– molten
Valery Yarynich nervously looks over his shoulder. Dressed in a brown leather jacket, the 72-year-old retired Soviet colonel lurks in a dark corner of the Iron Gate restaurant in Washington. It's March 2009—the Berlin Wall fell two decades ago—but Yarynich is still nervous as an escaped KGB informant. He begins to speak in a whisper, but firmly.
“The Perimeter system is very, very good,” he says. “We have relieved the politicians and the military of responsibility.” He looks around again.
Yarynich talks about Russia's Doomsday Machine. That's right, the real doomsday device is a real-life, working version of the ultimate weapon that was always thought to exist only in the fantasies of paranoidly obsessed political hawks. As it turned out, Yarynich, a veteran of the Soviet strategic missile forces and an employee of the Soviet General Staff with 30 years of experience, participated in its creation.
The essence of such a system, he explains, is to guarantee an automatic Soviet response to an American nuclear attack. Even if the US caught the USSR by surprise with a surprise attack, the Soviets would still be able to respond. It doesn’t matter if the United States blows up the Kremlin, the Ministry of Defense, damages the communications system, and kills everyone who has stars on their shoulder straps. Ground sensors will determine that a nuclear strike has taken place and a retaliatory strike will be launched.
The technical name of the system was "Perimeter", but some called it "Deadvaya Ruka". It was built 25 years ago, and continues to remain a closely guarded secret. With the collapse of the USSR, information about the system was leaked, but few people seemed to notice. In fact, it turns out that although Yarynich and former US strategic forces officer Bruce Blair have been writing about Perimeter since 1993, in various books and news articles, the existence of the system has not penetrated the public's brain or the corridors of power. The Russians are still reluctant to discuss 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 I recently told former FBI Director James Woolsey that the USSR had built a Doomsday Machine, he said, "I was hoping the Russians would be more sensible about it." But they weren't.
The system is still so shrouded in secrecy that Yarynich worries that his openness could come at a cost. Perhaps he has reasons for this: one Soviet official who talked with the Americans about this system died under mysterious circumstances, falling down the stairs. But Yarynich understands the risk. He believes the world should know about this. After all, the system continues to exist.
The system that Yarynich helped create came into operation in 1985 after some of the most dangerous years of the Cold War. Throughout the 70s, the USSR moved steadily closer to the US leadership in its nuclear power. At the same time, America, reeling from the Vietnam War and in recession, seemed weak and vulnerable. Then Reagan came along and said the days of retreat were over. As he said, in America it is morning, while in the Soviet Union it is twilight.
Part of the president's new hardline approach was to convince the Russians that the United States was not afraid of nuclear war. Many of his advisers have long advocated modeling and active planning for nuclear battle. These were the followers of Herman Kahn, author of “Thermonuclear War and Reflections on the Unthinkable.” They believed that having a superior arsenal and being willing to use it would provide leverage in negotiations during crises.
Image caption: You either attack first or convince the enemy that you can respond even if you die.
The new administration began expanding the US nuclear arsenal and preparing bunkers. And she supported open boasting. In 1981, during a Senate hearing, arms control and disarmament chief Eugene Rostow made it clear that the United States was crazy enough to use nuclear weapons, saying that after using nuclear weapons against Japan, “it not only survived, but prospered.” " Speaking about a possible US-Soviet nuclear exchange, he said, "Some estimates indicate that one side would have about 10 million casualties, while the other would have over 100 million."
Meanwhile, the behavior of the United States in both large and small ways towards the USSR became tougher. Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin lost his reserved parking space at the State Department. American troops attacked tiny Grenada to defeat communism in Operation Instant Fury. American military exercises were carried out ever closer to Soviet waters.
The strategy worked. Moscow soon believed that the new American leadership was ready to fight in a nuclear war. The Soviets also became convinced that the United States was ready to start a nuclear war. “The policy of the Reagan administration should be viewed as an adventure that served the goals of world domination,” Soviet Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov said in September 1982 at a meeting of the Chiefs of Staff of the Warsaw Pact countries. “In 1941, there were also many among us who warned against war, as well as those who did not believe that it was coming,” he said, referring to the German invasion of the USSR. “So the situation is not only very serious, it is very dangerous.”
A few months later, Reagan made one of the most provocative moves of the Cold War. He announced that the United States intends to develop a laser space shield against nuclear weapons to protect against Soviet warheads. He called the initiative missile defense; critics derided it as "Star Wars".
