The US has described a likely scenario of nuclear war on the planet

American journalist, writer and 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen published a book in which she described a likely scenario of nuclear war on the planet, The Guardian reports.

It is indicated that Jacobsen took into account only well-known facts and took into account the current relations between the countries.

Thus, according to the scenario described by the journalist, the first nuclear strike could be launched by North Korea, which will be convinced that it is about to be attacked by the United States. According to the author of the scenario, Washington will respond with a salvo of 50 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). They will be aimed at DPRK military facilities. However, as Jacobsen notes, these missiles will have to fly over Russia, making Russia a party to a nuclear conflict.

Realising the danger of miscalculation, the US president tries to contact his Russian counterpart. But the two men and the countries they govern don't get along, and he fails miserably. To make matters worse, Russia's cunning Tundra satellite early warning system has exaggerated the scale of the American salvo, and from his Siberian bunker, the Russian president orders a full-scale nuclear strike on the US," the publication writes.

The writer notes that in the world there is an extremely dangerous situation when the decision on a nuclear strike can be taken by one person - the head of state.

And once it is taken, no one has the right to block it. This is called sole power, and it is almost certainly the most frightening fact in the world today. It means that each of a handful of people is capable of destroying the world in a few minutes without consulting anyone," she points out.

Recall, Putin warned the West that Russia is technically ready for nuclear war. The Russian Federation, which inherited the nuclear weapons of the Soviet Union, has the world's largest stockpile of nuclear warheads. According to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), we are talking about 5,580 such warheads.