Red Alert (novel)

Red Alert

1st edition, originally titled Two Hours to Doom
Author	Peter George
Original title	Two Hours to Doom
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre	Nuclear war
Publisher	T. V. Boardman
Publication date	1958
OCLC	50737632

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 it 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, sprang up in the late 1950s, led by Nevil Shute's On the Beach.

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

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