For Moscow, this was confirmation that the United States was planning an attack. The system would not be able to stop thousands of simultaneously flying warheads, so missile defense only made sense when defending after an initial nuclear strike by the United States. They will first fire thousands of their missiles at Soviet cities and underground mines. Some Soviet missiles would survive the strike to fire back, but Reagan's shield would be able to stop most of them. In this way, Star Wars would negate the long-standing doctrine of mutual nuclear destruction - the principle that neither side would go to war because it was guaranteed to be destroyed in retaliation.
As we now know, Reagan did not plan the attack. According to his personal diary, he sincerely believed that his actions would lead to lasting peace. The system, he insisted, was purely defensive. But according to the logic of the Cold War, if you think that the other side is ready to attack, you must do two things: either get ahead and attack earlier, or convince the enemy that he will be destroyed even after your death.
"Perimeter" provided the possibility of a retaliatory strike, but it was not a "cocked pistol." The system was designed to remain dormant until a high-ranking officer activated it during a crisis. Then it begins monitoring a network of seismic, radiation, or air pressure sensors for signs of a nuclear explosion. Before launching a retaliatory strike, the system must check 4 positions: if it is turned on, it will try to determine whether there was a nuclear explosion on Soviet soil. If it looks like there was, then she will check to see if any communication with the General Staff remains operational. If they remain, and for some time, probably 15 minutes to 1 hour, there are no other signs of a nuclear attack, the machine will conclude that the command capable of ordering a retaliatory strike is still alive, and will shut down. But if there is no connection with the General Staff, then the machine concludes that the apocalypse has arrived. It immediately transfers retaliatory power to whoever is deep inside the secure bunker, bypassing normal hierarchical command procedures. At this moment, the responsibility for destroying the world falls on whoever is on duty at that moment: perhaps it will be some high-ranking minister who will be put in this position during a crisis, or a 25-year-old junior officer who has just graduated from a military academy...
Once initiated, the counterattack will be controlled by the so-called. command missiles. Concealed in secure bunkers designed to survive the blast and EM pulse of a nuclear strike, these missiles would be fired first and begin transmitting coded radio signals to all Soviet nuclear weapons that managed to survive the first strike. At this moment, the machine will begin to wage war. Flying over the radioactive and scorched earth of the fatherland with communications destroyed everywhere, these command missiles will destroy the United States.
The United States has also developed its own versions of such technologies, deploying command missiles within the so-called. Emergency Missile Communication System. They have also developed seismic and radiation sensors to monitor nuclear tests or nuclear explosions around the world. But these technologies have never been combined into a zombie retribution system. They feared that one mistake could end the whole world.
Instead, during the Cold War, American crews were constantly in the air with the capability and authority to launch retaliatory strikes. This system was similar to Perimeter, but relied more on people and less on machines.
And in accordance with the principles of Cold War game theory, the US told the Soviets about this.
The first mention of a Doomsday Machine, according to Apocalypse Man author Pee Dee Smith, was on an NBC radio broadcast in January 1950, when nuclear scientist Leo Gilard described a hypothetical hydrogen bomb system that could cover the entire planet in radioactive dust, killing all life. . “Who would want to kill all life on the planet?” he asked rhetorically. Someone who wants to hold off an opponent who is about to attack. If, for example, Moscow is on the verge of military defeat, it can stop the invasion by declaring: “We will detonate our hydrogen bombs.”
A decade and a half later, Kubrick's satirical masterpiece Dr. Strangelove brought this idea into the public consciousness. In the film, a mad American general sends his bombers to launch a preemptive strike on the USSR. Then the Soviet ambassador announces that his country has just adopted an automatic response system to a nuclear attack.
“The whole idea of the Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret,” shouted Dr. Strangelove. “Why not tell the world about it?” After all, such a device only works if the enemy is aware of its existence.
So why don't the Soviets tell the world about him, or at least the White House? There is no evidence that the Reagan administration knew about Soviet doomsday plans. Reagan's Secretary of State George Shultz told me he had never heard of such a system.
In fact, the Soviet military did not even inform its civilian negotiators about it. “I was never told about Perimeter,” says Yuliy Kvitsinsky, a leading Soviet negotiator at the time the system was created. But the generals don’t want to talk about it even today. Besides Yarynich, several other people confirmed to me the existence of such a system - former space department official Alexander Zheleznyakov and defense adviser Vitaly Tsygichko, but to most questions they simply frowned or snapped, saying nyet. In an interview in Moscow this February with another former Strategic Missile Forces official, Vladimir Dvorkin, I was escorted out of the office as soon as I raised the topic.
So why weren’t the Americans told about the Perimeter system? Kremlinologists have long noted the Soviet military's extreme penchant for secrecy, but this is unlikely to fully explain a strategic error of this magnitude.
