The New Yorker

1) Who was Herman Kahn and what were some of the main ideas in his book, On Thermonuclear War?
Herman Kahn was born in New Jersey in 1922 and went to U.C.LA and majored in physics. He also served in the pacific theatre in a non-combat position during the war Kahn was also the author of the book “Thermonuclear War” he was also a man who in the early years of the cold war made it his business, he was also a man creature of the rand corporation. He demonstrated that he was really intelligent after his training and after working with different technologies. Kahn began to be well known after his marathon after his magazine stories and as a journalist. After all in 1947 Kahn had joined Research and Development line item in the Air Force.

2) What is your reaction to his ideas so far?
He incorporates many different ideas that give me different reactions and make me stop and think about it, but through all his main argument of Kahn is that deterrence is not insured by the policy which is the theory of the “Splendid.” He’s main idea was also to designed a plan for the nuclear war and get everyone award about this. He wanted to prevent it or if not how to win and if that didn’t work then how to survive it. This is one of the things that did give me a big reaction because it was a pretty good idea he had for the cold War which was something really important.