Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

by Eric Schlosser

weapons. In 1974, little more than a decade after the release of Dr. Strangelove, the Soviet Union began work on the “Perimeter” system—a network of sensors and computers that could order the launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles automatically. Completed in 1985, it was known as the “dead hand.” The Soviet general staff planned to activate Perimeter if an American attack seemed imminent. The system would decide when to retaliate, instructing launch crews to fire their missiles if it detected nuclear explosions on Russian soil. Perimeter greatly reduced the pressure to launch on warning at the first sign of an American attack. It gave Soviet leaders more time to investigate the possibility of a false alarm, confident that a real attack would trigger a computer-controlled, devastating response. But it rendered American plans for limited war meaningless; the Soviet computers weren’t programmed to allow pauses for negotiation. And the deterrent value of Perimeter was wasted. Like the doomsday machine in Dr. Strangelove, the system was kept secret from the United States.

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