Post-apocalypse: the best books in the genre. Doomsday machines. "Dead Hand"
The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
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- About the book
- about the author
- Reviews
The long-awaited book by the man who first revealed the secrets of the Pentagon.
Edward Snowden
Deep understanding of the essence of war.
Oliver Stone
American director, screenwriter and producer
Over the past thirty years since the (first) Cold War, the perception nuclear weapons became partly folklore. The feeling of a direct and obvious threat to humanity was replaced at the end of the twentieth century by a rather carefree attitude towards the nuclear topic as a source of historical anecdotes and a kind of anachronism. Daniel Ellsberg does not intimidate the reader, as the catchy title of the book suggests, he does a much more important thing. It reminds us that the nuclear sphere is very serious and incredibly important, no matter what happens in global politics and whatever leaders appear on the world horizon.
Fedor Lukyanov
Chief Editor magazine "Russia in Global Affairs", Chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy
Quote
The unleashed energy of the atom has changed everything except our way of thinking, and it is leading us to an unprecedented catastrophe.Albert Einstein
What is this book about
Daniel Ellsberg talks about the dangers and folly of US nuclear policy for more than 70 years. For the first time, he reveals the details of the American nuclear program of the 1960s, which involved a preventive strike on the USSR. You will learn all about the chaos within the US military command: from the situation at the most remote air bases in the Pacific region, where the right to decide on the use of nuclear weapons is transferred from one level of command to another, to secret plans for an all-out nuclear war that would lead to destruction of all humanity.Why the book is worth reading
- Nothing in the history of mankind could be more insane and immoral than nuclear threat. The book is a story about how this catastrophic situation arose and why it has persisted for more than half a century.
- Never before has a direct participant in the events written so openly about the nuclear strategy of the Eisenhower and Kennedy eras.
- The author uses top secret documents that he gained access to during the development of the nuclear war plan.
- Unfortunately, little has changed since those times; despite all attempts to agree on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, the Doomsday Machine still threatens to destroy the world.
Who is author
Daniel Ellsberg - the legendary whistleblower who published the Pentagon Papers in 1971, after which Henry Kissinger called him “the most dangerous person in America, which must be stopped at all costs." In 1961, Ellsberg was a consultant to the US Department of Defense and the White House, developing plans for nuclear war. In the course of this work he realized that if American strike More than half a billion people would have died throughout the Soviet Union. From that day main goal Ellsberg's goal was to prevent the implementation of such plans. He writes about the dangers of the nuclear age and the need to raise public awareness of existing threats.
Video presentation of the book
Legendary whistleblower who published the Pentagon Papers in 1971, after which Henry Kissinger called him “the most dangerous man in America who must be stopped at all costs.” In 1961, Ellsberg was a consultant to the US Department of Defense and the White House, developing plans for nuclear war. In the course of this work, he realized that in the event of an American attack on the Soviet Union, more than half a billion people would have died. From that day on, Ellsberg's main goal was to prevent such plans from being implemented. He writes about the dangers of the nuclear age and the need to raise public awareness of existing threats.
Imagine several bunkers located deep underground. Every day strictly certain hour in these bunkers the alarm goes off and the computer system begins the countdown to the planet's self-destruction
"Our strategic nuclear forces(SNF) are configured in such a way as to threaten Russian nuclear and economic facilities. Even while we are negotiating with Russian President Vladimir Putin, we are keeping his Kremlin office at gunpoint. This is the truth of life."
Joseph Cirincione, director of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for international peace. December 2001.
Doomsday Machine, Apocalypse Machine, Last Judgment Machine - these concepts include certain hypothetical devices capable of destroying not only Man himself, but generally all life on Earth. Or even the Earth itself. In other words, it is the apotheosis of the doctrine of mutual assured destruction, the idea of which was first formulated by the American economist and one of the outstanding futurologists of the last third of the twentieth century, Herman Kahn.
The most fantastic option is the so-called “Dead Man's Button”. Imagine several bunkers located deep underground, the location of which is known to a very limited circle of people. Every day at a strictly defined hour, an alarm goes off in these bunkers, and the computer system begins the countdown to the self-destruction of the planet. The operator on duty must turn off the system within a few minutes by pressing the end call button. If this is not done, everything nuclear, chemical and bacteriological weapon accumulated on Earth. Everyone can imagine what this will lead to.
A potential possibility for the emergence of one of the variants of the Doomsday Machine could be the uncontrolled development of nanotechnology. (See Doomsday Machines. Gray Goo).
