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The Presidential Nuclear "Football" from Eisenhower to George W. Bush
- ggm 3y agoNuclear "suitcase" just doesn't have quite the same futurist cachet, does it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- southerntofu 2y agoWell the suitcase itself is not radioactive, and contains "emergency" martial law declaration material that is not covered by the "nuclear" adjective. Given that the USA were built on genocide, and at that time, FBI/CIA were already conducting mass arrest/incarceration and targeted assassinations (COINTELPRO) it's more of a change in public scenery than an actual policy change. But "emergency tyrant outfit" doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it?
- blamazon 2y agoI like nuclear satchel, myself.
- snthpy 3y agoI found that the scene in The Day After [1] where this comes out was one of the most frightening things I've seen. That and when the missiles leave the silos and you realize you have less than 30 minutes left to live. 1: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0085404/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0085404/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
- BonoboIO 3y agoThe moment you see icbms leave the silos it’s over. They are not scalpels for a tactical strike on a small area to prevent xyz, for that you would a submarine much closer or bombers or even a cruise missile. They are the hammer and lots of them. If they fly, you can be sure it’s the big game. You are right, in about 30 minutes (probably less, when you take into account that the USA would only react with icbms) or closer to 10-15 minutes it’s Armageddon. The first bombs would explode in the higher atmosphere and blind the electromagnetic spectrum aka radar detection fails and your only option is to fight back and hit hard in retaliation. I don’t know if it’s (still) in service, but the USA had a rocket that would fly over the rocket fields and send the launch codes and fire the icbms. The fear was, that the soldiers were incapacitated and could not fire them itself. The backup. Absolutely insane how in minutes everything would go to hell.
- standing_user 2y agothe dead mean switch
- siquick 2y ago> I don’t know if it’s (still) in service, but the USA had a rocket that would fly over the rocket fields and send the launch codes and fire the icbms. The fear was, that the soldiers were incapacitated and could not fire them itself. The backup. Truly terrifying as a citizen of a non-nuclear country that this is (or was) in place, and that a handful of countries (presuming they all have this capability) is willing to obliterate everyone else because they took it too far.
- defrost 2y ago> Truly terrifying as a citizen of a non-nuclear country I flicked back a page of your comments and saw " .. here in Sydney." I'm in Australia like, I presume, yourself. The same country that has (along with multiple other installations) the Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Communication_Station_Harold_E._Holt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Communication_Station_Ha... which has always been a prime target in any first strike scenario .. given its primary function is communications with roving nuclear ballistic missile launch submarines. Like it or not Australia's been part of the game since an Australian scientist first explained to the Americans how to build an atomic weapon and further convinced them that it was both feasible and essential.
- fragmede 2y agoTIL about Sir Mark Oliphant!
- CapitalistCartr 2y ago" . . . rocket that would fly over the rocket fields . . . " A series of airplanes, called Looking Glass, was the first backup.
- ano-ther 2y ago
- pyinstallwoes 2y agoBased on it being in Kansas, it could have a fun lore to the wonderful Land of Oz with transfigured beings.
- the-dude 2y agoIs on YT : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOPaaHSjMcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOPaaHSjMcw
- CodeTheInternet 2y agoThank you. Heard so much about this film and have never seen it.
- BrandoElFollito 2y agoI live in France and we usually complain about how our president, government, parliament, administration and whatnot is miserable. Until now (for all my life), it has just been general ranting because we knew that the system makes radical changes difficult. It is only recently (late last year an this year) that there is sometimes a strange feeling that one guy (Putin) could blow all this stability up by raising tension in our region to the point where European governments are talking about war right here. This is truly scary because so far war has been a remote thing - we knew that people were fighting somewhere in the world and we had armchair compassion at lunch. I noticed a palpable hatred toward Putin rising in my circles because of this tension raising. People are less interested in politics but rather in the fact that, to our horror, the idea of a war is being invoked.
- ddalex 2y agoIf Putin decides to unleash global Armaggedon, my only fear is NOT being at the epicenter of one of the nuclear detonations.
- BrandoElFollito 2y agoSame here, seriously. I live near Paris so there is hope that the blast will reach us. I had a look at a site that showed the area touched by specific bombs and I am at the edge. It is really sad that such thoughts are for real and not just in a movie.
- smackeyacky 2y agoMove to Australia and get a couple months reprieve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_(novel)
- meowster 2y agoIn the event of a nuclear armageddon, would anyone be nuking South America or Africa? I assume such an armageddon would disrupt supply chains and cause social strife in other parts of the world, but are there parts where it would be business as usual? Africa? Maybe warlords would run out of ammunition, but they would still have machetes.
- alex_young 2y agoFourth and infinity
- apengwin 2y agoFlag on the play. Pass interference. Defense, number 74. Ball will be placed at the spot of the foul. Automatic first down.
- linearrust 2y agoNow it's 1st and infinity. We haven't made any progress. We can do better. Flag on the play. Pass interference in the endzone. Defense, number 74. Ball will be placed at the 1 yard line. 1st and goal. Now we are getting somewhere.
- alex_young 2y agoOk but to get the conversation we had to start living in a mineshaft and murder a few billion people. What game are we playing again?
