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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.'"
What's the point of building a Doomsday machine if you don't tell everyone about it?
First, where's the Dr Strangelove tag?
Second, (as Dr Strangelove pointed out) a doomsday machine only makes sense as a deterent if both sides know about it. Why wasn't the machine made public earlier when the Soviets thought that the US was about to launch an attack?
Third, no worries. A small, controlled population with a ratio of 1 male to 10 females properly sheltered will be able to keep society going. Naturally, the females will need to be chosen for their attractiveness and the males for the knowledge and skills they know (I'm thinking lots of engineers will be needed so sign me up).
Its construction might have had less to do with Reagan and more to do with the fact that a single moment of restraint two years earlier had stopped a nuclear war. This is exactly the sort of almost-disastrous incident that this system was designed to address.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
Some anti-Yankees (North Korea) could detonate a warhead to set off Perimeter, and wipe us off the map. Maximum return on investment.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
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.
Ground-based sensors would detect that a devastating blow had been struck and a counterattack would be launched.
So technically if someone wanted to deal a massively destructive blow to the US they could just locate one of these "ground-based sensors" inside Russia and create some sort of "devastating blow" to set the entire system off. I guess one should be relieved that certain anti-american groups haven't done so yet.
The Long Now Foundation
The whole ND aspect of the cold war involved calculated appearances of insanity by both sides leaders. What "Perimiter" proves is that you can't expect the other side to fake crazy the same way you would fake crazy. This long after the fact, nobody in the US knows how President Reagan's moves were interpreted by the USSR nor how sincere they were in developing an automated response.
The cost of going down that path is incalcuable. Both sides spent themselves dry funding responses to every conceivable attack, and trying to detect which responses were fake insane and which might be real insane.
Who is John Cabal?
On the first page it explains all the conditions that must be met for this thing to go off. They include:
It's not automated. All it does it make sure someone is always able to fire the nukes, no matter which parts of the country get bombed. If the US detonated some new bomb that removed all human life within Russian borders, down to 500 miles underground, this system wouldn't be able to launch because the guy with his finger on the button would have been vaporized.
Actually the idea in the article that it was to keep the USSR generals and stuff from doing stupid things like launching first attacks because it would make sure they could always strike back was quite interesting.
At this point, the thing that would worry me most is that it's sounds like it's targeted at the US. So if some group in Afghanistan decides to take revenge for their war 2-3 decades ago (or N.K. attacks to prove they're cool, or...), then if this system enables the button the terrified guy at the button can fire back in defense... which would promptly attack the US because in panic he didn't realize that was who this was designed to defend against.
The article says there is a checklist he is supposed to follow too, but that's not a big comfort.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I wonder if the Israelis and Iranians have contemplated this possible chain of events?
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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.
I got news for you...while I will not go into any more detail than this, while I was in the Air Force I worked on a system for three years for the Strategic Air Command that would automatically launch all of our ICBMs if the chain of command was ever knocked out. As far as I know that system or its successor is still operational (I've been out of the military for 29 years). I am always amazed that the world has managed to avoid a nuclear war...
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
...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.
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.
It not so much nukes as the breakup of the old two superpower system. In that system, many states align with one or the other; for a variety of reasons. Since both states have a vested interets in not going to war you have relative peace and ofetn high tension, with minor conflicts acting as surrogates for big ones.
Contrast that to pre-WWI Europe, where numerous roughly equal powers decide to go to war beacuse they believe they can win and there is no larger power restraining them. Shifting allegiances, low tension bur\t it's a lot easier for things to get out of control.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Why do we need a victory over Russia? They aren't even maintaining a replacement birth rate and have 1.4 billion hungry Chinese on their border. Why spend American blood and treasure when demographics will take care of the problem for us?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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.
Here's a more relevant quote from TFA:
So it sounds like the purpose of the devices was more to deter a Soviet first strike, rather than a US first strike.
I don't care why you're posting AC
I first heard of this a few years after the cold war ended. Most of it was probably fictionalized but the way it was described is that three hardened telephone lines took widely separate routes from Moscow to a command bunker maybe a hundred miles away. These were severely hardened lines and for all three to go down at once could only mean that Moscow was nuked -- or some idiot tripped over a plug, you know how it is when you say something is fool-proof. Something else claimed at the time was that the Soviet method of controlling nukes was entirely automatic. The American system relies on computers sending launch codes via hardline or radio and human beings at the weapons personally deciphering and acknowledging the codes.