Less fantastic options include a thermonuclear (or atomic) “dirty” bomb, consisting of a container with a radioactive isotope (isotopes) and a charge explosive. When the charge is detonated, the container with isotopes is destroyed, and the shock wave disperses the radioactive substance over a sufficiently large area. One option for such a “dirty bomb” could be the deliberate detonation of a civilian installation that uses radioactive materials, for example, a nuclear power plant. But this is, so to speak, the Doomsday Machine local action. But in order for it to become the Doomsday Machine for all humanity, it will be necessary to blow up several dozen atomic bombs V various places planet, which will lead to nuclear winter and complete sterilization of the Earth.
Sometimes the Doomsday Machine is also called a supposedly hypothetical system, which, in the event of the death of the country’s political and military leadership as a result of an unexpected nuclear attack must automatically launch a retaliatory nuclear strike.
But is this system really that hypothetical?
It is reliably known that he possessed it Soviet Union, and now Russia has it. And it’s called, to the point of banality, simply – the “Perimeter” system. But the Americans called it “ By a dead hand».
So what is it?
In August 1974, a secret decree of the USSR government was issued, in which Soviet scientists and designers were tasked with creating a system that would guarantee a retaliatory nuclear strike against the enemy even if all command centers and all communication lines were destroyed.
The main reason for the appearance of this document was the development of rocket technology. At the turn of the 60-70s of the last century, the accuracy of hitting strategic targets of a potential enemy with warheads ballistic missiles has increased significantly. In addition, new delivery vehicles have appeared - sea- and air-launched cruise missiles. All this led to the emergence in the United States of the “Limited Nuclear War” doctrine, which provided for striking the most important targets - launchers, airfields, large transport hubs and industrial enterprises. In accordance with this doctrine, the flywheel of a nuclear conflict was supposed to spin up gradually, moving from the use of tactical nuclear weapons to strategic ones. Ultimately, it was assumed that the damage suffered would force the enemy to enter into peace negotiations to avoid complete destruction.
But soon this was not enough for Western strategists. The author of the new “Decapitation Strike” doctrine, designed to ensure victory in a nuclear war, was US Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger. It was based on the use of precision-guided munitions - small and medium range And cruise missiles with individual computers and laser guidance systems. The result was to be the destruction of the enemy's command centers and political leadership before he could decide to strike.
One of the indirect reasons was the construction by the United States of the Space Shuttle, capable of carrying nuclear weapons. (According to calculations by Soviet scientists from the Institute of Applied Mechanics, the Shuttle, having performed a lateral maneuver in the atmosphere, theoretically could have delivered the first nuclear strike and disabled combat system missile force control strategic purpose THE USSR).
All this prompted the leadership of the USSR to look for a symmetrical answer. This response was the creation and deployment of the Perimeter system, which ensured the automatic launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles from the bases of the Strategic Missile Forces and Navy submarines in the event of the destruction of command posts. There is not much reliable information about her. Which is quite understandable. But what is known is enough to rid the West of illusions about the possibility of striking Russia with impunity. And it’s good that the West knows about the existence of this system, which has no analogues in the world. Because one of the functions of this “Doomsday Machine” is a deterrent function.
The Perimeter system with its main component, the Dead Hand, was put into service in 1983. The first information about it became known in the West only in the early 1990s, when some of the developers of this system moved there.
On October 8, 1993, The New York Times published an article by its columnist Bruce Blair, “The Russian Doomsday Machine,” in which for the first time information about the control system of the Russian missile forces appeared in the open press. At the same time, its top-secret name, “Perimeter,” was announced for the first time, and in English language a new concept was introduced - “dead hand”.
Some in the West called the Perimeter system immoral, but at the same time, even its most ardent critics were forced to admit that it is, in fact, the only deterrent that provides real guarantees that a potential enemy will refuse to launch a preventive nuclear strike . It’s not for nothing that they say that fear rules the world.
As for immorality, then... what is the “immorality” of retaliating?
The Perimeter system is a backup command system for all branches of the military armed with nuclear charges. It is designed to be particularly resistant to all damaging factors nuclear weapons, and it is almost impossible to disable it. Its task is to make a decision on a retaliatory strike independently, without the participation (or with minimal participation) of a person. Only if the key nodes of the Kazbek command system (“ nuclear suitcase") and communication lines Missile Forces strategic missiles (Strategic Missile Forces) will be destroyed by the first strike in accordance with the “highly moral” concepts of “Limited Nuclear War” and “Decapitation Strike” developed in the United States.
IN Peaceful time the main components of the Perimeter system are in standby mode. They assess the situation by processing data coming from measuring posts. In the event of a threat of a large-scale attack using nuclear weapons, confirmed by data from early warning systems about a missile attack, the entire complex is automatically brought into combat readiness and begins to monitor the operational situation.
