-baked fiction. Not so. Indeed, after reading this novel, it sheds some light on why Streiber described such vivid pictures about the world being destroyed, and also perhaps explains why he developed a religious belief in the existence of intelligent aliens who will save us from our own foolishness (a common SF theme during the Cold War).
The premise of the novel is simple enough-it is a journalistic travelogue compiled by Streiber and Kunetka over a period of five years, as they travel across their wrecked homeland in search of answers as to what happened on 'Warday', when a short and limited nuclear war changed the world forever. Along the way we get some fascinating insights into the political, sociological and economic after-effects of the war. Most amusing is the almost superstitious fear about radioactivity, especially in post-war California, which takes over as the economic and political heart of the U.S., as well as the comical but tragic paranoia about refugees. The authors hold no punches though about showing the horrible aftermath in its detail, ranging from burns, sickness, involuntary euthenasia, starvation, plague, famine, and the other effects which end up claiming 70 million or so American lives in the war's aftermath.
In realism, the novel is quite accurate. The nuclear war is triggered when the U.S. builds a space-based 'star wars' system, which apparently leads Russia to believe its deterrent will be useless. Russia then launches a first strike, destroying the ICBM silos in the Midwest and launching a salvo of 10 megatonne bombs against Washington, New York, and San Antonio. About 70 megatonnes fall on Washington, reducing the city to molten rock and glass, whilst lesser megatonnage falls on New York. Although most of the New York salvo misses, enough damage is done to kill 3 million people and damage the city beyond repair. Russia also detontates a number of 'EMP' bombs over the U.S., destroying most of the electronics and computer systems in the U.S. The President, panicked and bewieldered, launches nuclear counter-strikes of similar force against Russia, and probably also orders the use of biological weapons against the Warsaw Pact (although this is never claimed explicitly). Russia also appears to deploy a biological agent against America, which ends up being simply called the 'Cinncinati Flu' which ironically kills about twice as many people as the nuclear strikes themselves do.
Although the authors vastly over-estimate the likely yield of the Soviet bombs (modern city busters have yields of about 400-750 kilotonnes, deployed in ICBMs with 3-12 warheads apiece) the general effects of the deployed weapons and the aftermath corroborate well with what I know about nuclear weapons and war in general. What is perhaps the most chilling is that a 'limited' nuclear war still effectively ruins and cripples the U.S., reducing it from a premier superpower to a nation with the same might as say, modern Japan or India. The authors are also prescient in their awareness of the damage an 'EMP' burst would do, something of considerable worry in more recent times with nuclear terrorism.
Overall the novel is perhaps the best fictional account of what a nuclear war could do. I would certainly give a copy to anyone who thinks nuclear weaponry is the best means of achieving political aims or of resolving international disputes.

Parenthetically, the more books I read of the post-apocalyptic genre the more I'm convinced of the utter unoriginality of Stephen King's The Stand (I did enjoy the movie)-from the T.S. Eliot quote at the beginning (On the Beach) to the scouting party westward (Warday).
Anyway, the authors of Warday spit the truth in your face, call on you to do something "before it's too late," but realize that hindsight is a luxury not only after a holocaust, but at present too. Midway through the book, before the authors lose their faith in human decency (in my opinion) traveling through California, they exhort us to shed excess bureaucracy and governance, downsizing to family units and really glorifying agriculture as a means of earning one's living. They repeat through the book how hard work is sometimes the only thing keeping survivors from thinking about their lives pre-Warday. But by the end of the book, when the thousand children are sent back to Philadelphia to face their second famine, I think the authors' hearts really break and they lose whatever faith remained. In a narrative in which there is surprisingly little anger or vengefulness expressed, even toward the American or Soviet leadership, I for one was left with a sense that once the survivors are able to feed themselves again there's going to be a reckoning.
The authors cover every base in their narrative, relying heavily on interviews in which the interviewees are encouraged to "let 'er rip," and on official post-Warday documents-quite ominous declarations and memos. The effects of electromagnetic pulses are given their due as being perhaps more destructive of the USA than the bombs and radiation themselves. Three maps of the Lower 48 show the bombs' effects at three different times after Warday.
A few things I find hard to believe in the book (besides the misery of course). The Soviet warheads were repeatedly described as being in the 5-10 megaton range, with 3 to 6 warheads delivered to Washington, New York, and San Antonio-about 30 megatons per population center. Stansfield Turner (whom I would trust more to know about such things) wrote in his recent book Caging the Nuclear Genie that ICBM-deliverable Soviet nukes tend to be in the 400 kiloton range and are not a great deal larger. The Soviets also would be more inclined to target military targets instead of population centers-and why just population centers in the East and Texas? Also there is scant information about conditions elsewhere in the world-the interview with the submarine-killer guy could have been expanded a lot. I doubt that in the space of four years London has become the overwhelming capital of the world again. Also, most far-fetched (in my humble opinion) is how American ideals of human dignity as expressed in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution are completely forgotten in just four years, not by people who lived through the famine and the Cincinnati flu, but by people in Georgia and California who merely lost the convenience of cable television. Also, I think it's unrealistic how the British and Japanese, after all that the USA did for them in the 20th century, are shamelessly picking at the corpse.
It's obvious the authors were trying to address the subject of Mr. Reagan and his Star Wars plans, and making us appreciate what a fragile world we live in while there are nukes around. This book is almost too much to take.