There could still be a hole in the system, say launch orders were improperly sent. I guess the pentagon thought erroneous orders could be directly countermanded. But there was a sense of comfort in having humans in the loop. By contrast, the soviet system was described as being completely automatic. I don't think that sounds completely right. I can understand maybe a missile silo being setup for automatic launch on order with the human crew just being caretakers but I don't see that working for a sub. The sub would have to get the order, the crew would have to bring the sub to launch depth, punching through the ice sheet if on polar patrol, and this is all assuming the Russians even had the ULF system the Americans did where subs at patrol depth could receive low-bandwidth radio signals -- because otherwise subs were incommunicado without coming to periscope depth and extending a radio mast.
The thing that still amazes me to this day was that the soviets could have a coup without nukes flying. I thought for sure a power struggle like that would end in a fireball.
The thing that scares me the most from the Cold War is we were raised to fear the specter of a Soviet attack but our own leaders were every bit as batshit crazy as they were accusing the Soviets of. Fucking Nixon and his brinksmanship, fucking LeMay and trying to start WWIII during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and fucking Reagan as mentioned in TFA. Those fucking monsters did their level best to end modern civilization.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
While I'm no fan of nukes, your logic is seriously flawed: it assumes that the little, ongoing conflicts didn't exist before nukes made world wars obsolete. But of course they did.
There are hardly fewer of the small, regional wars going on now (and since WWII) than there were in the centuries and millennia before. That problem is as old as civilization, MAD certainly did not create it.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Ah but before you get too comfortable with your government assigned harem - and do you really want women whose "attractiveness" is determined by a committee? (oh wait this is Slashdot...)
But before you get started on repopulating the planet, you have to deal with the mine shaft gap.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
"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
The article says there is a checklist he is supposed to follow too
I'm a little too tired to do it today, but hopefully some other slashdotters will come up with some speculation as to what exactly was on that checklist. Oh I'll give it a shot...
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...If you count in USA, EU, Russia and China thats pretty much 70% of the world. Now just create the same for Africa and we're close to 90%...
Sorry to nit-pick, but you may be neglecting a couple of very populous nuclear powers. I'm thinking of a fairly large mostly-Hindu nation that neighbors a "recently" formed largely Muslim nation that together house well over a billion people?
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
I like how the rest of Asia (40% of the world population), Mexico, and Central/South America (9%) constitute 10% in your worldview.
Kudos for throwing Africa in as 20%, even though it's closer to 14%. This may be the first time anyone has actually overestimated the influence of Africa.
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.
Enabled by military
The subtlety here is that it is not supposed to be enabled just before the strike. Rather, it is enabled when relations become tense, and possibility of nuclear strike by another side rises.
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.
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.
When elephants fight, it's the grass that suffers. The grass in; Afganistan, Viet Nam, Korea, Iraq, the Balkans. We, here in America, don't really feel the effects of our proxy wars. I'm not sure what's happening is progress.
Best regards.
Or they'll be thousands of years ahead of us in technology and will only surrender on the brink of total victory in Earth orbit because of some crazy religious revelation....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Before nuclear weapons the world fought numerous low level conflicts between spurts of global war. Now prior to the 19th century global war was difficult because people didn't go long distances, so lets start with the Napoleonic Wars. After they concluded in 1815 we had a number of small conflicts. Indian Wars in the US, Zulu and Boer wars, US Civil War, Franco-Prussian war, Italian Revolution, numerous conflicts in India, Crimirian War, Boxer rebellion, Russo-Japanese war, Spanish American War, US vs Mexico (Poncho Villa ), etc.... Then the Great War (WWI), after that we stopped fighting to get ready for WWII, whoops, no we didn't. Spanish Revolution, Japanese in China, Japanese border issues with the Russians, US all over South and Central America, Italians in Ethiopia, Europeans in Russia (their were West European and US troops all over Russia in the early 20's, Russo-Finish war. Now between the Napoleonic Wars and WWI, peace was maintained by overwhelming British Sea Power which kept any of those conflicts from going global. Between WWI and WWII the political will wasn't there to fight for a generation. After WWII if major conflict was avoided by nuclear weapons, which is likely, then good, but don't think that fighting limited wars started in 1945.
You'd discover that this is a very famous line from it:
Dr. Strangelove: Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*! Why didn't you tell the world, EH?
Ambassador de Sadesky: It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday. As you know, the Premier loves surprises.