The expert system, which receives information from a variety of sensors, analyzes the intensity of negotiations on military frequencies and telemetry from Strategic Missile Forces posts. But besides all this, “Perimeter” has one more unique ability- the system is able to analyze changes in the military and political situation in the world, evaluate commands received over a certain period of time, and in the event of force majeure, conclude that something is wrong in the world. If the “Perimeter” sensors register the characteristic signals of a massive nuclear strike, and the system itself loses contact with the command nodes of the Strategic Missile Forces for a certain time (let’s say, one hour), then its main component - the “Dead Hand” - gives an order through underground low-frequency antennas to launch command missiles.
Flying over the territory of Russia, these missiles transmit, through powerful radio transmitters installed on board, a control signal and launch codes for all components of the nuclear triad - silo and mobile launch complexes, nuclear submarine missile cruisers and strategic aviation. Having received this signal, the receiving equipment of the Strategic Missile Forces command posts and individual launchers begins the process of immediately launching ballistic missiles in fully automatic mode, thereby ensuring a guaranteed retaliatory strike against the enemy even in the event of the loss of everything personnel.
But the most important thing - again to the question of morality - the “Perimeter” system and its main component “Dead Hand” cannot begin active operations in peacetime. Even if there is no communication, and the entire combat crew has left the starting position, there are still many other control parameters that block active actions. But in the event of a sudden and unprovoked attack, the retaliatory strike will be crushing.
What could he be like? Let's try to imagine this and even write a script for a fantastic, hopefully, disaster film...
"Dead Hand or Machine of the Apocalypse"
...Tensions between the leading world powers are increasing every day. Any, the most insignificant local conflict, even between small states, can lead to nuclear confrontation, because behind the small there are always great ones. And somewhere in Africa, Asia, Latin America or even in Europe such a conflict occurred. This was followed by mutual accusations, which further inflamed the situation. The strategic nuclear forces of the great powers - the so-called nuclear triad - were ordered to be ready to deliver a strike that would guarantee the destruction of the enemy or inflict unacceptable damage on him. The world was on the brink of a new world war.
The Americans were the first to give in. At an emergency meeting of the Council national security encryption was discussed in an atmosphere of extreme nervousness supreme commander in chief NATO forces in Europe. In it, he reported that in the coming hours Russia could launch a nuclear strike on the United States (the same information was contained in the analytical note of the CIA director). After listening to the opinions of the military, the US President signed a directive on the implementation of the Freedom plan. This meant launching a massive nuclear strike on Russia...
It was unexpected and devastating. Thousands of deadly suns burned the sky. Fire tornadoes swept away everything in their path, turning Russian cities into ruins and raising tens of thousands of tons of dust and ash into the sky. As a result of the attack, strategic aviation airfields were destroyed, command posts and ground-based intercontinental ballistic missile launchers. All communication lines are out of order. Tens of millions of people died, the rest were demoralized and could not offer any resistance. There was no one to give the order for a retaliatory strike. And those who survived this Apocalypse were supposed to die in the coming days.
Victory!!! Complete and final!!! The Russians have nothing to fight with, and, most importantly, no one to fight with.
But the generals rejoiced early and clinked glasses of champagne (whisky). The Perimeter system quickly dispelled their illusions about the possibility of launching a nuclear strike on Russia with impunity. Having received confirmation from early warning systems of a large-scale attack using nuclear weapons, it automatically began monitoring the operational situation. And when the sensor components of the system confirmed the fact of a massive nuclear strike and the loss of communication with the main command nodes of the Strategic Missile Forces, the “Dead Hand” initiated the launch of command missiles, which, through powerful radio transmitters installed on board, transmitted a control signal and launch codes for all components of the nuclear triad.
Several minutes passed, and in the remote Siberian taiga, in the swamps middle zone Russia, on submarine cruisers with dead crews, at the same time, the hatches of the silo launchers opened, and dozens of intercontinental ballistic missiles rushed into the sky. Thirty minutes later, the fate of Russian cities was shared by enemy cities. There were no winners. Starting unexpectedly nuclear war ended just as unexpectedly, destroying almost all of humanity. Only here and there, in the vast expanses of the tundra, and on distant tropical islands, local aborigines turned the knobs of their radios, not understanding why they were silent, and anxiously looked at the stars that were extinguishing in the creeping black smoke...
The end of the film.
Do you think such a scenario for the development of events is fantastic? Not at all. On January 22, 2008, a group of retired senior NATO officers sent a report to the Alliance leadership, in which they proposed launching preventive nuclear strikes on the territory of a number of countries in order to prevent NATO opponents from using weapons mass destruction. What could happen next? See our script. "Perimeter" is always in standby mode.
One of the most monstrous inventions of times Cold War was intended to completely destroy life on earth in global hara-kiri. It is possible that his timer is still ticking somewhere, counting down the last hours of our world.
However, whether it actually exists is unknown. And if it exists, then no one can say what the ominous Doomsday Machine .