The silence can be partly attributed to fears that if the United States learned about the system, it might find a way to make it unworkable. But the root cause is more complex and unexpected. According to both Yarynich and Zheleznyakov, Perimeter was never intended to be a traditional Doomsday Machine. In reality, the Soviets built a system to contain themselves.
By providing assurances that Moscow could respond, the system was in effect designed to deter military or civilian leaders from striking first in times of crisis. The goal, according to Zheleznyakov, was “to cool down some too hot heads. Whatever happens, there will be an answer. The enemy will be punished."
Perimeter also gave the Soviets time. After installing the deadly accurate Pershing II at bases in Germany in December 1983, Soviet military planners concluded that they would have 10 to 15 minutes before radar detected the launch. Given the paranoia that reigned at the time, it would not be an exaggeration to suggest that a faulty radar, a flock of geese, or misunderstood American teachings could have led to disaster. And indeed, such incidents happened from time to time.
"Perimeter" solved this problem. If Soviet radar was transmitting an alarming but ambiguous signal, the leaders could turn on the Perimeter and wait. If it was some geese, they could relax and turn off the system. Confirmation of a nuclear explosion on Soviet soil was much easier to obtain than confirmation of a remote launch. “That’s why we need this system,” says Yarynich. "To avoid a tragic mistake."
The mistake that Yarynich and his US counterpart Bruce Blair would like to avoid now is silence. The system may no longer be the centerpiece of the defense, but it still continues to function.
While Yarynich proudly talks about the system, I ask myself the traditional questions for such systems: what if a failure occurs? If something goes wrong? What if a computer virus, an earthquake, a nuclear reactor, or a power grid failure all lined up to convince the system that war had begun?
Taking a sip of his beer, Yarynich dismisses my concerns. Even taking into account the incredible alignment of all accidents in one chain, there will be at least one human hand that will keep the system from destroying the world. Before 1985, the Soviets had developed several automated systems that could launch a counterattack without human intervention at all. But all of them were rejected by the high command. Perimeter, he says, was never a truly autonomous Doomsday Machine. “If there is an explosion and all communications are damaged, then people can, I emphasize, can organize a retaliatory strike.”
Yes, I agree, in the end a person may decide not to press the coveted button. But this man is a soldier, isolated in an underground bunker, surrounded by evidence that the enemy has just destroyed his homeland and everyone he knows. There are instructions and they are trained to follow them.
Will the officer really not respond with a nuclear strike? I asked Yarynich what he would do if he were alone in the bunker. He shook his head. “I can’t say if I would have pressed the button.”
It doesn't have to be a button, he continues to explain. Now this could be something like a key or some other secure form of launch. He's not sure what it is now. After all, he says, Dead Hand continues to modernize.
On the forums of "survivalists" there is an ongoing debate about what kind of vehicle will be needed in the event of a global catastrophe such as a 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. (Nobody 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.
One of the most monstrous inventions of the 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.
The attitude of European countries towards their defeat in World War II varied greatly.
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 flooding of the Berlin subway in order to drown the Germans hiding there along with the Soviet soldiers who broke through there. 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 yield of 100 kilotons to 2 megatons are intended only for the destruction of military and industrial facilities. They cannot send America to the bottom of the ocean.
If a nuclear war had broken out in the early 60s, most of the US territory would have remained untouched, and on it, in a favorable scenario, the United States could have been revived. 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, super-powerful 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 would also shift the earth's axis.
As is known, the predictions of science fiction writers sometimes come true. And sometimes interesting ideas are borrowed from them. 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 size of nuclear arsenals had 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 nuclear strike control system arose "Perimeter" . Representing something like "Skynet" from Cameron's famous film. Agree, it quite deserves the title of “machine of the apocalypse”!
However, the main part of the Soviet and now Russian defensive system, according to the above-mentioned authors, was the Kosvinsky Stone command center. According to their description, behind this name, in the depths of the Ural Mountains, lies 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 an easy task - to be left alone when your entire country is destroyed, and in one motion 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 play the role of an “absolute 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 the use of neutron charges are quite accurately described by the famous children's rhyme: the school is standing - but there is 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 More people died in 1918-19 than in 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 version of the Doomsday Machine. 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.
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 attack. 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
And just to finish off the most impenetrable reader, a legendary song on the topic, from a legendary band. We enjoy and think...
Take a look at these amazing photos and then try to do the same thing as this guy. Will you be able to...
| For your information!
