Reddit reviews Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

Strictly speaking, per the 25th Amendment, she would not be the acting President but the real-actual-in-fact President.

Once strategic nuclear forces were a thing, this became a serious question that needed solving. I strongly recommend Raven Rock, which is a really cool treatment of Continuity of Government efforts during the Cold War for more on this.

>NORAD and all the nuke silos in the Midwest go first.

Not really, the US has the ability to detect any missiles inbound for them and launch first. Part of the reason those ICBM's are in the middle of nowhere.

I highly recommend this book to anyone that wants to see just how serious the US government is about maintaining their ability to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike.

There’s also a great book about the real world Raven Rock and US government continuity operations as a whole. Good read.

Longer form: https://www.amazon.com/Raven-Rock-Governments-Secret-Itself-While/dp/1476735409

I'm not entirely sure what soft authoritarianism means. Maybe you need to specify in more detail for a more accurate answer. But there are certainly theorists who have argued for some forms of authoritarianism.

Thomas Hobbes, for example, argues that without government, and without a government in which authority is vested in one person (or a handful of people), then what will happen is a war of all against all. Unless we have a sovereign with absolute power to set the laws and harshly punish those who break the laws, then people will try and take advantage of others, they'll start pushing their own idiosyncratic views about politics and religion, and eventually all social trust will evaporate causing brutality and war.

The US government accepts certain premises behind this view. In his recent book Raven Rock, Garrett Graff describes US policy in the wake of a nuclear attack. These "continuity of government" plans essentially lead to an authoritarianism as there is no real method set up for new elections and huge power immediately gets vested in the hands of the president. He quotes (I think it was) Truman saying "Any democracy that enters a nuclear war will emerge from it a tyranny (or authoritarian); that is the price of survival."

Perhaps if you want to probe this further, ask yourself what justifies liberal democracy. Then you can try to determine whether any of those things are also present in authoritarianism.

Well, just spend more time there reading. To be clear, though, I'm a scientist who thought about getting retrained in order to work more directly on problems relating to climate change. In my independent research, it's become very clear that we are hitting the limits to growth and that there is not going to be a technological fix or even stop gap measure for the problems surrounding climate change. In fact, there's a massive amount of evidence that we are in a period of exponentially worsening, abrupt climate change. Once we get a blue ocean even in the arctic, things are going to accelerate very rapidly.

As you mentioned positivity bias, I think normalcy bias and the human tendency towards denial is a lot more important to consider. Most people simply cannot begin to comprehend the magnitude of the change that is coming because basically no one alive has ever expereiced such a thing. Kari Norgaard gives a great lecture on how even the majority of those who accept that climate change are real are in a kind of soft denial about just how real and how urgent it truly is. On denial see also: Clive Hamilton, Ajit Varki, etc.

The food surplus depends on a stable climate and there is literally nothing we can do at this point to maintain one. Even if all emissions were to stop tomorrow, the warming would continue for decades. Carbon capture and sequestration is a pipedream, geoengineering schemes like seeding the upper atmosphere with SO2 will have terrible side effects. There is nothing to be done.

I would like for you to be correct. I wanted to go to work to ensure that you would be. However, my conclusion is that there is nothing to be done other than to hope that the air remains breathable and that civilizational collapse halts the warming at around 4-6C. Past that and I worry we're going into a situation where no prep in the world besides a massive private or governmental bunker with artificial life support systems would be enough.

But don't take my word for it, do your own research. Collapse is a good starting point, but people like Clive Hamilton, Gwynne Dwyer, Jospeh Tainter, etc are also great sources to start with. But be careful, once you see it you cannot unsee it and it's pretty fucking depressing.

EDIT: Sorry, I just wanted to add this: every single civilization that has ever existed has experienced a collapse at some point. The difference has historically been that the collapses have been local and that the civilization was never developed enough to ruin the whole ecosystem (although permanent desertification are common, even as far back as Ur and Sumer). So your bet is a very risky one. ;) The difference this time is that this civilization is global, not one corner of the globe is untouched and this time the collapse might be an extinction event.

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Comment (8pts) in AskHistorians, "As Gerald R. Ford was being sworn in as President, (former)...", (20 Feb 19):

> In [Raven Rock](https://smile.amazon.com/Raven-Rock-Governments-Secret-Itself-While/dp/1476735409/ref=mp_s_a_1_fkmrnull_1?crid=3SO4ULMVMNNUH&keywords=raven+rock+the+story+of+the+u.s.+government+secret...





Comment (10pts) in science, "Since the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National...", (17 Oct 18):

> That was so good! Thanks for linking it





Comment (61pts) in nfl, "NFL broadcasts lose Viagra, Cialis as major advertisers", (10 Jul 17):

> His son in law did start Blackwater USA, and his daughter in law is the Secretary of Education. Also Rich DeVos has given millions to Focus on the Family.


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If you want something more accurate, go read Garrett Graff's recently published Raven Rock. https://www.amazon.com/Raven-Rock-Governments-Secret-Itself-While/dp/1476735409

If you've never read it, look up Raven Rock by  Garrett Graff. He goes into all sorts of detail and little stories like this about the secret effort to build bomb shelters and otherwise plan to protect the top heads of state in the event of a nuclear war.

It's fascinating.

https://www.amazon.com/Raven-Rock-Governments-Secret-Itself-While/dp/1476735409