Because this is the collective name for a certain weapon capable of wiping humanity off the face of the earth - and maybe even destroying the planet itself.
The authors of this name were science fiction writers, and it was first heard in the film by Stanley Kubrick "Doctor Strangelove" (1963). The idea itself goes back centuries, when those who lost battles preferred collective suicide to surrender. Preferably - together with enemies. That is why the last surviving defenders blew up the powder magazines of fortresses and ships.
But these were isolated cases of unprecedented heroism. It never occurred to anyone to blow up the whole world back then. Firstly, it is unlikely that anyone was so bloodthirsty or fell into such despair. Secondly, even if he wanted to, he would not have been able to drag the whole world with him to the grave - since he did not have the necessary weapons. All this appeared only in the 20th century.
Attitude towards his defeat in World War II European countries it was very loud.
Denmark, for example, capitulated immediately after the Nazis entered its territory - and surrendered without resistance. Which, however, did not prevent her from later receiving the status of a participant in the “anti-Hitler coalition.” But Hungary was so loyal to Germany that it resisted us to the last - and all Hungarian men of military age went to the front.
Germany itself, since the end of 1944, was only making its legs, retreating in panic from the Red Army. A few months before the fall of Berlin, one and a half million enemy soldiers surrendered, and the Volksturm units fled.
Enraged by the reluctance of his people to fight to the death, Hitler ordered the Berlin Underground to be flooded so that, together with those who broke through there, Soviet soldiers drown the Germans hiding there as well. Thus, the locks of the Spree River became one of the prototypes of the Doomsday Machine.
And then nuclear weapons appeared. As long as the number of warheads numbered in the hundreds, and the means of their delivery were “antediluvian,” both the USA and the USSR believed that it was possible to win a nuclear war. You just need to strike first in time - or repel the enemy’s strike (shooting down planes and missiles), and “bang” in response.
But at the same time, the risk of being a victim of the first blow (and losing miserably) was so great that the idea of terrible retribution was born.
You may ask, weren’t the missiles fired in response such revenge? No.
Firstly, a surprise enemy strike will disable half of your nuclear arsenal. Secondly, it will partially reflect your retaliatory strike. And thirdly, nuclear warheads with a capacity of 100 kilotons to 2 megatons, they are intended only for the destruction of military and industrial facilities. They cannot send America to the bottom of the ocean.
Nuclear war broke out in the early 60s, most of US territory would remain untouched, and on it, in a favorable situation, the United States could be reborn. Deprived of their industrial areas, surrounded by radioactive deserts - but still revived. The Soviet Union would have survived in the same way. And other countries of the world could have survived the Third World War almost safely - and who knows, perhaps one of them would have pulled ahead and become a “world hegemon”.
The irreconcilable heads in Washington and Moscow could not agree with this. And they began to create weapons, after the use of which there were no winners, no vanquished, no passive observers in the Southern Hemisphere.
The Soviet Union was the first to do it - having tested on Novaya Zemlya a hydrogen bomb of monstrous power (over 50 megatons), known in the West as "Kuzka's mother" .
It was pointless as a weapon of war—too powerful and too heavy to be flown onto American soil. But it was ideally suited as that very powder magazine that would be blown up by the last surviving defenders of the Land of the Soviets.
Stanley Kubrick correctly understood Nikita Khrushchev's hint. And his Doomsday Machine was 50 nuclear (cobalt) bombs , planted like landmines in different parts of the planet. The explosion of which would make life on the planet impossible for a whole century.
In the novel "Swan's Song" writer Robert McCammon's super-powered hydrogen bombs were located on special space platforms “Sky Claws”. They should have automatically, a few months after the defeat of the United States, dumped their cargo at the poles. Monstrous explosions would not only melt the ice caps, causing a new global flood, but they would also shift the earth's axis.
As is known, the predictions of science fiction writers sometimes come true. And sometimes they borrow from them interesting ideas. Rumors about Soviet thermonuclear landmines planted off the coast of the United States, as well as on the territory of the USSR itself (in case of occupation), have been circulating since the times of Perestroika. No one, of course, confirmed or denied them.
However, by the beginning of the 80s the sizes nuclear arsenals reached such proportions that their use, even minus those destroyed, would lead to global radioactive contamination of the planet. Well, plus it would plunge her into the so-called for several years. "nuclear winter" So the Doomsday Machine might not be needed.
But instead of the question of how to destroy the planet, the question arose of how to do it? And here, in the mid-80s, according to weapons expert Bruce G. Blair and author of the book “Doomsday Men” P. D. Smith, the Soviet control system arose nuclear strike "Perimeter" . Representing something like "Skynet" from famous film Cameron. Agree, it quite deserves the title of “machine of the apocalypse”!
