After the shooting down of a Korean civilian airliner by a Soviet MiG over Sakalin Island, President Ronald Reagan, who believes his hand is guided by God, seizes the moment and embarks on a non-stop, no holds barred worldwide anti-Soviet campaign.

In Moscow the paranoid Soviet Premier, Yuri Andropov, dieing of liver cancer, already has plans in place for a full scale nuclear retaliation if he suspects the Americans of preparing for a first strike. But why was a civilian airliner with a veteran crew aboard who had flown this route many times, so far off course and coincidentally over flying the most secret Soviet missile base in the east? Neither the Soviet mole buried deep within NATO or the CIA secret operative inside the KGB can shed any light on the worsening situation.

At the same time, U.S. Naval Intelligence has been stymied by a recurring code word hidden in Soviet communications traffic, code word: RYAN. Lieutenant David Harden is given the task to find out what it means. Unfortunately, Harden has zero field experience and the only clue lies behind the wall in East Berlin.

Based on true incidents which occurred in the Fall of 1983, Children of the Nuclear Gods is based on actual events experienced by the author from September to November of 1983 during Operation Able Archer and which have been labelled as the "Nuclear War Scare".