Calling Dr. Strangelove...Turns out, Russia DOES have a Nuclear Doomsday System

[MilesColtrane]

Holy crap. *gulp*


http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-10/mf_deadhand?currentPage=all

"The Perimeter system is very, very nice," he says. "We remove unique responsibility from high politicians and the military." He looks around again.

Yarynich is talking about Russia's doomsday machine. That's right, an actual doomsday device—a real, functioning version of the ultimate weapon, always presumed to exist only as a fantasy of apocalypse-obsessed science fiction writers and paranoid über-hawks. The thing that historian Lewis Mumford called "the central symbol of this scientifically organized nightmare of mass extermination." Turns out Yarynich, a 30-year veteran of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces and Soviet General Staff, helped build one.


The point of the system, he explains, was to guarantee an automatic Soviet response to an American nuclear strike. Even if the US crippled the USSR with a surprise attack, the Soviets could still hit back. It wouldn't matter if the US blew up the Kremlin, took out the defense ministry, severed the communications network, and killed everyone with stars on their shoulders. Ground-based sensors would detect that a devastating blow had been struck and a counterattack would be launched.

The technical name was Perimeter, but some called it Mertvaya Ruka, or Dead Hand. It was built 25 years ago and remained a closely guarded secret. With the demise of the USSR, word of the system did leak out, but few people seemed to notice. In fact, though Yarynich and a former Minuteman launch officer named Bruce Blair have been writing about Perimeter since 1993 in numerous books and newspaper articles, its existence has not penetrated the public mind or the corridors of power. 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. When I recently told former CIA director James Woolsey that the USSR had built a doomsday device, his eyes grew cold. "I hope to God the Soviets were more sensible than that." They weren't.

[Louisiana1976]

1. ...

:nuke:

[MilesColtrane]

5. By all rights and measures, the human race should be wiped out already.

I thought Reagan and Star Wars was insanity! This is crazed.

[Gman2]

17. It is not crazed. They thought that Reagan not only ha a plan, but a preemptive plan

Reagan was installing Star Wars. So, they put the button out of the reach of anyone that could be as batshit crazy as Reagan. The reaction times became insane, given we had them ringed.

[MilesColtrane]

35. They also put the button out of reach of anyone who could assess...

the actual reason for a positive input. (communication breakdown, seismic event, radiation release, etc...)

I wouldn't call that sound thinking.

[Gman2]

37. We pushed the game. WE DID. They reacted. Always.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. We science fiction writers just don't pull shit out from our asses

human nature is way too predictable.

Oh and I am willing to bet the US and a few others have similar systems in place.

[MilesColtrane]

8. You'd think that you would want to advertise the fact that you have something like this.

Seeing as how deterrence has kept us all alive these past 50+ years.

Why build this and not tell anyone about it?

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. The Israelis have sort of advertised it

they are hit, they launch everything... to the point that Project Samsom is a screaming secret.

But some things you do not want to truly advertise since technically they may violate a treaty or two. This may violate, though I'd have to read it, SALT II... just like Star Wars violated the ABM that Bush got rid off.

[pitohui]

21. um, hello, where you have been, mike?

MAD was an open admitted policy in the usa for decades

they knew we had it, and of course we knew they had theirs, although "think of the children" people used to lie and say, "oh, the only delivery systems those russkies have is helicopters so don't worry about it"

everyone who wanted to know/needed to know (to deter) knew, hell, as a single digit aged child I KNEW...if you didn't know, you had some reason you didn't want to acknowledge that we had the mutual power to end the world in minutes

but this was no secret, it was a known policy

[MilesColtrane]

30. 1) Who is Mike?

2) I had always assumed that the decision to end the world as we know it would be in the hands of someone with access to at least SOME information, not a pimple faced junior officer who'd been sequestered in a missile silo for a month.

[dysfunctional press]

25. "why didn't you tell the world, eh...?"

"Yes, but the whole point of the doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, eh?"
"It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday. As you know, the Premier loves surprises."
- Dr Strangelove & Russian Ambassador

[dysfunctional press]

27. "our source was the new york times..."

"Cobalt thorium G has a radioactive halflife of ninety three years. If you take, say, fifty H-bombs in the hundred megaton range and jacket them with cobalt thorium G, when they are exploded they will produce a doomsday shroud. A lethal cloud of radioactivity which will encircle the earth for ninety three years!"
"I'm afraid I don't understand something. Is the Premier threatening to explode this if our planes carry out their attack?"
"No sir. It is not a thing a sane man would do. The doomsday machine is designed to to trigger itself automatically."

