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Soviets Built a Doomsday Machine; It's Still Alive
An anonymous reader points out a story in Wired introducing us to the Doomsday Machine built by the Soviet Union in the 1980s — and that remains active to this day. It was called "Perimeter." The article explains why the device was built, and why the Soviets considered it to be something that kept the peace, even though they never told the US about it. "[Reagan's] strategy worked. Moscow soon believed the new US leadership really was ready to fight a nuclear war. But the Soviets also became convinced that the US was now willing to start a nuclear war. ... A few months later, Reagan... announced that the US was going to develop a shield of lasers and nuclear weapons in space to defend against Soviet warheads. ... To Moscow it was the Death Star — and it confirmed that the US was planning an attack. ... 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, [an informant] 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 nuclear weapons are sensible then?
Say what you will about nuclear weapons but they are probably the only reason that humanity hasn't fought World War III yet.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
You're right, nuclear weapons have kept us from getting involved in another massive global shooting war. On the other hand, they've allowed us to settle into a basically constant series of low-level conflicts across the globe. So, instead of having one giant conflict that lasts for a few years, we have a never-ending series of small but locally devastating conflicts that go on forever. Nuclear weapons haven't curbed our innate desire to destroy ourselves, they've just made it more of a long-term commitment to do so.
But we weren't having just *one* giant conflict that lasts a few years. We were having a *series* of them. So we replaced a never-ending series of giant conflicts with a never-ending series of small but locally devastating conflicts. It's not perfect, but it's progress.
...is the fact that it was designed by the Russians to stop them from making a pre-emptive strike. With an automatic retaliation system in place, Russia gets its revenge whether or not there are any survivors. There was no reason to announce its existence when its purpose is not to prevent your enemy from attacking you, but instead to prevent you from attacking your enemy.
I believe he's trying to say that our current system of having a basically never-ending series of localized conflicts is preferred over our old system of having a major earth-shattering conflict every 25 years or so. The point is a good one, I think, especially if you believe we likely would have gotten involved in WWIII sooner rather than later between the Soviets and Americans without the threat of mutually assured destruction. Given the hostilities between the two powers, it's at least a strong possibility that we would have.
So, his argument that we're better off now is perfectly valid, although I'm sure the people living in the various conflict zones would disagree. Of course, figuring out how to live together without killing each other would be better still, but humans have been around for a long time and have yet to do that, so I guess we take what we can get.
Indeed, Reagan's true achievement wasn't in intimidating the USSR militarily into despair. Rather, he managed to convince them that he thought Star Wars was a documentary. He then subsequently convinced them that we were building this fantastic laser-beam and ICBM-based international defense system that would annihilate them if they sneezed on us. Which cause the military hot-heads over there to spend far too much money on military defenses, while letting the rest of their empire rot.
Hence Reagan's irresponsible spending and gloating lead to even more irresponsible spending and gloating in the USSR - which became their undoing.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
So, instead of having one giant conflict that lasts for a few years, we have a never-ending series of small but locally devastating conflicts that go on forever.
WW2 killed over 70 million people in 7 years, on all sides. I've yet to see any small-scale conflict with similar sustained casualty rates. There are occasional spikes, like Rwanda genocide, but those don't really fall into Cold War proxy wars.
"So we replaced a never-ending series of giant conflicts with a never-ending series of small but locally devastating conflicts."
I disagree. There would be exactly one giant conflict. There wouldn't be much of humanity left after that.
--fatboy
Presumably it would take more than one to trigger a counterstrike. It would probably require several, plus loss of connection to multiple communications facilities. The Soviets may have been paranoid, but they generally weren't stupid. A fault along those lines could trigger an initial strike, guaranteeing an American counterstrike.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Dont worry I honestly believe that the moment that we discover another intelligent species we will have instant world peace. On our world at least... We will simply have the first worlds war. But thankfully we will have generations of experience at war. We will teach them peace loving aliens a lesson or two about technology.
I think the design of the device fits in quite logically with human thinking, but so does Mutually Assured Destruction.
Remember (apologies for the history lesson), the deterrent factor that has probably prevented at least one, and possibly two or three additional World Wars by now was the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). "You don't dare fire missiles at me because you know I'll fire everything I've got at you, and the planet's pretty much done for." "Game over, man! Game over!" On the surface, it seems illogical, but it's actually EXTREMELY logical. MAD ties our survival inexorably with that of our enemies. A war, once started, is assured to be death for both sides with almost no exception. It sets the price barrier far beyond what any sane country would be willing to pay from the get-go. No one wants to start a war with that much of an assured outcome. "A strange game - the only way to win is not to play."
Traditional shooting wars, on the other hand, can start small and slowly grow, turning rapidly into self-justifications like "we can't pull out now or the hundreds of our people who have died so far will have died meaningless lives! Honor their sacrifice! Fight on!" That logic, which is very typical during a shooting war, leads to the loss of thousands, then the same argument allows escalation to the loss of tens of thousands, and so on until you are counting in the millions. Surrender becomes impossible except under the threat of an obviously overwhelming loss, and maybe not even then. Surrender or compromise is seen as invalidating the sacrifice of the people who died during the fighting. It's not right, but it's human.
MAD pretty much eliminates that. If any country has MAD capability, then we won't attack them. So the nuclear-holders of the world cannot attack each other directly, but of course they can involve other countries indirectly. The best MAD scenario would logically be for everyone to have MAD capability, but those that already have it would be deeply loath to let any of the countries they've been beating up on into the game. Anyway..
Back to "Perimeter":
Given the rules/logic behind MAD, the real risk is not that a decisionmaker would want to destroy the enemy at the cost of his own country - there are enough decisionmakers to pretty much (but not completely, of course) ensure that actual MAD would never be knowingly implemented. The real risk is that he might think the enemy has already committed to destroying him, and that he has nothing to lose and must implement his destructive capabilities before the enemy destroys his capability to retaliate.
The only thing worse than a false negative (you die but don't manage to kill your enemy) in MAD is a false positive (you end up attacking your enemy by mistake, and you both die). The possibility of false negatives is proportional to the chances of a false positive (the more you feel you need to act preemptively, the more likely it is that someone will). "Perimeter" reduced the possibility of a false negative by assuring generals that they could wait and make DAMNED SURE it was an attack before retaliating. Therefore, it significantly reduced the possibility of a false positive (preemptive strike when the side that launched first thought it was retaliating).
"Perimeter" is arguably one of the most logical things Mankind has ever built. It was a well-designed solution that significantly mitigated the problem.
Logic != Morality or Correctness.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Both Iran and Syria want nukes because we in the west turned a blind eye to Israel developing them.
I dont read