
In Nuclear Silos, Death Wears a Snuggie (2011) - wallflower
https://www.wired.com/2011/01/death-wears-a-snuggie/
======
Someone
_" The process was rigorous, thorough and fully governed by a checklist that
was, to our knowledge, without defect. The room for human error was minimal."_

So, this would be easy to automate. I often wonder whether part of the reason
both the USSR and the USA put people in this process was that the hope was
that those humans would not go through with real orders.

If the idea was that it (also) would help in detecting cases where the
electronic parts of the system fail, that is clear indication that those in
charge thought the humans in would sometimes deviate from the script.

~~~
chakalakasp
Having humans inbetween the automated steps reduces potential errors
introduced by bugs or compromised software. If the last step in Cryptolocker
was "Now have the user manually enter in terminal commands to encrypt each
individual file", the virus wouldn't work at all. Requiring two human beings
to agree with each other that an alert is legitimate and for them to both need
to confirm coded messages, target the missiles and to simultaneously turn four
keys at the same time - it's a pretty big meat-based firewall for malicious or
buggy code.

Not that what runs the silos is really that easy to mess with. They still do
software updates with eight inch floppy disks.

~~~
lisper
> Not that what runs the silos is really that easy to mess with.

I dunno. This seems pretty hinky to me:

"wireless Nintendo Wii controllers could cause the system to detect a false
electromagnetic pulse attack and shut down."

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ajdlinux
A good BBC Radio 4 program about the launch process for British nuclear
weapons:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc1L6dCjhwQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc1L6dCjhwQ)

~~~
a_imho
Has this piece ever been addressed officially?

[https://wikileaks.org/trident-safety/](https://wikileaks.org/trident-safety/)

------
tajen
I'm always wondering what PR is behind articles of journalists visiting
nuclear silos. This one looks like a first-person account, so was a military
allowed to write about his job? How comes he writes so well? He could have
been a journalist... Also, was the piece read, checked and corrected by a
commandant before being published? If so, which parts were left out? Why did
they leave the part where he admits not dressing with the uniform, installing
a hammoc, playing video games and so on? Last question, he describes his role
as reading a console, decrypting and triggering a button at request, and at
the same time saying human error is the most probable cause for a nuclear
winter: Why do we need a person to transcribe a machine message to another
missile-launching machine? Couldn't both machines be wired up together? Sure
it would allow hacking the launch of the missiles, but at the same time, if he
receives the correct message, he's going to send them anyway...

~~~
pdkl95
> Why do we need a person to transcribe a machine message

Because it prevented World War III.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident)

> he's going to send them anyway

The good judgment of Stanislav Petrov shows that this isn't guaranteed.

Automation that can harm people always requires a human fail-safe. Leaving
judgment to a mechanism _only_ implies either hubris that assumes all possible
situations have been accounted for, or enough narcissism to not care about the
(possibly deadly) errors.

~~~
icebraining
Sounds like confirmation bias. If an algorithm had made the right call against
human judgment, would you be arguing for the opposite position?

~~~
glorp
In Dr. Strangelove, the absurd behavior of buffoonish humans contributes to
the doomsday scenario. Idiots blindly following the orders of a madman on one
side, and psychos constructing a completely automated self-destruct mechanism
attached to a retaliatory weapon on the other side.

Both are bad, but people playing the game at all, were the real problem.

~~~
ceejayoz
You know that was a satirical fictional film, right?

~~~
wonkaWonka
[http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/almost-everything-
in...](http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/almost-everything-in-dr-
strangelove-was-true)

    
    
      With great reluctance, Eisenhower agreed 
      to let American officers use their nuclear 
      weapons, in an emergency, if there were no 
      time or no means to contact the President. 
      Air Force pilots were allowed to fire their 
      nuclear anti-aircraft rockets to shoot down 
      Soviet bombers heading toward the United 
      States. And about half a dozen high-level 
      American commanders were allowed to use far 
      more powerful nuclear weapons, without 
      contacting the White House first, when 
      their forces were under attack and “the 
      urgency of time and circumstances clearly 
      does not permit a specific decision by the 
      President, or other person empowered to act 
      in his stead.”
     
      Unbeknownst to both Kubrick and George, a  
      top official at the Department of Defense  
      had already sent a copy of “Red Alert” to  
      every member of the Pentagon’s Scientific  
      Advisory Committee for Ballistic Missiles.  
      At the Pentagon, the book was taken  
      seriously as a cautionary tale about what  
      might go wrong.
    