"But this is absolute madness, ambassador. Why should you build such a thing?"
"There are those of us who fought against it, but in the end we could not keep up with the expense involved in the arms race, the space race, and the peace race. And at the same time our people grumbled for more nylons and washing machines. Our doomsday scheme cost us just a small fraction of what we'd been spending on defense in a single year. But the deciding factor was when we learned that your country was working along similar lines, and we were afraid of a doomsday gap."
"This is preposterous. I've never approved of anything like that."
"Our source was the New York Times."
- President Merkin Muffley & Russian Ambassador

[ddeclue]

3. We will all be required to breed prodigiously!

:rofl:

[Forkboy]

4. Th..th..th...that's all folks!

[Libertas1776]

6. Pfft. Oh yeah Russia, Well we had a SLIM strike

Simultaneous Launch Intercontinental Missile Strike



But seriously, this little revelation is pretty fucking scary, especially the fact that our supposed see all and know all intelligence community didn't know and still doesn't know about the Russkies doomsday response system................MEIN FUHRER! I CAN WALK!!! (Sorry, just had to lighten the mood :silly: )

[nebenaube]

7. So...

We are one Tunguska or earthquake away from......

[MilesColtrane]

9. "We'll meet again...don't know where...don't know when..."

Don't worry.

Nothing can go worng.

[Ikonoklast]

10. The Russians always needed a brute force method for a solution

to the problem they had of lack of accuracy in delivery systems.

They developed nuclear weapons with huge destructive capacity not to impress their enemies, but because they needed a massive kiloton first strike weapon, or had to target three smaller devices to destroy what we would have accomplished in one strike.


They figured if they got it within three kilometers of the target on re-entry, they did a good job.

We measured accurate warhead delivery in *meters*.

They had a real fear of both political and military c-and-c being de-capitated by a first strike by us.

[Turbineguy]

11. Ok, I'm looking for a mine shaft.

[Ian David]

12. Oh, wow...

<snip>

The silence can be attributed partly to fears that the US would figure out how to disable the system. But the principal reason is more complicated and surprising. According to both Yarynich and Zheleznyakov, Perimeter was never meant as a traditional doomsday machine. The Soviets had taken game theory one step further than Kubrick, Szilard, and everyone else: They built a system to deter themselves.

By guaranteeing that Moscow could hit back, Perimeter was actually designed to keep an overeager Soviet military or civilian leader from launching prematurely during a crisis. The point, Zheleznyakov says, was "to cool down all these hotheads and extremists. No matter what was going to happen, there still would be revenge. Those who attack us will be punished."

And Perimeter bought the Soviets time. After the US installed deadly accurate Pershing II missiles on German bases in December 1983, Kremlin military planners assumed they would have only 10 to 15 minutes from the moment radar picked up an attack until impact. Given the paranoia of the era, it is not unimaginable that a malfunctioning radar, a flock of geese that looked like an incoming warhead, or a misinterpreted American war exercise could have triggered a catastrophe. Indeed, all these events actually occurred at some point. If they had happened at the same time, Armageddon might have ensued.

Perimeter solved that problem. If Soviet radar picked up an ominous but ambiguous signal, the leaders could turn on Perimeter and wait. If it turned out to be geese, they could relax and Perimeter would stand down. Confirming actual detonations on Soviet soil is far easier than confirming distant launches. "That is why we have the system," Yarynich says. "To avoid a tragic mistake. "

More:
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-10/mf_deadhand?currentPage=all

[MilesColtrane]

13. Premature retaliation?

Can't they just think about baseball?

[Gman2]

18. It shows clearly, we are the dangerous ones for humanity

what with all the nukes are for everday warmaking.

[Bozita]

15. Buck Turgidson was right!

[spanone]

19. i knew it ......

[pitohui]

16. oh come on, this can't possibly be a surprise

it was never any secret that having such a device was an important part of MAD/game theory -- hence why it was a prominent feature in such films as "dr. strangelove" -- you can't deter w. a weapon if no one knows you have the fucking weapon and the crazy to use it

i don't doubt we had one too but perhaps we haven't had anybody lately assoc. w. OUR project who wanted to give an interview

the paranoid "uber hawks" they refer to were not on the fringes of gov't, they WERE the gov't -- do people really forget what it was like in those days? we were willing to start WW3 over some missiles in cuba, we were willing to go to war in vietnam over nothing except to prove how batshit crazy and unpredictable we were (an important part of game theory strategy), etc.

