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Duration: 2:27

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Plot:The captain of the USS Nathan James (DDG-80), Thomas, begins by describing his ship to the reader. His ship, named after an American naval hero from World War II, is a nuclear-powered guided missile destroyer and is armed with nuclear-tipped Tomahawk cruise missiles. He discusses the ethics of command, of a warship, of nuclear strike forces, life aboard a U.S. Navy ship in the Arctic Circle, and the nature of his ship's mission. He recounts how, one December day, without warning, he received authenticated orders to carry out a nuclear strike on the Soviet city of Orel and its nearby ICBM silos. He then explains that after carrying out the mission and reporting the fact to his superiors, a reply from the U.S. Navy became hopelessly garbled halfway through the message. With one exception later in the book, this is the last official communication from the U.S. Navy that the Nathan James ever receives.
Thomas then decides to head southward into the North Sea and then to the United Kingdom, in order to re-establish contact with friendly forces. The ship encounters dense clouds of radioactive smoke, through which can be seen the ruins of London. Thomas then reverses course and heads for the open sea in order to escape the radiation. In the following months, the ship's crew discovers that the radioactive cloud hovers around all land masses that the Nathan James approaches, rendering them uninhabitable

to air sometime in mid-2014.