Skull Valley

From the author of Bitten, a taut and terrifying account of the worst nerve gas accident in U.S. history, the military’s ensuing cover-up, and how the disaster ended the country’s pursuit of offensive chemical and biological weapons. Skull Valley, Utah, 1968. A shepherd bolts from his cot, unnerved by a ghostly silence. When he steps out of his sheep wagon, he is stunned by an incomprehensible sight: hundreds of dying sheep strewn across the desert landscape. In 1968, Americans thought they lived in a peace-loving country, one that took the moral high ground in defending freedom. But political assassinations, race riots, and the Vietnam War had begun to fuel doubt in those beliefs. Then came the images of thousands of twitching, writhing sheep, poisoned by nerve agents on American soil, and the realization that the military was developing a deadly new class of weapons. When news of the disaster leaked, an even more disturbing truth was revealed: the Skull Valley incident wasn’t the only chemical weapons accident—it was simply the first one the government couldn’t keep hidden. With the page-turning pace of a thriller, Skull Valley dives deep into the macabre history of nerve agents, poisons so powerful that a drop on the skin or a few molecules inhaled can kill within minutes, and the day that the military poisoned the American West.