The cold war may be over, but dozens of U.S. and Russian subs still lurk under the ocean, poised to attack. It's dangerous work, as Russians discovered last year with the sinking of the Kursk and Americans realized last month with the U.S.S. Greenevilles deadly collision. The Navy operates 18 Trident subs, whose 432 missiles carry enough nuclear warheads to destroy Russia many times over. Time's Douglas Waller was granted the most access any journalist has ever had to chronicle a patrol of one of those Tridents, the U.S.S. Nebraska. His book Big Red: Three Months On Board a Trident Nuclear Submarine (HarperCollins; $27.50) arrives in bookstores this week. In the excerpt below, the crew practices the most complex and momentous operation a Trident can undertake: the launching of nuclear weapons.
展开▼
