During the Cold War,
Russia created a fail-safe
device for their nuclear
weapons arsenal to ensure
a second strike capability
even if all command and
control were to be
destroyed. The system
(code-named Dead Hand)
utilized seismic, light,
radioactivity, and pressure
sensors to detect an
incoming nuclear attack
and retaliate if necessary.
The best part? The system
is almost certainly still
operational.

Originally built 25 years
ago, the system was
created to ensure a
nuclear retaliation if
Russia were attacked by
the US. Should this
happen, the system would
be triggered by an
elaborate network of
sensors positioned around
Russia, it would then
retaliate with an all-out
launch of missiles against
targets throughout the US.
At the time that Dead
Hand was created, many
Russian military strategists
feared US ballistic nuclear
submarines and their first
strike capabilities. If the
submarines were to
stealthily move within
Russia’s territorial waters,
they could strike with very
little notice. This would
make it possible for the
Americans to destroy the
entire Soviet leadership
without provoking a
retaliation by the
leaderless Soviet military.
To combat this perceived
weakness, the Soviets
created Dead Hand to
ensure they maintained a
second strike capability
regardless of a US first
strike outcome.
One of the many systems
that Dead Hand relies on is
an interesting reserve
communication system
known as “Perimeter.”
Perimeter consists of a
network of command
rockets that are used to
transmit launch
commands directly to the
strategic missile launchers.
Once Perimeter received
commands to proceed, the
rockets would be launched
and begin broadcasting
launch orders to the
missile launch sites
continuously for up to 50
minutes. This ensured
that, even if
communication networks
were disabled, launch
commands could still be
sent to strategic missile
regiments in the field and
a nuclear strike could
proceed.
In typical Cold War–era
reasoning, Dead Hand was
just one more level of
annihilation stacked on
top of the already
terrifying idea of mutual
self-destruction, perhaps
(theoretically) giving the
Americans one more
reason to pause their itchy
trigger fingers. However,
the scariest part of Dead
Hand is the fact that it
does not require human
intervention at all. If an
event, like an asteroid,
triggers its detectors in
any way that resemble a
nuclear attack, Dead Hand
is more than capable of
beginning the process of
nuclear annihilation all on
its own. According to
reports, it would attempt
to contact political and
military leaders, and if
they could not be
contacted within a
specified period of time, it
could decide its own time
for retaliation.
All is not lost it seems, as
Russia had the good sense
to place human
intervention somewhere
within this process.
Situated deep
underground in a bunker
sit three Russian duty
officers who decide
whether or not to begin
Armageddon. It rests in
their good hands to
question whether said
event passed from Dead
Hand was an actual
nuclear attack or
something of a much
more benign nature. If it is
determined that a real
attack had occurred and
the Moscow leadership
had been destroyed or
was unreachable, they
were tasked with deciding
whether or not to initiate
the Perimeter system and
launch all their remaining
missiles.

[url]en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand_(nuclear_war)[/url]

Hm interesting

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