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.'"
If you tell everyong about it, the liberals will try to interfere with our right to bear doomsday devices by either adding a 3 day waiting-period for mad scientists or by classifying them as "assault rifles".
As the article explains, the purpose was to keep Soviet generals from being less hot-headed, by assuring them there was retaliatory capability. It wasn't to deter the US, so no need to tell the US.
What's the point of building a Doomsday machine if you don't tell everyone about it?
That point is well covered in the article:
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, Zheleznyakov 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."
The machine was designed as a deterrent to soviet military commanders, not to deter the US.
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.
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, Zheleznyakov 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."
So it sounds like the purpose of the devices was more to deter a Soviet first strike, rather than a US first strike.
If Soviet radar picked up an ominous but ambiguous signal, the leaders could turn on Perimeter and wait. If it turned out to be geese, they could relax and Perimeter would stand down. Confirming actual detonations on Soviet soil is far easier than confirming distant launches. "That is why we have the system," Yarynich says. "To avoid a tragic mistake. "
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.
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 [wired.com] two years earlier had stopped a nuclear war. This is exactly the sort of almost-disastrous incident that this system was designed to address.
It's hard to say what factors weigh in leaders' heads. We cannot rip out their neurons and study them in a lab[1], so we must use available clues to guess.
Reagan often gets credit for ending the Soviet Union, but the story may not be so simple. Some cite evidence that the Soviets simply wanted to "join" the western world and become more European. The Beatles and their sorts perhaps should be given as much credit as any politician.
Further, Reagan was gambling. His gamble appears to have paid off, but it may have also gone sour because one can never know for sure what another leader is thinking. Is it brilliant strategy, or shear luck?
We should thank our lucky stars (or the Anthropic Principle) that we are still here......so far. The Cold War played with fire many times.
By the way, howz the LHC coming along?
[1] Although there's a few I would have liked to try.
Some anti-Yankees (North Korea) could detonate a warhead to set off Perimeter, and wipe us off the map. Maximum return on investment.
It doesn't work that way. High command has to enable it because they saw what they think was a launch from us. Then the detonation would have to sever all communication between command and the bunker. Then, an officer in the bunker would have to look at the seismograph and radiation data and misinterpret it to think there had been a major attack that wiped out all the people in charge and in turn order a launch.
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.
Given the paranoia of the era, it is not unimaginable that a malfunctioning radar, a flock of geese that looked like an incoming warhead, or a misinterpreted American war exercise could have triggered a catastrophe. Indeed, all these events actually occurred at some point. If they had happened at the same time, Armageddon might have ensued.
I wonder if the Israelis and Iranians have contemplated this possible chain of events?
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...
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.
Of course you won't go into details - because the system you described never existed. It sounds more like you're confused (very confused) about how ABNCP/TACAMO or the ERCS worked.
In fact, US policy was to keep man-in-the-loop to the lowest operational levels possible in order to prevent a 'Dead Hand' scenario. Strategic policy (implicit from the 60's and explicit from the 80's) was to prepare for nuclear war fighting, not 'wargasm'. Furthermore, it was US policy was to publicize such things - because (as TFA correctly points out) deterrence doesn't work if the other side doesn't know its supposed to be deterred.
I am always amazed that the world has managed to avoid a nuclear war.
Many people not familiar with either the psychology of deterrence or with how the systems worked are so amazed.
...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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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....
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Well put. The fact that the "small" regional conflicts are actually news-worthy is a huge step forward. They're tragic and we'd all like to see things progress to the point where they're non-existent, but they'd be totally under the radar if we were experiencing something on the scale of WWII (or gods help us WWIII).
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.
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.
So the whole "Doomsday Machine" thing was an automated system based on ground sensors to launch the missiles in case US attacks.
On the first page it explains all the conditions that must be met for this thing to go off. They include:
Enabled by military
No contact from headquarters
Detected nuclear detonation
Button press by guy in bunker
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.
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...
Try to contact headquarters again, just to be sure they're really, really blown up this time
Double check that "nuclear detonation" detector to make sure it's not giving us false positives -- again
Make sure it's pointed at the guys who really shot at us, which will *probably* be the US, but it never hurts to make sure
Fill out forms BFG-1, 2, and 9000 in triplicate, sign, date, and tuck the forms in your boot
Open the launch bay doors -- THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!!!
Try to contact headquarters one last time. If anyone -- I mean freaking anyone answers, stop here.
The control switch requires two simultaneous handprints that are 12 feet (I mean 4 meters, cuz we're commies) apart, so in the event you are the sole survivor, cut off one of your arms and tape it to either handprint sensor before proceeding.
Lift the covering over the button that says "Doomsday Device: NEVER USE"
Laugh maniacally like an evil genius -- hey, you'll only get to do this once, so might as well make the most of it.
It's a good article, but it's not a doomsday machine in the Kahn ("Dr. Strangelove") sense, a machine that destroys the world automatically in case of a nuclear attack. What it is is an system that allows retaliation after a nuclear first strike even if the high command is dead.
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.
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.
"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."
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?
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).