However main part Soviet, and now Russian defensive system, according to the above-mentioned authors, was command center"Kosvinsky stone". According to their description, behind this name in the depths Ural mountains hiding a huge bunker with a special “nuclear button”.
It can only be pressed by one person, a certain officer, if he receives confirmation from the Perimeter system that a nuclear war has begun and Moscow has been destroyed and government bunkers have been destroyed. And then the question of retribution will be completely in his hands.
Surely this is not simple task- to be left alone when your entire country is destroyed, and in one move send the rest of the world into tartarar. By the way, this situation is played out in the episode "Dead Man's Button" fantasy series "Beyond the possible".
It must be said that the concept of the Doomsday Machine brought considerable benefits. The threat of mutual destruction somewhat cooled the hotheads - and mainly thanks to it, the Third World War never began. For now
But even Skynet could not destroy all the people with nuclear weapons alone - and it had to finish off the survivors with the help of terminators. Therefore, in search "ultimate weapon" (the term was coined by the science fiction writer Robert Sheckley), theorists and practitioners delved into the jungle of the exact sciences.
In 1950, American physicist Leo Szilard put forward the idea cobalt bomb - a type of nuclear weapon that, when exploded, creates a huge amount of radioactive materials, turning the area into a super-Chernobyl. No one dared to create and test it - the fear of the consequences was too great. However for a long time the cobalt bomb was predicted to be the “ultimate weapon.”
In the 60s there appeared neutron charges - in which 80% of the explosion energy is spent on emitting a powerful stream of neutrons. The consequences of using neutron charges are very accurately described by the well-known nursery rhyme: The school is standing - but there’s no one in it!
However, the possibilities of radiation seemed somewhat limited to some - compared, for example, with artificially created stamps of deadly bacteria and viruses.
“Modernized” pathogens of Ebola or Asian flu with almost 100% mortality seemed to them a more effective means of eliminating humanity.
So, for example, from Spanish flu virus died in 1918-1919 more people than during the entire First world war. What if the terrible strain of African streptococcus, which rots a person alive within a few hours, was given the ability to become airborne?
What is being created and has already been created in the secret laboratories of the Pentagon has long been troubling ordinary people and provides rich food for the imagination of writers (read "Confrontation"
Stephen King). But even the most dangerous bacilli will seem like just a runny nose compared to what the so-called can do. "Grey Slime" . No, it has nothing to do with the all-consuming “biomass” from the Soviet science fiction film “Through Hardships to the Stars”, since it consists not of proteins and proteins, but of myriads of microscopic nanorobots .
Capable of self-reproduction (building copies of themselves) by processing any suitable raw material that comes their way. The idea of such nanorobots was proposed in 1986 by one of the founders of nanotechnology Eric Drexler . In his book “Machines of Creation,” he suggested an option when self-replicating nanorobots, for some reason, would be released and begin to use plants, animals, and people as raw materials for replication. “Tough, omnivorous “bacteria” could outcompete real bacteria: they could be spread by the wind like pollen, multiplying rapidly and turning the biosphere into dust in a matter of days. Dangerous replicators could easily be too strong, small and fast-spreading for us to stop.”
According to Dreckler's calculations, nanorobots will need less than two days to completely destroy the surface of the planet. It will be a real Apocalypse! Interestingly, long before Dreckler, Polish science fiction writer Stanislav Lem already described a similar scenario in the story "Invincible" - only there the nanorobots didn’t devour, but simply destroyed civilization on one of the planets.
Thus, tiny robots invisible to the naked eye claim to be the most ideal option Doomsday machines. And, given that developments in the field of nanotechnology are being accelerated all over the world (in Russia, Putin himself declared them a priority in science), then science fiction may become reality in the very near future.
There is one consolation: the all-destructive Doomsday Machine restrains hotheads from taking drastic steps and, in fact, is the main guarantee of peace.
On the "prepper" forums, debates continue to rage about what kind of vehicle will be needed in the event of an attack global catastrophe like nuclear war...
What do Hollywood filmmakers think about the “doomsday machine?” Considering that the topic is about a truck capable of performing the functions of a mobile home, let’s immediately discard all sorts of Mad Max muscle cars and buggies, as well as jeeps and motorcycles.
Probably the first such cinematic<машиной апокалипсиса>became a car<Ковчег-2>from the classic American TV series (1976), in which a team of research scientists travels across a scorched planet. We must pay tribute to the props and decorators of the series - the car was built in full size and equipped according to the assigned tasks. Inside the self-propelled ark there was a command cabin (it’s hard to call IT a driver’s cabin), living quarters, a laboratory and even a garage for a small four-wheeled all-terrain vehicle. Unfortunately, the exterior<Ковчега>on the contrary, it turned out to be completely awkward - a huge cigar-shaped (Improving aerodynamics for participation in post-apocalyptic racing?) silver (Yeah, camouflage rules) body was mounted on the chassis of a decommissioned three-axle truck, resulting in a vehicle with huge rear and bow overhangs, a disproportionately short wheelbase, creepy geometry and tiny wheels shod with tires with<лысым>road protector.