This book is something you must read. It provides an entirely believable story of the world after a US vs USSR nuclear war. The USSR may be gone but China seems to be in the running for another Cold War with us within a few years, and though its written from the viewpoint of 1988, the destruction and the aftermath can't be expected to be very diferent. It is intensely realistic. Its even dedicated to Oct 27, 1988, the last day before the war. It was written in 1984. If you tore out the cover, review pages in the beginning, copyright, and the book order forms in the back, then buried it, to be discovered hundreds or thousands of years later by our great Great etc grandchildren they might add a chapter to their history books on the war of 1988. This book even had me thinking about what I would do if I was in the author's position in the introduction - with a nuclear blast some miles away and fallout about to kill me. I live ~50 miles away from NYC (and go to school even closer)so this could definitely be my position. You definetly should read it.

I first read WARDAY as an eight-grader, by recommendation of my mother. I'm from the Texas Gulf Coast, so this story was especially troublesome. The style of writing and - above all - the technical data contained within "Official" documents absolutely chill you. I thank God every day that the book is fiction; and pray that it remains that way. Yes, it is that compelling.

This was a very sobering look at the shattering results of a nuclear attack on the US, with the resulting balkanization of the regions of the country, although the subcultures described are a bit dated. The vast differences in fortune found in each area are also certainly plausible. I did find the Japanese ascendancy a stretch, but the Brits' role did not surprise me. True to form at their best. I loved the comment about not torturing children with stories of what they had lost ... what a heartbreak! Much more likely scenario than "total dust" hysteria, and thus leaves the reader much more thoughtful.

Streiber and Kunetka have the gift of poetic imagery; they write lyrically of a world in which the United States as we know has ceased to exist - a shadow of its former self, dominated by the United Kingdom and reliant upon the charities (if one could call them that) of nations untouched by nuclear war. Their technical research is impeccable, as well; as a former military officer, I can vouch that the weapons, communication systems and strategies they describe fairly parallel those which actually exist. In much the same manner, their descriptions of cities which (in their history) once existed but do so no longer are haunting simply because of their accuracy; one feels achingly the loss of San Antonio. However, their downfall is the pedantic moralizing with which they continually make their point: nuclear war is bad and the US military is at best blase about it and at worst somewhat looks forward to it (see the interview with the US Army general in which he remembers thinking a nuclear war would strengthen America's moral fiber; I know a number of general officers, and no one fears such a war more so than those who have to plan for it).
What's my point? This: entertaining reading, but go proselytize on someone else's time. Remember, this is the same Whitley Streiber who is convinced he is the chosen contact for aliens...

Warning: Some Spoilers.

