[PredatorOC]

Valery Yarynich glances nervously over his shoulder. Clad in a brown leather jacket, the 72-year-old former Soviet colonel is hunkered in the back of the dimly lit Iron Gate restaurant in Washington, DC. It's March 2009—the Berlin Wall came down two decades ago—but the lean and fit Yarynich is as jumpy as an informant dodging the KGB. He begins to whisper, quietly but firmly.

"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.
Chart source: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Natural Resources Defense Council

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.

The system remains so shrouded that Yarynich worries his continued openness puts him in danger. He might have a point: One Soviet official who spoke with Americans about the system died in a mysterious fall down a staircase. But Yarynich takes the risk. He believes the world needs to know about Dead Hand. Because, after all, it is still in place.

The system that Yarynich helped build came online in 1985, after some of the most dangerous years of the Cold War. Throughout the '70s, the USSR had steadily narrowed the long US lead in nuclear firepower. At the same time, post-Vietnam, recession-era America seemed weak and confused. Then in strode Ronald Reagan, promising that the days of retreat were over. It was morning in America, he said, and twilight in the Soviet Union.

Continued

Go Wolverines!

R edit: Go away.

[Oxymoron]

Only the Russkies.

[Typhoon]

The tale of Dead Hand has been around a while but Dead Hand was never built and the Soviet command and control system was never configured to allow the automatic launch of nuclear weapons. The Perimeter designation itself referring to the missile based reserve communication system that could be used if land lines were knocked out, also bypassing lower command posts by broadcasting directly to the launchers.

http://russianforces.org/blog/2006/04/d ... lity.shtml

[W01f]

I guess the frequent arguments we see suggesting the possibility of a successful first strike against Russia are out the window. It seems like a pretty smart system given the failsafe measures and the fact that it can only be used defensively.

The only potential problem I can see is that it's only useful under the assumption that America is the only possible country who could cripple Russia with a first strike to the extent that warrants this system's activation. If another country were to obtain nuclear capabilities on par with America or Russia, the system wouldn't be able to determine who the counterstrike should be aimed at, and would presumably target America regardless. In the most sinister scenario, this third country could launch a crippling attack on Russia, which would prompt an automatic counterattack on America, thus killing two birds with one stone. Though that's in the realm of fantasy since no third country is even attempting to obtain such nuclear capabilities, just an interesting thought.

[Zerogouki]

That's not a doomsday device. Only the USA and USSR would have been affected. A true doomsday device would wipe out all of humanity.

[Figlio di Moros]

The only potential problem I can see is that it's only useful under the assumption that America is the only possible country who could cripple Russia with a first strike to the extent that warrants this system's activation. If another country were to obtain nuclear capabilities on par with America or Russia, the system wouldn't be able to determine who the counterstrike should be aimed at, and would presumably target America regardless. In the most sinister scenario, this third country could launch a crippling attack on Russia, which would prompt an automatic counterattack on America, thus killing two birds with one stone. Though that's in the realm of fantasy since no third country is even attempting to obtain such nuclear capabilities, just an interesting thought.

Easy solution, Al-Qaeda and/or Chenyans utilyze dirty nukes to set off the perimiter; the terrorist attacks cripple Russia(presumably), the automatic retalliation takes out North America and the EU, and they likely retaliate and finish off the rest of Russia. Aside from China, there wouldn't be any foreign powers particularly capable of influencing middle eastern affairs.

However, a much more diabolical doomsday machine would be a massive EMP capable of knocking out all electronics on earth; if it could be coupled with, say, something that'd blot the sun or rapidly change the environment, it'd be a true doomsday device.