      A decade after the release of “Strangelove,”
      the Soviet Union began work on the 
      Perimeter system - a network of sensors and 
      computers that could allow junior military 
      officials to launch missiles without 
      oversight from the Soviet leadership. 
      Perhaps nobody at the Kremlin had seen the 
      film. Completed in 1985, the system was 
      known as the Dead Hand. Once it was 
      activated, Perimeter would order the launch 
      of long-range missiles at the United States 
      if it detected nuclear detonations on 
      Soviet soil and Soviet leaders couldn’t be 
      reached.
    

I believe that's check and mate, old chap?

~~~
arethuza
Also some of the quotes from US military leaders at the time sound like
something from Stranglove:

 _" Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole
idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans
and one Russian left alive, we win!"_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_S._Power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_S._Power)

------
Synaesthesia
Crazy that the spectre of instant destruction still haunts us today.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I wonder if this will ever change now. As technology goes forward, we're
creating a world in which an individual can gain more and more destructive
power, and in which when something goes terribly wrong, it can wider and wider
consequences. We're at global level now, and fast approaching extinction-
level.

Two areas to highlight the point:

\- High-energy anything. There's a saying that any propulsion system that
could allow us to travel between planets in a reasonable (for human) timespan
is also a weapon of mass destruction. And it's not just space travel - history
of technology in general is about getting, storing and making use of bigger
and bigger quantities of energy.

\- Self-replicating system. The best-known example of these is also known as
"biology". Something we're only beginning to play with on a serious level.
Mishaps, or worse - deliberate malicious actors by crazy individuals - could
have planet-wide consequences as our ability to manipulate biological
nanomachines grows.

Sleep tight :).

(Also, alt-text from [https://xkcd.com/728/](https://xkcd.com/728/) \- "Maybe
we're all gonna die, but we're gonna die in _really cool ways_.")

~~~
7952
Of course a lot of the risk comes from the trend for technology to operate at
larger and larger scale to achieve efficiency. We could see a trend in the
opposite direction where individual households and communities can be more
self sufficient. For example, efficient small scale energy production could
reduce the risk of nationl level grid disruption. That same biotech industry
could enable local food production without needing to depend on complex
infrastructure for evey meal.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I agree those may be desirable directions for development, but they don't
change the overall dynamics - we expand our capabilities by dealing with more
and more powerful, and thus dangerous, stuff. As individual demand for
electricity increases with each appliance we incorporate in our lives, the
household battery/generator of 2050 could very well be powerful enough to
level a city block if weaponized. Even more likely, the same biotech industry
that can enable local food production will enable creation of new, deadly
pathogens.

Humans, unfortunately, are very optimistic when it comes to workplace and
household safety, while at the same time extremely resourceful when they need
to make weapons out of mundane objects.

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Moral_
Protip for wired articles. Ctrl-save and read them offline to get around the
stupid ad blocker popup

~~~
peteretep
Protip in general: that page renders just fine without Javascript, and then
there's no stupid ad blocker popup

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
thanks! Did the trick!

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drharby
All my nuke buddies would bring monitors and gamecubes and have smash bros
sessions inbetween working on their online masters

~~~
tbihl
'nuke buddies' as in submariners?

~~~
drharby
Air Force silo jockies, tho I do suppose the nomenclature is more commonly
used to refer to submariners. All i know about submariners is that the movie
Down Periscope is more accurate than satiracle.

------
madengr
Why does the author state MAD is obselete?

~~~
avs733
there is an argument by some that the rise of suicide bombing as a weapon of
war meaningfully changed the parameters of mutually assured destruction,
because there are people entirely comfortable/supportive of their own
destruction for a cause.

~~~
merpnderp
This outlook seems historically ignorant. In the midst of the very first use
of nuclear weapons there were hundreds of suicide attacks in the form of
kamikazee suicide runs by aircraft, ships, and soldiers.

One of the likely reasons no terrorist group has tried too hard to obtain a
nuclear weapon is they know whoever it is they fight for will be targeted for
in kind retaliation. Aka MAD.

------
pluma
Why do we still pretend nuclear weapons are necessary when the only military
power that still reserves the right to use them in a first strike is also the
only power to have forces deployed all over the world?

~~~
varjag
Russia has dropped No First Use policy in 1993. Besides relying on a written
statement from a potential adversary is silly. The capability is always there.

