Eric Schlosser reconstructs a terrifying 1980 accident at a Titan II missile silo near Damascus, Arkansas, where a dropped socket wrench punctured a missile's fuel tank and set in motion a chain of events that nearly caused a nuclear detonation on American soil. Schlosser interweaves this minute-by-minute account with a broader history of American nuclear weapons accidents, security failures, and the government's ongoing struggle to prevent catastrophic mishaps. Drawing on declassified documents, interviews with weapons designers and military personnel, and accident reports hidden from the public for decades, he reveals that such near-disasters were far more common than Americans ever knew. The book exposes the tension between the need for weapons that could be launched quickly and the imperative to prevent accidental detonation, showing how these competing demands created systemic vulnerabilities. Schlosser, known for his investigative work on the fast food industry, brings the same meticulous research to the nuclear weapons complex, humanizing the airmen, technicians, and scientists caught between impossible demands. The Damascus accident serves as the narrative anchor, but the book ranges across the entire Cold War, documenting fires, crashes, dropped bombs, and close calls that remained classified for decades. The result is a harrowing examination of how close humanity has come to nuclear catastrophe through accident rather than war.