“During the Reagan administration, the American government devised and put into place this secret protocol named Wild Fire. What Wild Fire is, is the nuclear obliteration of the entire Islamic world by means of American nuclear missiles, in response to a nuclear terrorist attack on America.

For Wild Fire to be a reliable deterrent, as Mutually Assured Destruction was, it cannot be kept a complete secret. In fact, since the Wild Fire plan was implemented, the heads of all Islamic governments have been notified by succeeding administrations in Washington that an attack on an American city with a weapon of mass destruction would automatically ensure an American nuclear retaliation against fifty to one hundred cities and other targets in the Islamic world.

Wild Fire is seen by the American government as a very strong incentive for these countries to control the terrorists in their midsts, to induce these countries to share information with American intelligence agencies, and to do whatever they need to do to keep themselves from being vaporized.”

From Nelson DeMille’s latest novel, Wild Fire. In DeMille’s story, some right-wing loonies get their hands on some Soviet suitcase nukes and decide to blow up a couple of American cities, blame it on the terrorists, and turn Sand Land into molten glass.

I googled “Wild Fire” and found myself on the Library of Congress website, looking at Senate Report 105-200 – Department of Defense Appropriation Bill, 1999. Just search the page for “Wild Fire” and you’ll find the reference but no explanation. Probably nothing but figured I’d note it here.

This is just something an imaginative writer came up with, right? Like most of DeMille’s novels… Wild Fire is a thriller. (And a nice companion read to Scott Adams’ The Religion War.)