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Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine (It actually exists)
- joshfinnie 17y agoLinke to print version of the article: http://www.wired.com/print/politics/security/magazine/17-10/mf_deadhand http://www.wired.com/print/politics/security/magazine/17-10/...
- wallflower 17y ago> 24-old junior officer fresh out of military academy. And if that person decided to press the button ... If/then. If/then. If/then. If/then. The most deadly group of if/then statements in existence. "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." -Joshua, WarGames (1983)
- tsestrich 17y agoOddly enough, I'm actually a little relieved that it does eventually come down to a person's decision. I guess if the decision is to end the world, a 24 year-old junior officer is as qualified to make the decision as anyone else. I'm definitely more than a little concerned that they're still maintaining this thing though.... creepy
- fuzzmeister 17y agoAs the article says, when all of the information said junior officer has points to the fact that his country has been destroyed, he is just about as likely to turn the key as an if/else statement.
- spamizbad 17y agoThe fact that we'd tit-for-tat several hundred million lives is a saddest reality of the cold war. It's frightening how destructive our revenge emotion can be.
- roundsquare 17y agoSo a possibility just occurred to me. Build the whole device, but disable the key. You can't launch! It would serve all sorts of deterrent purposes, but in the end, no revenge. Of course, you'd need a few people to keep secret, but you could probably keep this to 2 or 3 people.
- brazzy 17y agoAnd where are the "else" branches, eh? Is this the final confirmation that multiple method exit points are evil?
- 1gor 17y agoFrom the article: The Russians still won't discuss it, and Americans at the highest levels—including former top officials at the State Department and White House—say they've never heard of it. From "Dr. Strangelove": "Yes, but the whole point of the doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world?"
- brazzy 17y agoPlease read the entire article. It explains that the main function of the system was not intended to be deterrence towards the enemy, but deterrence towards the own side's hawks, who might be less eager to launch a nuclear response based on incomplete data when they know that there is an automated response designed to work when all else fails.
- tsestrich 17y agoI still think it's a little odd that they wouldn't want to simply achieve both goals at once by telling people about it. That would still mean that they would be less likely to preemptively pull the trigger themselves, and at the same time would deter the US from attacking them. Not to mention, if I (as the US) knew that this system was in place, I would probably be a little less terrified that the USSR was going to randomly decide to attack (since this is clearly meant to be a purely reactive system). This would subsequently lead ME to be less likely to randomly attack, etc, etc.
- osipov 17y agoyou are ignoring the fact that if the awareness of the doomsday machine rose above suspicion, then Americans would take steps to attempt to locate and preempt the machine
- tsestrich 17y agoperhaps, but this is talking back during the cold war (maybe today would be different). I would think that we'd be too afraid to try something like that during the cold war in fear of starting a legitimate war. But again, maybe that would be different today, and we might not-so-politely ask them to disarm the system
- jwb119 17y agoit seems to me that the possibility this device does not in fact exist deserves more investigation than is given by the article. for instance, if you assume for a second that this device doesn't actually exist, then the current russian response makes perfect sense... it would be in their best interest to neither confirm nor deny existence of of such a machine. i.e. the benefits of hesitation on the side of a potential enemy that believes the machine may exist far outweigh the dangers of accidentally ending the world (since there is no danger at all).
- keatsta 17y agoDoes anyone else feel that one of the most interesting parts of the entire article was introduced in the last sentence? "After all, he says, Dead Hand is continuously being upgraded." This seems contrary to the spirit of most of the rest of the article. The fact that is still active is presented as it should be - a surprising fact - but constantly being updated shows a commitment several steps beyond that.
- tsestrich 17y agoI agree, "Russians Continue to Upgrade Doomsday Device" would have been an even better attention grabber for the article title.
