If this list of potential catastrophes was meant to reassure Pauline, it failed. Whitfield said: 'With your permission, Madam President, we'll go all the way down and work back up.'Īs the elevator descended he said proudly: 'Ma'am, this facility offers you one hundred percent protection if the United States should suffer any of the following: a pandemic or plague a natural disaster such as a large meteorite hitting the Earth riot and major civil disorder a successful invasion by conventional military forces cyberattack or nuclear war.' 'This blast- proof room exists mainly to protect the elevators,' Whitfield said.Īs they entered the elevator, Pauline quickly lost the impatient sense that she was engaged in an exercise that was barely necessary. It had a low ceiling, and its walls seemed nearer, as if they were several feet thick.

I put this question to several people with experience of international affairs at a high level, who were kind enough to give me interviews: former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, European First Minister Baroness Ashton, Sir Kim Darroch, who was British ambassador to Washington until he fell foul of President Trump, and numerous academics.The room it led to felt suffocating. That was the spark that lit the fire, and my first task in writing ‘Never’ was to consider what the flashpoint leading to World War 3 might be. I see four stages on the path to war: the spark, the escalation, the existential threat, and the commitment.Įveryone knows about the assassination of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of Austria, by a Bosnian nationalist at Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. Leaving aside the possibility of a nuclear war by accident, or a nuclear war started by a mentally unbalanced world leader such as Donald Trump, could reasonable, moderate men find themselves dragged against their will into World War 3? And that realisation led me to ask: Could it happen again? Yet each of the emperors and prime ministers took small, quite rational steps that led to the worst war the human race had ever known. I studied the path that led to the first World War while I was writing ‘Fall of Giants’, and what struck me was the fact that no national leader actually wanted a European war. Image: Peter Ritson‘Never’ takes place in the present, but it was inspired by events that happened more than a hundred years ago.

Ken follett never ending