Warday refers to the day the Soviet Union launched a preemptive attack on the United States in response to Spiderweb, the book's name for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program proposed by President Ronald Reagan. Authors Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka provide a pseudo-realistic travelogue of the post-apocalyptic United States five years after the fateful attack. Throughout their journey, they meet bandits, priests, writers turned school teachers, the poor, wealthy immigrants, old friends, and anyone else who would talk to them.

There is one thing I really like about realistic attempts at science fiction. If you wait long enough, they all become alternate history novels. Warday is no exception. Written during the dark days of the Cold War, Strieber and Kunetka paint a bleak depressing view of the post-apocalyptic United States in the 1990s. Had I read the novel during the 1980s, this book would have terrified me. Being a decade removed from the imagined time period, this novel now reads like a low tech American dystopian comedy. A fascist California is fending off illegal immigration through gestapo tactics. So that's why the Dead Kennedys hated Jerry Brown. The Rio Grande Valley has seceded from Texas, forming Aztlan. I personally find that a fair trade for ending the drug war with Mexico. The carpetbagging Japanese and British are exploiting the remaining wealth of the United States, while doing their best to stifle Americans from climbing out of economic depression. Poor China, they were always an afterthought in the 80s. New York and San Antonio actually have something in common. Both happened to share the first wave of a Soviet nuclear attack. Forget Los Angeles. Forget Seattle and Boeing. Hey, forget Dallas and Houston and Austin. The Soviets considered San Antonio to be a target as important as Washington D.C. and New York. As a Texan, this does spark some personal pride in me. While this book was very well thought out for its time, it now provides incredible entertainment value for how little of it makes sense thirty years later.

Despite my previous snark, I do believe Warday and the Journey Onwards deserves its place in the essential post-apocalyptic canon alongside Swan Song, On the Beach, Alas, Babylon and other great novels. Both authors do a commendable job of providing excellent insightful analysis of both the causes and consequences of a limited nuclear attack. Unfortunately, the authors' personal biases and 20/20 hindsight date many of their ideas considerably. Still, Strieber and Kunetka accomplished something that few have done in the realm of science fiction; they provide a novel that reads more like an accurate historical text than a piece of escapist fiction.

There is no way anyone will ever know to what extent books such as Warday helped bring the United States and the Soviet Union to the bargaining table and reduced the chance for a military confrontation. However, the book's general message remains vividly clear after all these years. War is a terrible thing, and the consequences of any war are uncertain. A war that took less than 30 minutes set the United States back a hundred years and killed over half the population from radiation sickness and famine. I really enjoyed reading Warday for two reasons: I get to laugh at a world that will never be, and I get to hope for a future without its own Warday.

The realism conveyed in Warday chills you to the bone! The book illustrates what a "dreamworld" we live in, and take for granted. I have given a few copies to friends as gifts, and their comments are a mixture of "great fiction" but just a little too close to reality for comfort! Strieber & Kunetka's research is evident with the "local flavors" found in the various chapters. A definite member of my all time top ten list. Craig Scott Brookfield, IL

The realism conveyed in Warday chills you to the bone! The book illustrates what a "dreamworld" we live in, and take for granted. I have given a few copies to friends as gifts, and their comments are a mixture of "great fiction" but just a little too close to reality for comfort! Strieber & Kunetka's research is evident with the "local flavors" found in the various chapters. A definite member of my all time top ten list. Craig Scott Brookfield, IL

Very easy to read. The journal and narrative styles used by the authors allows the material to have greater impact. Not an out-and-out horror tale, Warday shows the subtler--but no less lethal-- effects of even a limited nuclear conflict

The terrifying thing about warday is it envisages the inevitable result of what would happen if the US tried to put a system in place that could stop a russian attack. any russian premier would be criminally negligent not to launch an attack before it was deployed. ask yourself; would the US allow Russia to get in a position where it could destroy the US without retaliation? of course not. with the latest attempt to launch a missile defense system we are back to the dangerous 80s.

This book is a poorly written, aimless book.There seemed to be very little effort to knit the narrative together. I suppose that this was meant to highlight the disintegration of the US, but it made the book a very poor read. I have read other Streiber books in an effort to understand his popularity, but this was my final attempt. He just doesn't write well.