The next attempt by filmmakers to create<машину апокалипсиса>became a unique amphibious all-terrain vehicle<Ландмастер>() with planetary propulsion from the film<Долина проклятий () снятого по мотивам классического роуд-муви Роджера Желязны. Специально построенный для съемок вездеход вполне справедливо считается лучшим киноавтомобилем за всю историю кинематографа. Не смотря на то, что <Ландмастер>was built as a set for a film, without any special calculations, completely unexpectedly the car turned out to be an all-terrain vehicle in the literal sense of the word, easily moving even where even the trucks and SUVs of the film crew were slipping, which once again clearly demonstrated the outstanding characteristics of the planetary propulsion unit undeservedly forgotten today. Potential<Ландмастера>turned out to be so high, the models built for filming (on a scale of 1/10) were used only once (in the flood scene), in all other cases the amphibian<отыграла>your role<вживую>, no special effects. Unfortunately, during the post-production period<Долина проклятий>was seriously re-edited and almost all the scenes in which the interior of the unique car could be seen were cut from the film.
Despite the modest box office receipts of "Valley of Damnation", one could expect new blockbusters from Hollywood in the future about road adventures in a PA setting, but then disaster struck - in 1981 it was released<Воин дороги>.
Having become an immortal classic of PA cinema, the second part of the Mad Max adventure once and for all set the canons of the post-apocalyptic road movie. Now any post-apocalyptic hero was simply obliged to wear a shabby leather jacket and ride a pumped-up American muscle car, and his opponents were the indispensable bikers with punk hairstyles on buggies and motorcycles decorated with spikes, skulls and sophisticated graffiti. If there were any trucks, they were in the form of huge mainline tractors with semi-trailers, similar to mobile branches of hell - entangled in barbed wire, with bars on the windows and an invariable locomotive blade instead of a bumper. (No one really thought about the fact that a huge semi-trailer would completely reduce the already minimal cross-country ability of a rear-wheel drive tractor to zero.)
This infernal image of the apocalypse truck was replicated in countless imitations and parodies, and this copy-paste continues to this day. I’ll give just a few examples; you can find other similar shit trucks yourself on the Internet.
Giant truck from the movie<Вожди 21-го века>1982 (also known as) was a hybrid of a command and staff vehicle, a campervan and an armored personnel carrier, in which the commander of a small<Армией Судного Дня>- a motorized gang of thugs who took control of several
villages
In the zombie apocalypse<Земля мертвых>(, 2005) combat vehicle<Мертвецкий патруль>was nothing more than a good old tractor with a short semi-trailer, armed with heavy machine guns, miniguns, etc. . . Installation for launching fireworks.
All these monsters are purely intended for highway use, and the highway must be in good to average condition.
The most offensive thing about this car epic is that if only the directors, stupefied by coke, had shown at least a little curiosity, they would have learned that in reality, cars were built a long time ago that were much more spectacular and interesting than all their movie creations combined. But more on that next time.
The system's technical name was "Perimeter", but many called it "Dead Hand". Illustration: Ryan Kelly.
Valery Yarynich casts nervous glances over his shoulder. Dressed in a brown leather jacket, the 72-year-old former Soviet colonel sat in the back of the dimly lit Iron Gate restaurant in Washington. It's March 2009 - the Berlin Wall fell two decades ago, but the thin and fit Yarynich is nervous, like an informant hiding from the KGB. He begins to speak almost in a whisper, quietly but firmly.
“The Perimeter system is very, very good,” he says. “We remove the greatest responsibility from senior politicians and military men,” he looks around again.
Yarynich talks about the Russian Doomsday Machine. In fact, this is a real doomsday mechanism, a functioning perfect weapon that has always been considered to exist only in the fevered imagination of apocalypse-obsessed science fiction writers and paranoid White House hawks. Historian Lewis Mumford calls it "the central symbol of a scientifically orchestrated nightmare of mass destruction." Yarynich, a 30-year veteran of the Soviet Strategic Missile Forces and the Soviet General Staff, helped build this system.
The point of the system, he explains, was to guarantee an automatic Soviet response to an American nuclear strike. Even if the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense were destroyed, communications were disrupted, and all military personnel were killed, ground sensors would detect that a crushing blow had been struck and launch the Perimeter system.
