Nuking the Moon
And Other Intelligence Schemes and Military Plots Left on the Drawing Board
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4.1 • 15 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
The International Spy Museum's Historian takes us on a wild tour of missions and schemes that almost happened, but were ultimately deemed too dangerous, expensive, ahead of their time, or even certifiably insane.
"Compulsively readable laugh out loud history." —Mary Roach, New York Times bestselling author of Grunt and Stiff
In 1958, the U.S. Air Force nuked the moon as a show of military force. In 1967, the CIA sent live cats to spy on the Soviet government. In 1942, the British built a torpedo-proof aircraft carrier out of an iceberg. Of course, none of these things ever actually happened.
But in Nuking the Moon, intelligence historian Vince Houghton proves that abandoned plans can be just as illuminating--and every bit as entertaining—as the ones that made it. Vividly capturing the fascinating stories of how twenty-one plans from WWII and the Cold War went from conception, planning, and testing to cancellation, Houghton explores what happens when innovation meets desperation: For every plan as good as D-Day, there's a scheme to strap bombs to bats or dig a spy tunnel underneath the Soviet embassy. Along the way, he reveals what each one tells us about twentieth-century history, the art of spycraft, military strategy, and famous figures like JFK, Castro, and Churchill. By turns terrifying and hilarious—but always riveting—this is the unique story of history left on the drawing board.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As International Spy Museum historian Houghton recounts in his entertaining first book, driven by pressure to gain an edge over WWII and Cold War adversaries, some of the U.S.'s smartest researchers dreamed up crazy military and espionage schemes that were ultimately consigned to the dustbin. He begins with "Acoustic Kitty" the project's official name a CIA plan to turn cats into listening devices (in one iteration, an antenna was woven down a test subject's spine) that failed because cats, stubbornly difficult to train in even simple tasks, made poor spies. He moves on from other, often cruel ideas involving animals to plots such as "Operation Monopoly" (the aborted digging of a tunnel to allow for spying on the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C.), a proposal to try redirecting hurricanes by exploding nuclear bombs inside of them, and several other frightening projects involving nuclear weapons, including the book's titular idea, in which a young Carl Sagan was involved. "When innovation and desperation meet, trouble will usually follow. If necessity is the mother of invention, desperation is the drunk uncle," Houghton quips. Alternately terrifying and hilarious, this book leaves the reader wondering what bizarre schemes are in the works in today's top-secret corridors of power.
