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Dial 00000000 To Blow Up the World
Charliemopps writes "For 20 years the password for the U.S. nuclear arsenal was '00000000.' Kennedy instituted a security system on all nuclear warheads to prevent them from being armed by someone unauthorized. It was called PAL, and promised to secure the entire US arsenal around the world. Unfortunately for Kennedy (and I guess, the whole world) U.S. military leadership was more concerned about delaying a launch than securing Armageddon. They technically obeyed the order but then set the password to 8 Zeros, or '00000000'."
00000000 is just as random as any other code. My grandfather used to play 1-2-3-4-5-6 in the lottery, and when someone would point out that that number would never come up, he'd gleefully educate that person on probability.
A pity that those numbers never came; then he and thousands of other "I understand probability" blowhards might have actually learned something. The object in the lottery is not just to pick the winning numbers, but also to share the jackpot with as few others as possible. 1-2-3-4-5-6 is, in fact, the worst possible choice.
Not only a dupe, but old, old news. This has been publicly and widely known for nearly a decade.