The whole movie is about the Soviets and a secret Doomsday device. The GP was quoting it because ti is both amusing and relevant.
The article states that if all 4 "large scale nuclear blast" conditions are met, it calls the government first. After the government doesn't respond after an undisclosed amount of time, it just activates the "End the World" button instead of requiring keys and passcodes. So the final button still has to be pushed by whoever is manning the switch.
Notice that none of that had anything to do with money. It was the relaxation of political control that led to the fall of the USSR, not an economic failure. The Soviets had demonstrated time and again that they cared nothing for the suffering of their people. They would happily murder them in the millions, let them starve, and imprison anyone who criticized the government. Moreover, they were still quite capable of competing with us militarily at the time.
The Soviet Union fell because planned economies do not work. Gorbachev recognized that, and decided to end the suffering of his people. Soviets were standing in bread lines long before Reagan. I know conservatives need to lay something at the feet of St. Reagan, but really y'all need to own up that the man was a complete joke that never accomplished anything but tricking Republicans into voting against their own self-interests.
What makes anyone believe that such "never ending local conflicts" weren't common before the world wars?
During the world wars, entire nations were flattened. Civilians were slaughtered by the millions and collateral damage occured by the 100s of thousands. 100 thousand soldiers would die in one battle.
Conflating the occasional bush war with this is the sort of historical illiteracy that has gotten airplay on CNN lately.
The term "balkanize" exists for a reason as does the observation that every great power must impale themselves upon Russia, Afganistan or both.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
So the whole "Doomsday Machine" thing was an automated system based on ground sensors to launch the missiles in case US attacks.
No.
If you actually read the article, it's a system that, in the event that it's turned on (and it's normally off) and senses a nuclear strike on Soviet territory, and the lines to Soviet command go dead, automatically gives launch authority of the Russian retaliation force to the humans that are lower down on the chain of command.
It's not "Wargames." It still requires humans to command a nuclear attack.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Post-hoc fallacy. All of the current in the world conflicts involve third-world shitholes with corrupt officials and are coincidental to the rather benign posturing of the major powers against each other. Third-world shitholes are volatile from start to finish.
The primary reason there hasn't been a WWIII is global trade. You don't need to invade the other guy's turf to get his resources if he will dig it out, put it on a ship, and send it to you for a reasonable fee. "When goods cannot cross borders, armies will." — Frédéric Bastiat
I must have missed something. When was the first one discovered?
Both Iran and Syria want nukes because we in the west turned a blind eye to Israel developing them.
I dont read
No.
"Perimeter ensures the ability to strike back, but it's no hair-trigger device. It was designed to lie semi-dormant until switched on by a high official in a crisis. Then it would begin monitoring a network of seismic, radiation, and air pressure sensors for signs of nuclear explosions. Before launching any retaliatory strike, the system had to check off four if/then propositions: If it was turned on, then it would try to determine that a nuclear weapon had hit Soviet soil. If it seemed that one had, the system would check to see if any communication links to the war room of the Soviet General Staff remained. If they did, and if some amount of timeâ"likely ranging from 15 minutes to an hourâ"passed without further indications of attack, the machine would assume officials were still living who could order the counterattack and shut down. But if the line to the General Staff went dead, then Perimeter would infer that apocalypse had arrived. It would immediately transfer launch authority to whoever was manning the system at that moment deep inside a protected bunkerâ"bypassing layers and layers of normal command authority. At that point, the ability to destroy the world would fall to whoever was on duty: maybe a high minister sent in during the crisis, maybe a 25-year-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.
Once initiated, the counterattack would be controlled by so-called command missiles. Hidden in hardened silos designed to withstand the massive blast and electromagnetic pulses of a nuclear explosion, these missiles would launch first and then radio down coded orders to whatever Soviet weapons had survived the first strike. At that point, the machines will have taken over the war. Soaring over the smoldering, radioactive ruins of the motherland, and with all ground communications destroyed, the command missiles would lead the destruction of the US.
The US did build versions of these technologies, deploying command missiles in what was called the Emergency Rocket Communications System. It also developed seismic and radiation sensors to monitor for nuclear tests or explosions the world over. But the US never combined it all into a system of zombie retaliation. It feared accidents and the one mistake that could end it all.
Instead, airborne American crews with the capacity and authority to launch retaliatory strikes were kept aloft throughout the Cold War. Their mission was similar to Perimeter's, but the system relied more on people and less on machines.
