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Red Alert (novel)

Red Alert AuthorPeter GeorgeOriginal titleTwo Hours to DoomCountryUnited KingdomPublisherT. V. Boardman1958Media typePrintOCLC50737632
Red Alert is a 1958 novel by Peter George about nuclear 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. Kubrick's film differs significantly from the novel in that the film is a black comedy.

Originally published in the UK as Two Hours to Doom, with George using the pseudonym "Peter Bryant" (Bryan Peters for the French translation, 120 minutes pour sauver le monde), the novel deals with the apocalyptic threat of nuclear war and the almost absurd ease with which it can be triggered. A genre of such topical fiction, of which Red Alert was among the earliest examples that sprung up in the late 1950s, led by Nevil Shute's On the Beach.[citation needed]

Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler's later best-seller, Fail-Safe, so closely resembled Red Alert in its premise that George sued on the charge of copyright infringement, resulting in an out-of-court settlement. Both novels would go on to inspire very different films that would both be released in 1964 by the same studio (Columbia Pictures).

Plot
In a paranoid delusion, moribund U.S. Air Force general Quinten unilaterally launches an airborne preventive nuclear attack upon the Soviet Union from his command at the Sonora, Texas, Strategic Air Command (S.A.C.) bomber base by ordering the 843rd Bomb Wing to attack using war plan "Wing Attack Plan R", which authorises a lower-echelon S.A.C. commander to retaliate after an enemy first strike has decapitated the U.S. government. He attacks with the entire B-52 bomber wing of new aircraft, each armed with two nuclear weapons and protected with electronic countermeasures to prevent the Soviets from shooting them down.

When the U.S. President and cabinet become aware the attack is underway, they assist the Soviet defence interception of the U.S.A.F. bombers, to little effect, because the Soviets destroy only two bombers and damage one, the Alabama Angel, which remains airborne and en route to its target.

The U.S. government reestablishes the S.A.C. airbase chain of command, but the general who launched the attack, the only man knowing the recall code, kills himself before capture and interrogation. His executive officer correctly deduces the recall code from among the general's desk pad doodles. The code is received by the surviving bomber aircraft, and they are successfully recalled, minutes before bombing their targets in the Soviet Union, save for the Alabama Angel, whose earlier-damaged radio prevents its recalling; it progresses to its target.

In a last effort to avert a Soviet–American nuclear war, the U.S. President offers the Soviet Premier the compensatory right to destroy Atlantic City, New Jersey; at the final moment, the Alabama Angel fails to destroy its target, and nuclear catastrophe is averted.

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