i knew this when i was like...10...this isn't new info, it's more like "hey, youngsters, DID YOU KNOW?" and apparently based on this article they really didn't

hmkay -- what part of, in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, you were told the world could end at any time on 15 minutes notice, do you youngsters not believe? we lived in constant fear of the end because we'd seen pretty good evidence that they could make it come true!

play poker for awhile (truman did, other presidents did too) and you will understand what the game theorists were trying to say...the crazy unpredictable opponent is the one you gotta walk on eggshells with

we were the crazy guy to russia, they were the crazy guy to us...EVERYONE knew this once -- MAD was an open, admitted strategy because it was worthless if kept secret

does history get lost that quickly? america (and russia) kept their children in terror for 3 decades to make a strategic point, oops and now it's a cute piece of silly season news? it used to be a well known stone cold FACT

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. does history get lost that quickly

IN the US, you betcha.

[jberryhill]

36. A lot of people do not understand nuclear doctrine which did, in fact, keep peace

The only launch-on-failure to instruct sysem we had, though, was for the submarines.

Surface, no contact, check radio spectrum, look for background radioactivity in excess of threshold, launch.

[anonymous171]

20. So, if we had listened to the hawks, we would all be dead now?

:shrug:

[pitohui]

23. we did listen to the hawks and we're not dead, so...?

i'm not saying MAD was a good policy but it was the policy we followed and we're still here

hawks ruled the world pretty much from truman onward

the only non-hawk who held office in usa (briefly) was carter and he was slammed mercilessly...

hawks have pretty much forever reigned in soviet union/russia except for gorbachev (again, briefly i office, long time powerless)

i wish the world were otherwise but there are actually sound game theory reasons why MAD (mutual assured destruction) can work

good thing too, if it didn't work, we WOULD be dead now, because it's the policy we followed

[provis99]

26. you got it backwards. MAD was the dove policy, not the hawk policy.

The hawk policy was a first strike on the Soviet Union; in which case, yes, we would all be dead. Remember the old "Better Dead than Red" shirts the idiot Reagan Democrats used to wear?

[Selatius]

31. Richard Perle was called "The Prince of Darkness" by people in the Reagan Administration because...

he advocated a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union, a first strike. He felt such a war could be winnable if the Soviet Union's leadership is decapitated in the first blow. In those days, though, he did not hold as much power as he did during the George W. Bush era.

[Selatius]

24. The only thing they failed to build was Skynet to give it control over Perimeter.

Then we would've really been screwed.

[NNN0LHI]

28. Sounds like something Reagan would have had built

I bet he did too.

Don

[kayakjohnny]

29. Guess this all has to be introduced into the evolutionary record.

If the record is to be complete.

[gordianot]

32. Let's hope no large asteroids hit Moscow.

Sounds like an accident waiting to happen.

[Selatius]

33. According to the article, the system is left in the OFF position.

It can only be turned ON by a human with the authority to do so.

If an asteroid were to land on Russian soil, Perimeter wouldn't act because the human did not put the system ON prior to impact.

[RagAss]

34. Bring it on !

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

38. We can not allow a mine shaft gap!

[MrScorpio]

39. 25 Years ago? Is it possible that they got the idea to build it from Dr. Strangelove?

The movie could have been self fulfilling prophesy.

[sofa king]

40. I'm pretty sure we had one too.

My source is a ca. 1978 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, of all things, which at the time claimed that the U.S. disclosed that it had a retaliatory device which could destroy all of humankind, or something.

It's important to remember that a "doomsday device" is really a tactic, or a philosophical position, rather than a purpose-built device, though there can be a purpose-built device to go with the theory. If one can guarantee that a massive retaliation of missiles will be launched in response no matter how sneaky the attack, that is effectively a "doomsday device." (The Russians call the tactic "Dead Man's Hand") We know that the United States was interested in finding a way to get targeting data and launch codes to missiles regardless of how damaged the communications network became, which became DARPAnet and eventually this thing we're all looking at right now.

Further modifications to the missiles' instructions can make them much more indiscriminate and deadly than they already are (if you can believe that), by having them ground-burst and kick up millions of tons of radioactive dust, sure to kill millions downrange, and possibly even everyone through a nuclear winter.

The most amusing part of this story is that, just as Dr. Strangelove points out, such a tactic is useless if you keep it a secret!. If it's secret, it fails to serve as a deterrent, which is its only practical use (seeing as once it's used, everyone dies). I guess the purpose was pretty much just revenge.