And in keeping with the principles of Cold War game theory, the US told the Soviets all about it."
and when we win, I hope, we will not repeat the mistakes of the 1990ies...
The biggest mistake of 90s was to let free market extremists advise on the transition. It's that kind of approach that ruined Russian economy in early 90s, forever tarnishing the ideals of liberal democracy - that came alongside with the disastrous economic policies - in the minds of the people. It's truly surprising, how a benign word such as "democracy", which was very much favored and hope-inspiring in 1991 and 1993, became almost indecent by 1996, and downright insulting into 2000s (though the latter happened with some guidance from above).
What makes you think that the current fragmented conflicts are less deadly than a world war? Let me tell you; its because neither you nor anybody you care about are affected. Let me give you an example; between 1998 and 2004 about 4 million were killed in the second congo war; and that was a fairly localised conflict. Add that to the casualties form the other wars in that period and you like get a figure not far off a world war.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
according to TFA it most certainly DID require multiple staggered detections combined with simultaneous loss of connection to multiple communications facilities (all of the actually) and even then a human in the launch bunker was still required to manually "push the button". If any of these "steps" failed to trigger the next within set timeframes then the system would automatically shut itself down.
Giving us 10,000 years is very kind. To be honest I don't see us surviving the next 100 years. As you mentioned there are way too many crazies that are in the process of, or have nuclear weapons.
This is why we need to get off this rock asap. Yes, space is hostile, but it is about to get just as hostile here in a short amount of time.
We should put nukes in the hands of atheists, who have no sense of an afterlife. Having them in the hands of Christian fundamentalists (USA) or Muslim fundamentalists (Iran, Pakistan) is not a good idea.
yes you are correct, if the united states learned to cast magical spells the USSR would have been screwed.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
World War I was won by the chemists. World War II was won by the physicists. World War III will be won by the mathematicians. I heard this twenty years ago and didn't really understand how it could matter. Now think about how the internet and computer security have become the center piece of our society. I'm not too worried about some bunker of bombs that might be launched against us (well, I'm a little worried). I'm more worried about an army of hackers that can have access to our entire financial system, power system, transportation systems, and communication systems at will.
Which grew out of the European Coal-and-Steel Community, the goal of which was to integrate the economies of Europe to such a degree that war was unthinkable.
In that respect, the European Union is an amazing success story. A war between Germany and France is now genuinely inconceivable. How would it happen? How could the German Chancellor declare war on France without being laughed out of the building?
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
Er what? Europe was split into two roughly equally powerful alliances before World War One. Hence the Blackadder quote
Blackadder: You see, Baldrick, in order to prevent a war in Europe, two super blocs developed: us, the French and the Russians on one side; and the Germans and Austro-Hungary on the other. The idea was to have two vast, opposing armies, each acting as the other's deterrent. That way, there could never be a war.
Baldrick: Except, well, this is sort of a war, isn't it?
Blackadder: That's right. There was one tiny flaw in the plan.
George: Oh, what was that?
Blackadder: It was bollocks.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
WW2 was won by poor long suffering soldiers, sailors and airmen - just like all wars. And the folks who suffered most and fought the hardest in WW2 were the Soviets - we not have liked their system of government but what the Soviet people went through in WW2 should never be forgotten.
I don't think he suggested absolute casualty rates are lower, his point seemed to be that overall a larger proportion of the world is living in peace, which is true.
Absolute figures are always going to increase as population increases, but that doesn't mean proportionally more of the world is in conflict. In fact apart from a few small skirmishes in South America, and in Asia, as well as some large skirmishes in Africa and the Middle East the world is much more peaceful.
As a basic example, if 4 areas are getting bombed and there are 100 people in each area, then 50 years later there's 400 people in each area but only one area is getting bombed that's a hell of a proportional improvement- sure 400 are still in conflict, but 1200 are also now living in peace.
Population will always increase, and certain areas, such as those with low important natural resources such as water will always be points of conflict for as long as there is no solution to the resource shortage. That has no relevance to the fact that in many other areas where conflicts were occuring for other reasons, or where the resource shortage issue has been resolved there are no longer conflicts.
So your point is correct, but it's also irrelevant in the context of whether or not the world is more peaceful in general, else by that logic we'd say the world would be a better place if there were far less people in it, but not a single one of them was living in peace.
because how right or wrong something is depends on the numbers. fucking idiot.
Yes. Welcome to right and wrong in the real world.