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I also think there is a second human stage after the system has been activated. From my understanding after Dead Hand is armed with the access codes it goes in

by jpgvm 5y ago

I also think there is a second human stage after the system has been activated. From my understanding after Dead Hand is armed with the access codes it goes into a monitoring state. Until all conditions are met nothing happens but upon losing its links to all nuclear commands -and- it detects that a nuclear strike has landed on Soviet soil only then does it provide nuclear arming codes to the staff of the Dead Hand control bunker. These poor souls then make the decision to end humanity or not by launching the control missiles which will activate all automated nuclear weapons, transmit authorizations to bombers and submarines etc - which too will have humans that need to make the call if they want to take part in the apocalypse. Though AFAICT Russia still has enough land based ICBMs to level every major city on earth and all of those are probably 100% automated so I don't think the poor airmen/seamen will have to worry too much about their conscience no matter which choice they make.

jacquesm 5y ago
There has been some speculation about how many of these will still work due to periodic remanufacturing requirements, that would be interesting to get some hard data on. Probably a very closely guarded state secret.
tablespoon 5y ago
> Though AFAICT Russia still has enough land based ICBMs to level every major city on earth... I learned the other day that there are two main strategies for targeting nuclear weapons, counter-force (nuking military targets) vs counter-value (nuking cities). The former requires a lot more warheads for an effective deterrent, and the large stockpile of nukes in the US and Russia implies that they're doing a lot of counter-force targeting (though I suppose that doesn't mean they won't also attack counter-value targets as well). IIRC, according to this an exclusive counter-force nuclear attack against Russia would use far more warheads, but kill less people than an exclusive counter-value attack (~10 million vs 50 million deaths). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2968/057004008 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2968/057004008
- jpgvm 5y ago
  That is really interesting. For me the counter-value strategy seems like a more effective deterrent though from a MAD/counter-attack perspective. It's meant to be a terrifying outcome and maximally terrifying is the best possible configuration to prevent nuclear war. There is only ~500 cities in the world with over 1mil population, Russia has over 5k operational nukes. That is ~10 nukes for every large city on Earth. If they were only interested in nuking the US that is still ~100 nukes per US state.

by jpgvm 5y ago

jacquesm 5y ago

There has been some speculation about how many of these will still work due to periodic remanufacturing requirements, that would be interesting to get some hard data on. Probably a very closely guarded state secret.

tablespoon 5y ago

> Though AFAICT Russia still has enough land based ICBMs to level every major city on earth... I learned the other day that there are two main strategies for targeting nuclear weapons, counter-force (nuking military targets) vs counter-value (nuking cities). The former requires a lot more warheads for an effective deterrent, and the large stockpile of nukes in the US and Russia implies that they're doing a lot of counter-force targeting (though I suppose that doesn't mean they won't also attack counter-value targets as well). IIRC, according to this an exclusive counter-force nuclear attack against Russia would use far more warheads, but kill less people than an exclusive counter-value attack (~10 million vs 50 million deaths). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2968/057004008 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2968/057004008

jpgvm 5y ago
That is really interesting. For me the counter-value strategy seems like a more effective deterrent though from a MAD/counter-attack perspective. It's meant to be a terrifying outcome and maximally terrifying is the best possible configuration to prevent nuclear war. There is only ~500 cities in the world with over 1mil population, Russia has over 5k operational nukes. That is ~10 nukes for every large city on Earth. If they were only interested in nuking the US that is still ~100 nukes per US state.