Didn't they watch Dr. Strangelove? (Score:5, Funny)
What's the point of building a Doomsday machine if you don't tell everyone about it?
Re:Didn't they watch Dr. Strangelove? (Score:5, Funny)
If you tell everyong about it, the liberals will try to interfere with our right to bear doomsday devices by either adding a 3 day waiting-period for mad scientists or by classifying them as "assault rifles".
Parent
Re:Didn't they watch Dr. Strangelove? (Score:5, Funny)
Amen brother! I never go anywhere without my mutated anthrax... for duck hunting.
Parent
Re:Didn't they watch Dr. Strangelove? (Score:5, Informative)
As the article explains, the purpose was to keep Soviet generals from being less hot-headed, by assuring them there was retaliatory capability. It wasn't to deter the US, so no need to tell the US.
Parent
Re:Didn't they watch Dr. Strangelove? (Score:5, Informative)
What's the point of building a Doomsday machine if you don't tell everyone about it?
That point is well covered in the article:
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, Zheleznyakov 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."
The machine was designed as a deterrent to soviet military commanders, not to deter the US.
Parent
Re:Didn't they watch Dr. Strangelove? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Didn't they watch Dr. Strangelove? (Score:5, Funny)
Gentlemen! you cant fight in here, this is the War Room!
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Re:Didn't you RTFA? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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I you WTFM (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Dr Strangelove? (Score:5, Funny)
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).
A more likely possibility (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A more likely possibility (Score:5, Interesting)
It's hard to say what factors weigh in leaders' heads. We cannot rip out their neurons and study them in a lab[1], so we must use available clues to guess.
Reagan often gets credit for ending the Soviet Union, but the story may not be so simple. Some cite evidence that the Soviets simply wanted to "join" the western world and become more European. The Beatles and their sorts perhaps should be given as much credit as any politician.
Further, Reagan was gambling. His gamble appears to have paid off, but it may have also gone sour because one can never know for sure what another leader is thinking. Is it brilliant strategy, or shear luck?
We should thank our lucky stars (or the Anthropic Principle) that we are still here......so far. The Cold War played with fire many times.
By the way, howz the LHC coming along?
[1] Although there's a few I would have liked to try.
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Creepy thought... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Creepy thought... (Score:5, Informative)
Some anti-Yankees (North Korea) could detonate a warhead to set off Perimeter, and wipe us off the map. Maximum return on investment.
It doesn't work that way. High command has to enable it because they saw what they think was a launch from us. Then the detonation would have to sever all communication between command and the bunker. Then, an officer in the bunker would have to look at the seismograph and radiation data and misinterpret it to think there had been a major attack that wiped out all the people in charge and in turn order a launch.
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Automated Response (From the USSR, not me) (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
FTA (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if the Israelis and Iranians have contemplated this possible chain of events?
That makes at least two... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:That makes at least two... (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course you won't go into details - because the system you described never existed. It sounds more like you're confused (very confused) about how ABNCP/TACAMO or the ERCS worked.
In fact, US policy was to keep man-in-the-loop to the lowest operational levels possible in order to prevent a 'Dead Hand' scenario. Strategic policy (implicit from the 60's and explicit from the 80's) was to prepare for nuclear war fighting, not 'wargasm'. Furthermore, it was US policy was to publicize such things - because (as TFA correctly points out) deterrence doesn't work if the other side doesn't know its supposed to be deterred.
Many people not familiar with either the psychology of deterrence or with how the systems worked are so amazed.
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More interestingly... (Score:5, Insightful)
Credit where credit may be due (Score:5, Insightful)
Hence Reagan's irresponsible spending and gloating lead to even more irresponsible spending and gloating in the USSR - which became their undoing.
Re:Credit where credit may be due (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting. Isn't this what Al-Queda has done to the US?
This was Osama's plan [cnn.com] from the beginning.
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scary shit (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Doomsday Machine (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Doomsday Machine (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Doomsday Machine (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Doomsday Machine (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
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We don't even have 100 years (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Doomsday Machine (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Doomsday Machine (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Doomsday Machine (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Doomsday Machine (Score:5, Funny)
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....
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Re:Doomsday Machine (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Doomsday Machine (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Doomsday Machine (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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Re:Doomsday Machine (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Doomsday Machine (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Flawed logic (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Flawed logic (Score:5, Interesting)
Well put. The fact that the "small" regional conflicts are actually news-worthy is a huge step forward. They're tragic and we'd all like to see things progress to the point where they're non-existent, but they'd be totally under the radar if we were experiencing something on the scale of WWII (or gods help us WWIII).
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Forgot history? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Doomsday Machine (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Re:Doomsday Machine (Score:5, Insightful)
Both Iran and Syria want nukes because we in the west turned a blind eye to Israel developing them.
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Re:Doomsday Machine (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Doomsday Machine (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Doomsday Machine (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Doomsday Machine (Score:5, Funny)
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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Not A Doomsday Machine (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:Doomsday Machine (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Doomsday Machine (Score:5, Informative)
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."
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Re:And then USSR collapsed... (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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Re:And then USSR collapsed... (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
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