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Six Minutes to Winter

Nuclear War and How to Avoid It

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Six Minutes to Winter

By: Mark Lynas
Narrated by: Tom Lawrence
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Bloomsbury presents Six Minutes to Winter: Nuclear War and How to Avoid It by Mark Lynas read by Tom Lawrence

‘Terrifying and timely, this is a book everyone should read and heed’ - George Monbiot
'Urgent, gripping and sobering, Six Minutes to Winter is a hair-raising wake-up call’ - David Wallace-Wells
‘Powerful and insightful. Although many have forgotten about nuclear weapons, we shouldn't’
- Charles Oppenheimer

The world is currently closer to superpower conflict than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. World War III is a real possibility, and with 12,000 warheads in the arsenals of more than half a dozen countries, we are standing on a nuclear knife edge.

Despite receiving very little attention, nuclear war is a far greater threat to humanity's immediate survival than climate change. While climate heating threatens humanity over many decades, nuclear war could destroy civilisation in just a few hours. A major missile exchange would mean months of near-total darkness, followed by a decade-long global nuclear winter that would destroy most life on Earth. Virtually everyone would starve in the resulting worldwide famine, and there would be no reliable refuge.

We are sleepwalking to Armageddon. There are no mass marches, no COPs, no nuclear Greta. But the climate experience teaches us that ignoring a problem is no solution, and that a worldwide mobilisation can work. Six Minutes to Winter presents an unflinching view of the nuclear nightmare, but also describes how weapons can be taken off hair-trigger alert and ultimately abolished altogether. If human civilisation is to survive long term, we have no alternative.©2025 Mark Lynas (P)2025 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Engineering Environment Military Physics Politics & Government Science Weapons & Warfare War Survival Nuclear War Winter
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Critic reviews

‘Gripping, terrifying and timely, this is a book everyone should read and heed.’
Staggering, necessary … Six Minutes to Winter is Lynas’s way of smashing the alarm button … Lynas closes Six Minutes to Winter on this resonant ceremony — so right in its moral soundness and so neat in its poetic symmetry that it made me weep.
‘The world is shadowed by the risk of nuclear winter, but we tell ourselves it's already spring and the terrifying prospect has passed. It hasn't. Urgent, gripping, and sobering, Six Minutes to Winter is a hair-raising wake-up call.’
‘A powerful and insightful reminder of the immense responsibilities that come with modern technology. Although many have forgotten about nuclear weapons, we shouldn't’
'Lynas' fearsome yet humane clarion call should trigger a new era of nuclear disarmament. This should be the opening read of the Heads of Nuclear States book club. Pulverizing physics react with Mark Lynas' poetic soul to deliver a book of unmatched power.'
Six Minutes to Winter offers morbidly compelling descriptions of exactly what it would be like if the Eastern seaboard were hit by a full-on nuclear attack and guess what: it’s not great.
‘An unflinching look into the most terrifying threat facing humanity. Everyone needs to know the story Lynas is telling'.
‘Of no surprise to anyone who has read his previous books, Mark Lynas gives a rigorous but understandable overview of one of humanity’s biggest threats. Before we can stop nuclear war we need to wake up to the reality of what could happen. Mark Lynas shows us how. Ignore it at your own peril.'
'Moving seamlessly between vivid narrative and sober-minded explanation, Lynas delivers a powerful warning of the continued threat of nuclear disaster. If any book can puncture our passivity towards one of the greatest threats to humanity, it is Six Minutes to Winter.'
All stars
Most relevant
With greatest respect for the author (Lynas is one of my go - to writers on the climate), the narration is grim, and almost certainly AI-generated. Almost unlistenable-to at standard speed though survivable at 1.5x.

AI - voice, it would seem, and a tough listen, not just content.

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This was disappointing. The opening passage start with a basic statistics/probabilty error that doesn't bode well for the rest of the book. There’s very little original in here, he rehashes a few of the extremely well-known bits of nuclear history (all covered better elsewhere). His write up of nuclear winter from a climate perspective is okay, and there’s no denying his main thesis of nuclear war being a REALLY bad thing (up there with super volcanoes and planet killing asteroids) and yet entirely of our own making and we could remove this existential risk by simply dismantling all the bombs - save a lot of money as well.
Lynas did write some good stuff on climate around 20 years ago now, incredibly, he writes in here that this previous work should now live on the cli-fi shelf, suggesting that we have now largely mitigated the climate risks he wrote about then. Nonsense.

Important message but disappointing book

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im not sure what I was expecting, all the information is there and he's clearly done his research. I just found it hard to listen to at points

Dull

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