Red Alert by Peter Bryant

Red Alert

Peter Bryant

Red Alert is a 1958 novel by Peter George about thermonuclear war. The book was the underlying inspiration for Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Originally published in the UK as Two Hours to Doom – with George using the pseudonym "Peter Bryant" – the novel deals with the apocalyptic threat of nuclear war and the almost absurd ease with which it can be triggered.

The cover of Red Alert.

Peter George, a.k.a. Peter Bryant, was a WWII RAF Officer and he also worked for British "Intelligence."

As a signer of the Official Secrets Act, that Great Briton was bound to silence.

That meant that the only way he could communicate the Pentagon's doomsday scenario was by writing a novel.

Peter Bryant
(1924–1966).

The Cuban Missile Crisis was almost a replay of that novel. In 1964, Stanley Kubrick bought the movie rights to the novel for a pittance and turned it into a FARCICAL COMEDY. In the movie, the second in command at SAC, played by Peter Sellers, is an RAF officer.

For writng a book about the dangers of thermonucnlear war, Bryant was brutally murdered in his own home:

After the release of Dr Strangelove, Peter George continued to be preoccupied by the horrifying prospect of nuclear conflict. It was a fascination that would prove fatal. The aftermath of a devastating war formed the subject of his next two books. The first, Commander One, he dedicated to Kubrick, but the second, Nuclear Survivors, was never completed. The 41-year-old writer was found dead from a self-inflicted shotgun wound at his home in St Leonards, near Hastings, Sussex, on 1 June 1966. (Smith, Doomsday Men, p. 429).

Britons are not allowed to own guns and a person who is suicidal is not concerned about the survival of the human race.

FOREWARD

This is the story of a battle. A battle fought in the skies over the Arctic and over Russia, on an American Strategic Air Command Base, and in the minds of men. Its duration was only two hours.
It is a chaotic story, because battles usually are chaotic. It is a pitiless, cruel story, because pitilessness and cruelty are inherent qualities of battle, and especially a battle fought out with modern nuclear weapons.
Most important of all, it is a story which could happen.
It may even be happening as you read these words. And then it really will be two hours to doom.
Yours and mine and every other living creature's.

Chapter 1	“ALABAMA ANGEL”
Chapter 2	SONORA, TEXAS
Chapter 3	“ALABAMA ANGEL”
Chapter 4	SAC HQ OMAHA, NEBRASKA
Chapter 5	SONORA, TEXAS
Chapter 6	THE PENTAGON, WASHINGTON D.C.
Chapter 7	“ALABAMA ANGEL”
Chapter 8	SONORA, TEXAS
Chapter 9	THE PENTAGON, WASHINGTON D.C.
Chapter 10	“ALABAMA ANGEL”
Chapter 11	SONORA, TEXAS
Chapter 12	“ALABAMA ANGEL”
Chapter 13	THE PENTAGON, WASHINGTON D.C.
Chapter 14	“ALABAMA ANGEL”
Chapter 15	SONORA, TEXAS
Chapter 16	THE PENTAGON, WASHINGTON D.C.
Chapter 17	“ALABAMA ANGEL”
Chapter 18	SONORA, TEXAS
Chapter 19	“ALABAMA ANGEL”
Chapter 20	THE PENTAGON, WASHINGTON D.C.
Chapter 21	“ALABAMA ANGEL”
Chapter 22	THE PENTAGON, WASHINGTON D.C.
Chapter 23	“ALABAMA ANGEL”
Chapter 24	THE PENTAGON, WASHINGTON D.C.
Chapter 25	“ALABAMA ANGEL”
Chapter 26	THE PENTAGON, WASHINGTON D.C.

Reference

Smith, P.D. Doomsday Men: The Real Dr. Strangelove and Dream of the Superweapon. St. Martin's Press, New York, 2007.

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