- sschueller 2y agoI like this version better (also for the reason that it won't end the world) : https://hackaday.io/project/183892-cyberdeck1 https://hackaday.io/project/183892-cyberdeck1
- blamazon 2y agoI love this genre! Here's another one that I saw on HN recently: https://www.doscher.com/recovery-kit-version-2/ https://www.doscher.com/recovery-kit-version-2/
- DavidVoid 2y agor/cyberDeck is a good resource if you want to see more stuff like this: https://old.reddit.com/r/cyberDeck/ https://old.reddit.com/r/cyberDeck/
- mfex 2y agoThere are 2 speculative fiction books about nuclear war unfolding in present time. Both feature usage of the 'football'. The 'commission report' is my recommendation out of the two: The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States [0] Nuclear War: A Scenario [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_2020_Commission_Report_on_the_North_Korean_Nuclear_Attacks_Against_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_2020_Commission_Report_on_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_War:_A_Scenario https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_War:_A_Scenario
- seper8 2y agoNuclear War: A Scenario, is being turned into a movie by Dennis Villeneuve (Dune, Blade Runner...)
- huppeldepup 2y agoThanks for the tip! He's also working on a "Rendezvous with Rama" adaptation.
- throw5323446 2y ago> Nuclear War: A Scenario I read the wikipedia article, but I don't see how this scenario seems probable, it notes the nukes have to pass by russia to strike North Korea, thus creating the world war. But the US has nuclear subs with nuclear wardheads! Most likely there is one close to NK and then no need to pass over russia...
- credit_guy 2y agoIt's an awful book. In the scenario, the US does launch SLBMs from a submarine close to North Korea, and they hit in minutes. But for some reason the author thought that's is plausible that the US would also launch 50 land based ICBMs. Why? The author's technical expertise is very limited. She thinks that satellites fall out of the sky if their electronics are destroyed by an EMP attack. There are many other mistakes, you are better off skipping this book.
- pavlov 2y agoThe Bulletin of Atomic Scientists argued in 2020 that it’s time to retire the football: https://thebulletin.org/2020/10/trumps-covid-infection-shows-why-its-time-to-retire-the-nuclear-football/ https://thebulletin.org/2020/10/trumps-covid-infection-shows... It could be prudent to change these protocols before the next election, to avoid another situation like this: ’President Trump took the nuclear football with him to Walter Reed Medical Center, where he received treatment for COVID-19. According to Trump’s doctor, the president’s blood oxygen levels had dipped. And this, according to independent health experts, can impair decision-making ability. He is taking dexamethasone, which can cause mood swings and “frank psychotic manifestations.” Yet as far as we know, at no point did the president transfer his powers to the vice president, as allowed under the 25th Amendment.’ ’To state the obvious, we should not entrust nuclear launch authority to someone who is not fully lucid. (Reagan transferred authority temporarily before planned surgery, as did President George W. Bush before a medical procedure that required his sedation.) A nuclear crisis can happen at any time, including at the worst possible time. If such a crisis takes place when a president’s thinking is compromised for any reason, the results could be catastrophic.’
- rl3 2y agoThe hospital stuff was the least of our concerns.[3] The history of this actually gets better. Nixon was sloshed half the time and then rolled that fact into the furtherance of his nuclear brinksmanship[2] pioneering: "If the president had his way," Kissinger growled to aides more than once, "there would be a nuclear war each week!" This may not have been an idle jest. The CIA's top Vietnam specialist, George Carver, reportedly said that in 1969, when the North Koreans shot down a US spy plane, "Nixon became incensed and ordered a tactical nuclear strike... The Joint Chiefs were alerted and asked to recommend targets, but Kissinger got on the phone to them. They agreed not to do anything until Nixon sobered up in the morning." [1] No big deal. "The allegation of flirting with nuclear weaponry is not an isolated one. Nixon had been open to the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam as early as 1954 and as president-elect in 1968 had talked of striking "a blow that would both end the war and win it". A Kissinger aide who moved over to the White House, David Young, told a colleague "of the time he was on the phone [listening] when Nixon and Kissinger were talking. Nixon was drunk, and he said, 'Henry, we've got to nuke them.'"[1] Now we know where a certain warmonger gets their habit of threatening the use of tactical nukes. I think the best system is probably some type of consensus system between military command elements. We have a fleet of EC-4 "Nightwatch" aircraft for this purpose, as a backup. It makes more sense to have your nuclear war decision makers comfortably aloft with the job being their primary vocation, as opposed to some dude waking up groggy at 3am being told they have 15 minutes to live while probably also being evacuated at the same time. Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenzo once said about war? Mandrake: No. I don't think I do sir, no. Ripper: He said war was to important to be left to the Generals. When he said that, fifty years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/weekend/story/0,3605,362947,00.html https://www.theguardian.com/weekend/story/0,3605,362947,00.h... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/weekend/story/0,3605,362958,00.html https://www.theguardian.com/weekend/story/0,3605,362958,00.h... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory [3] https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/09/23/the-real-gen-milley-story-is-the-presidents-sole-authority-to-launch-nukes/ https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/09/23/the-real-gen-mi...
- _heimdall 2y agoLex Friedman's podcast episode [1] with Annie Jacobsen, author of Nuclear War: A Scenario, is an extremely interesting one. They go into detail on what she found regarding the nuclear football, why it was created in the first place, and how insane it is to expect anyone to make such a decision. [1] https://lexfridman.com/annie-jacobsen/ https://lexfridman.com/annie-jacobsen/
- HocusLocus 2y agoGood 1990 movie about Cold War tension under launch, not a comedy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4SiM5uAtTE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4SiM5uAtTE By Dawn's Early Light, great role for James Earl Jones.