The system's technical name was "Perimeter", but some called it "Dead Hand". It was built 30 years ago and remained a secret behind seven seals. With the collapse of the USSR, the very name of the system leaked to the West, but few people noticed it at the time. Although Yarynich and a former Minuteman launch officer named Bruce Blair have written about Perimeter since 1993 in numerous books and newspaper articles, its existence has not penetrated the public consciousness or the corridors of power. The Russian side is still not discussing it, and Americans at the highest levels, including former senior officials in the State Department and White House, say they have never heard of it. When former CIA Director James Woolsey was told about this, his gaze grew cold.
“God grant that the Soviets are prudent,” he said.
The Dead Hand remains shrouded in secrecy, and Yarynich worries that his continued openness puts him at risk. His fears are probably well founded: one Soviet official who spoke to the Americans about the system died after falling down a flight of stairs. But Yarynich still takes risks. He believes the world should know about the Dead Hand. If only because, in the end, it still exists.
The system began operating in 1985, after some of the most dangerous years of the Cold War. Throughout the 1970s, the USSR steadily increased its nuclear power and eventually broke the long-standing US leadership in this area. At the same time, after the Vietnam War, America seemed weak and depressed. Then Ronald Reagan came to power with his promises that the days of recession were over. It was morning in America, he said, but twilight in the Soviet Union.
Part of the new president's hardline approach was to make the Soviets believe that the United States was not afraid of nuclear war. Many of his advisers had long advocated modeling and active planning for nuclear war. These were followers of Herman Kahn, author of the works “On Thermonuclear War” and “Thinking the Unthinkable.” They believed that the side with the largest arsenal and the expressed willingness to use it gained leverage during any crisis.
Either you launch first or convince the enemy that you can strike back even if you are dead. Illustration: Ryan Kelly
The new administration began to actively expand the US nuclear arsenal and put launchers on alert duty. At the Senate confirmation hearings in 1981, Eugene Rostov, taking office as head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, made it clear that the United States might just be crazy enough to use its weapons. At the same time, he said that Japan “not only survived, but also thrived after the nuclear attack of 1945.” Speaking about a possible US-Soviet nuclear conflict, he said that “by some estimates there would be 10 million casualties on one side and 100,000,000 on the other. But this is not the entire population.”
Meanwhile, in large and small ways, US behavior towards the Soviets took on a harsher character. Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin was stripped of his reserved parking pass at the State Department. American troops landed on tiny Grenada to defeat communism in Operation Flash of Fury. American naval exercises were moving ever closer to Soviet waters.
This strategy worked. Moscow soon believed that the new US leadership was truly ready to wage a nuclear war. But the Soviets also became convinced that the United States was now ready to start it. “The policies of the Reagan administration must be seen as adventurous and serving the goal of world domination,” Soviet Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov said at a meeting of the Warsaw Pact chiefs of staff in September 1982.
“In 1941, there were also many among us who warned against war and those who did not believe that war was coming. Thus, the situation is not only very serious, but also very dangerous,” Ogarkov said, referring to the Nazi invasion of the USSR.
A few months later, Reagan made one of the most provocative statements of the Cold War. He announced that the United States intended to develop a shield of lasers and nuclear weapons in space to protect against Soviet warheads. He called it missile defense. Critics dubbed it "Star Wars."
For Moscow, this was confirmation that the United States was planning an attack. It would be impossible for the shield to stop thousands of simultaneously incoming Soviet missiles, so missile defense only made sense as a mop-up method after an initial US strike. First, the United States launches thousands of warheads to destroy Soviet cities and missile silos. Some Soviet missiles would survive a retaliatory launch, but Reagan's shield would be able to block many of them. In this way, Star Wars nullified long-standing doctrines of mutually assured destruction, the principle that ensured that neither side would start a nuclear war because neither would survive a counterattack.
As we now know, Reagan did not plan the first strike. According to his personal diaries and personal letters, he sincerely believed that he was bringing lasting peace. (Reagan once told Gorbachev that he might be the reincarnation of the man who invented the first shield). The system, Reagan insisted, was purely defensive. But according to Cold War logic, if you think the enemy is going to strike, you must do one of two things: either strike first, or convince the enemy that you can strike back even if you are dead.
The Perimeter provides the ability to retaliate, but it is not an immediate response device. It lies in semi-sleep mode until it is turned on by a high-ranking official during a military crisis. Then a network of seismic, radiation and air pressure sensors begins to be monitored for signs of nuclear explosions. Before launching a retaliatory strike, the system must answer four if/then questions: If it was turned on, it must try to determine whether a nuclear weapon actually struck Soviet soil. Then the system will check if there is a connection with the General Staff. If there is one, and if a certain amount of time—just 15 minutes to an hour—passes without further signs of an attack, the machine will assume that the military is still alive and there is someone to order a counterattack, after which it turns off. But if the line to the General Staff is dead, then the perimeter concludes that the Apocalypse has arrived. Then she immediately transfers launch rights to whoever is on duty at that moment deep inside the protected bunker. At this moment, the opportunity to destroy the world is given to the person on duty: maybe a minister, or maybe a 25-year-old junior officer, fresh from military school. And if that person decided to press the button... If/then. If/then. If/then. If/then.
