Mistakes, bureaucracy, crumbling infrastructure...Russia has been falling apart for decades. They somewhat routinely has nuclear plant accidents to this day whi

Mistakes, bureaucracy, crumbling infrastructure...Russia has been falling apart for decades. They somewhat routinely has nuclear plant accidents to this day which we only find out about when monitoring stations pick up huge upticks in background radiation. The chances of enough infrastructure problems, incompetence, and don't-give-a-fuck-itis-its-vodka-time to trigger this system are very much non-zero. Boris the drunk farmer accidentally cuts a comm line nobody remembers, but is still used by the doomsday machine. The same day, someone new and untrained is working the switchboard at a defense HQ and thinks "some asshole with a flute" is crank calling them when it's actually the doomsday machine playing the "hey, I've been triggered, is anyone alive?" recognition tones that they're supposed to punch in a response to. Some military system was recently decommissioned but turns out the doomsday machine uses its status as one of the later stages of its decision-making. So then we end up with every population center in the continental US turned to glass?