- idlewords 17y agoThis article is a massive bait and switch. The 'doomsday machine' turns out to be... a protocol for delegating launch decisions to some dude deep in a bunker if certain conditions (phone to Moscow goes dead, ground shakes a lot, someone remembered to turn the system on) are met. Even the British version of this is more unsettling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort
- raquo 17y agoSure, some person has to make the decision, but what happens next is total apocalypse. Works as advertised, IMHO. (I agree though that the whole 4-page article could be condested to one paragraph)
- idlewords 17y agoWhich makes it no different from any number of past and present Cold War control loops.
- electromagnetic 17y agoActually the British version is less unsettling, it's resting the command on four Captains of the Royal Navy. First they have to confirm that the UK has been destroyed (this means no government or no established military chain of command) then they have to establish the prime minister has been killed. After this they execute their last order, which is whatever is held on the letter, which could potentially be anything. It would likely be targets, but it could equally be orders to contact an ally for appropriate targets prior to launching a blind attack.
- gort 17y agoI'm reminded of an Arthur C. Clarke story, "The Last Command", where the letter orders the men to... surrender to the enemy; since deterrence has already failed.
- pohl 17y agoIt's a "state machine": a device that can be in one of a set number of stable conditions depending on its previous condition and on the present values of its inputs. Machines don't need to be built out of springs and gears. RFC1149, I'm looking in your direction.
- run4yourlives 17y agoIt utterly amazes me that civilians are surprised that military people around the world actually plan for the worst eventualities, even if the likelihood of occurrence is low. You can plan when everyone is home and safe in their beds, you can't when they shit is actively hitting the fan.
- abefortas 17y agoWhy do you think the "worst eventualities" are so catastrophic, if not because of such planning?
- run4yourlives 17y agoAre you suggesting that planning for bad things causes them to happen? Don't you carry life insurance?
- roundsquare 17y agoThats not what abefortas is saying. Its different in the case of larger and larger build ups. Here, each side is causing 1) The possiblity of doing more damage. 2) Which leads the other side to do the same. Going back to 1. The problem is that building up your arsenal is always better from a strict game theory sense (assuming, of course, the other side is rational).
- gaius 17y agoOne thing that upsets a lot of my friends (with no military background) is the difference between the military and civilian uses of the word "plan". To the military, plan literally means, make a plan. To a civilian to plan implies an intent to do something. So when the media reports that the military is drawing up plans to do X, they freak out.
- electromagnetic 17y agoThis is kind of a disappointing 'doomsday machine', it's basically an over complicated and/or machine. I was hoping for at least a stockpile of nuclear weapons in a converted cobalt mine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb). Get a few hundred multi-megaton nukes wired up together and if the country gets nuked it blows, kind of like a dead-country's switch. If you generate enough radiation you can essentially guarantee you wipe out your enemy by wiping out the majority of life on Earth. Essentially any large-scale nuclear war can potentially render the world uninhabitable. The amount of soot put into the upper atmosphere by the detonation and widespread forest fires would potentially eradicate all ozone, meaning heaps of UVA, UVB and even UVC. The concern is that we only receive 1.3% of the suns UV's thanks to the Ozone layer and can still receive major burns. Consider that it takes ~30-60 minutes on a bright day to get a burn (at least it does for me), after a major nuclear war it could possibly take less than a minute of direct exposure to get a sunburn and it could possibly take 100 or more years for the depleted ozone layer to restore itself.
- varjag 17y ago> If you generate enough radiation you can essentially guarantee you wipe out your enemy by wiping out the majority of life on Earth. The point of Perimeter in confrontation with the USA was to punish the USA, not to wipe the life off Earth.
- electromagnetic 17y agoWell they're a bunch of pansies, couldn't build a real doomsday device(!)
- nfnaaron 17y ago"Permissive Action Links. ... So in 1962, Robert McNamara ordered every nuclear weapon locked with numerical codes. Effect: None. Irritated by the restriction, Strategic Air Command set all the codes to strings of zeros. The Defense Department didn't learn of the subterfuge until 1977." The most egregious default password in history.