Once launched, the counterattack is controlled by so-called command missiles. Concealed in hardened launchers designed to withstand the massive blast and electromagnetic pulses of a nuclear explosion, these missiles will launch first and then transmit a coded order to the entire arsenal that survives the first strike. Flying over the smoldering, radioactive ruins of the Motherland, and the entire destroyed land, the missile team will destroy the United States.
The United States has also tried to master these technologies, in particular, the deployment of command missiles in the so-called emergency missile interaction system. They also developed seismic and radiation sensors to monitor nuclear tests and explosions around the world. But the US did not combine all this into a system of zombie retribution. They were afraid of accidents and a fatal mistake that could end the whole world.
Instead, American aircraft crews with the capabilities and authority to retaliate patrolled the airspace during the Cold War. Their mission was similar to Perimeter, but the system was more human-based rather than machine-based.
And in keeping with the rules of the Cold War game, the US told the USSR about it. The first mention of the Doomsday Machine was on an NBC radio broadcast in February 1950, when atomic scientist Leo Szilard described a hypothetical system of hydrogen bombs that could transform the world into radioactive dust.
A decade and a half later, the hero of Stanley Kubrick's satirical masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove, tried to introduce this idea into the public consciousness. In the film, an American general sends a bomber to launch a preemptive strike on the USSR. The Soviet ambassador says his country has just deployed a device that will automatically respond to any nuclear attack.
“The whole point of the Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret!” Dr. Strangelove shouts. - Why didn't you tell the world this?
After all, such a device only works as a deterrent if the enemy is aware of its existence. In the film, the Soviet ambassador only responds: “This should have been announced at the party congress on Monday.”
In real life, however, many Mondays and many party congresses have passed since Perimeter was created. So why didn't the USSR tell the world about him, or at least the White House? There is no evidence that senior Reagan administration officials knew anything about the Soviet doomsday plan. George Shultz, secretary of state for most of Reagan's presidency, said he had never heard of it.
Indeed, the Soviet military did not even inform its own civilian negotiator about limiting nuclear weapons in Europe.
“They never told me about Perimeter,” says Yuliy Kvitsinsky, who led negotiations on the Soviet side at the time the system was created. And today no one will talk about it. In addition to Yarynich, several other people confirmed the existence of the system, but most questions on this matter still run into a sharp “no.” At an interview in Moscow in February of this year with Vladimir Dvorkin, another former Strategic Missile Forces official, I was escorted out of the room almost as soon as the topic was raised.
So why didn't the US report Perimeter? People experienced in the matter have long noted the extreme penchant of the Soviet military for secrecy, but this probably does not fully explain the silence.
It may be partly due to fears that the US will try to figure out how to shut down the system. But the main reason is much deeper. According to Yarynich, the perimeter was never intended only as a traditional doomsday machine. The USSR understood the rules of the game and went one step further than Kubrick, Szilard and everyone else: it built a system to hold itself back.
By ensuring that Moscow could retaliate, Perimeter was actually designed to deter Soviet military and civilian leaders from making a rash, hasty, and premature decision to launch. That is, give time to the hot heads to cool down. No matter what happened, there will still be an opportunity for revenge. The attackers will be punished."
"Perimeter" solved this problem. If Soviet radar picked up an alarming but ambiguous signal, the leaders could turn on the Perimeter and wait. If the alarm was false, Perimeter was turned off.
“That’s why we have a system,” says Yarynich. - To avoid a tragic mistake.
Since Yarynich describes “Perimeter” with pride, I ask him a question: What to do if the system fails? What to do if something goes wrong? A computer virus, an earthquake, deliberate actions to convince the system that a war has begun?
Yarynich sips his beer and dispels my doubts. Even with an unthinkable series of accidents, there will be at least one human hand to keep the Perimeter from destroying the world. Before 1985, he said, the Soviets had developed several automated systems that could launch a counterattack without any human intervention at all. But all these devices were rejected by the high command.
Yes, a person could decide, in the end, not to press the button. But this man was a soldier isolated in an underground bunker. And all around is evidence that the enemy has just destroyed his homeland and everyone he knows. The sensors have gone off, the timers are ticking. These are instructions, and soldiers are trained to follow instructions. Although…
“I can’t say whether I personally would press the button,” Yarynich himself admits.
Of course, it's hardly a button, really. Now this could be some kind of key or other safety switch. He's not entirely sure. After all, he says, Dead Hand is constantly being updated.
Nicholas Thompson
Based on materials from Wired.com
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