Thomas J Yeggy Interview Published on: 16, Jan 2024

I was born in Iowa City, Iowa and now live in Davenport, Iowa and Pensacola Beach FL.

Each place has its own plusses and minuses with Iowa City having educational and quality of life advantages and Pensacola Beach natural beauty. I'd take Pensacola Beach if forced to choose just based on weather.

My undergraduate degrees in English and Psychology and experience as a Mental Health Judge had a great influence on me. Introspective thoughts about why the individual elements called humans, which make up our society could be so cruel made me reflect on my own experiences and examine whether change could be accomplished by kindness. Law and finance exposed me to many individuals that made the journey into the reasons for conflicts apparent. So many people lack an anger filter that an automatic response to anyone that is perceived to be blocking them from reaching their goals, minor and major, is merely collateral damage. Just look at road rage or someone having a nicotine fit.

The answer here goes back to Freud. The id drives us toward our goal at any cost with the superego moderating our methods and the ego making the decision as to what action is finally taken to reach that goal. The cases where a soccer mom gets bored and goes downtown for excitement and gets hooked on crack were the worst. The mental health cases where the diagnosis was that the patient was a sociopath were a good case study for why we have global conflicts. Think Hitler and Tojo here.

I see Eisenhower warning us about the military –industrial complex and his statement that “you just can’t have that kind of war because there aren’t enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets” as a dire warning. We continue with the arms race and the new hypersonic missiles. When will it stop. Look at the money spent on defense by all the nations around the world and imagine it being spent on humanitarian projects like healthcare.

Well just listening to the Kennedy Ex-Com tapes will let you know that he stood alone against the entire committee in trying to understand Khrushchev’s predicament and how Khrushchev could save face and we could avoid nuclear war. Also, what Vasili Arkipov did onboard the B-59 Russian Foxtrot submarine on October 27,1962 to stop Captain Savitsky from firing a nuclear torpedo and sinking the U.S. aircraft carrier Essex saved the world.

The main problem is conflict resolution whether it be on an international scale or individual one. Just realize that it is one person that could be making that decision who lacks self-control as nuclear weapons proliferate and may think that infidels need to be punished for their sins.

Even in small claims court you can sense the animosity of one human for another and but for the consequences of the legal system they would carry out a violent campaign against the other side. And it gets worse in any domestic relations situation. You have to realize the ingrained hate that organizations like Hamas and the Taliban have for other humans to get an idea as to what they would do with nuclear weapons.

I wanted to intertwine my protagonist with actual events yet make it readable. The first part of the book Mushroom Cloud portrays Caleb Young as a homeschooled child genius. His parents were Chemistry and Physics professors at Berkley. They realized that he needed more than the physical sciences to succeed in life. At that point I introduced Plato, Kant, Hobbs and other literary and philosophical thinkers because I wanted to send a message to the readers about life. Some may find that part difficult, but it was necessary to build Caleb into a Will Hunting type of character. Then the research into the Soviet Union took a lot of time.

The West is somewhat cognizant of the problems. I think that NATO, Russia, China and other nuclear powers that now exist are aware of the problems, but many others are not and that will cause problems in the future. I firmly believe that North Korea is a problem but perhaps not as big of a problem as Iran. We need to reimpose sanctions on Iran and stop their regime from selling oil to fund terrorism. That would topple the Mullahs in a few years from internal discontent.

Davenport is next to the Rock Island Arsenal and Pensacola is near the Pensacola Naval Air Station and two air force bases. It is easy to imagine both being targets. The last part of Armageddon Book III of the first strike series tries to deal with the war and its aftermath.

When I saw the pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and started doing the math between kilotons and megatons I wanted to know more about the blast and thermal radiation radius of fifteen and twenty megaton weapons. Of course, they release 1,000 times more energy.

All one must do is google “nuclear close calls” and see the growing list. Very few people know that JFK asked Khrushchev, informally through secret channels, if he would help stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons by bombing China’s nuclear facilities. Let's take a page out if JFK’s book and stop Iran by cutting off their oil supplies surreptitiously. I believe this would stop their nuclear development. If they fund terrorist Iran will sponsor nuclear use.

I love my dogs Otis, Emme and my wife Eileen, though not necessarily in that order! I have many other family members and close friends who would be there in time of need as do most of your readers. I am concerned that most of us take for granted the orderliness of society in general. All of that goes away if the world, or even a region goes nuclear to resolve a conflict. Mad dashes to grocery stores and general “Mad Max” conditions then exist. No one even considers that North Korea could try to explode a nuclear weapon in our atmosphere causing an electrical magnetic impulse that would change our lives instantly. I think our ABM system is good enough to stop that, but it is a real possibility that it may not.

I have spent the last six months working on JFK’s solutions to the Berlin 61 Crisis and have done a five-part blog on that at my website. https://thomasjyeggy.com . That blog forms the basis for my next book. It is a “what if” Khrushchev would not have backpedaled on his threat to sign the peace treaty with East Germany and JFK would have had to use nuclear weapons to open the Autobahn. Would he have used SIOP-62 or the Kaysen-Rowen limited counterforce plan?

The simplicity and the economics . You get a lot of banners for your books that are very good for social media use.