In this article we describe the Doomsday Machine itself, and We don’t make lists of everything we’ve read, played and watched with mention of the subject. It's here, so all edits with an attempt to play necrophilia will be rolled back, and their authors will be shot on the spot with a rocket launcher, for great justice! |
In fact
The Doomsday device is a high-tech product designed to bring the “Apocalypse Now” call to life. Must be developed by one of the interested parties in deep laboratories of densely populated planets. The goal is to cut down the population of the latter to adequate sizes.
Most often, the Doomsday device is presented in the form of a prodigy (for example, the Death Star or the Doomsday Machine) or some kind of software and hardware complex that has gone beyond human control (for example, Skynet from the Terminator films, which destroyed the homeland of Superman Brainiac or, in fact, The Doomsday Device from the same "Dr. Strangelove"). However, it has several mandatory features:
- cuts out the vast majority of participants in the process, or better yet the entire planet or star system
- does not differentiate between one's own and others'
- allows you to avoid the long-lasting survival stage (for example, by cheerfully and cheerfully turning the target audience into individual atoms of shit).
Kinds
Despite the fact that the imagination of the fathers of DDD is almost limitless, there are several general directions on the issue of global depopulation:
- Nuclear DDDs (tests were successful), thermonuclear (aka hydrogen) ones became a development and ZOG's IRL dream realized - neutron DDDs, as well as antimatter bombs (fortunately, not yet realized in metal).
- Psychotronic and metaphysical DDD (all kinds of psi-attitudes, zombies, religious and other insanities, subconscious heroism, suicidism, coding, etc.).
- Bacteriological DDD, affecting the entire population with deadly viruses that kill completely or not completely in a few hours.
- Unexplored physical structures (collider).
- Anomaly generators (reversal of the Earth's rotation, changes in the Earth's gravitational field, distortion of the bubbles rising in beer, etc.).
- DDD of alien origin (evil little green men decided to anally punish humanity and launched their alien wunderwaffle, sterilizing the population of this planet).
- Geophysical DDD: earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, asteroids from space... well, you get it.
- The product of nanotechnology is self-replicating nanorobots, which over time consume all the biomass of the Earth (“Grey goo”, as well as more promising technology).
- Beam DDD: a cute sun that burns out entire cities with a directed beam of light.
- OBHR! Thousands of them! .
- Indirect action (mostly - all kinds of time paradoxes, but there are also exotic tricks: in the form of a purposeful awakening of all sorts of Cthulhus or a central idealist who dreams of a given universe; especially the epic ones are included in the epigraph).
- Secret developments of Russian and bourgeois scientists that no one will ever know about...
- Chuck Norris: NO_COMMENTS.
IRL
In real life, as our governments, striving for peaceful coexistence, assure us, a working prototype of the doomsday device has not yet been seen. But all this, of course, is a lie and bullshit. A completely non-illusory operating Doomsday machine was created in the USSR, in America it also exists, so that playful hands would not think of using the SUDDENLY formed advantage of a guaranteed retaliatory strike, for example, and the science of game theory is engaged in such thoughts, which smoothly leads us to the philanthropy of its founder - the Hungarian YERJ Johnny von Neumann, with another similar one, ChSKH, the Hungarian YERE Edjard Teller, who suggested that G. Truman should fuck the USSR with nuclear bombs while it was possible in the period 1945-1949. So these scientists have only an eye and an eye.
Perimeter system
Well, these Internets of yours, they were also originally there in order to convey “We are dying, but we do not give up” where it was needed, yes. In fact, this was a network of bunkers, and in the bunkers there were computers, with protruding sensors and various communication systems. In the event of a nuclear strike on the Center by the enemy, the epic prodigy could automatically decide on a global exterminatus. The glorious robots themselves, without the participation of the two-viper lietech, monitored various parameters around them, such as the intensity of negotiations on military frequencies, the radiation background around bunkers, signs of a shock wave, or the fact that the transmission of information from headquarters had stopped. At the same time, exterminatus was guaranteed even if all communications and headquarters were destroyed: special command missiles, converted from ballistic ones, flying over the vast expanses of Soviet land, gave a signal to all other missiles to launch - receiving automatic systems were installed in mobile launchers and even on submarines, however , no one knows whether this crap could have sent gifts to the enemy with the killed crew. This chthonic prodigy is called the “Perimeter” System, but the Yankees quite accurately dubbed it the “Dead Hand”.
The Perimeter system is a backup system for communicating orders and transmitting launch codes to military formations (in particular, to the Strategic Missile Forces and submarines). The main part is the so-called. a command missile, which, when flying, broadcasts these orders to the entire territory. The missile was tested in the "Seven Hour Nuclear War". By itself, this system does not explode anything. By the way, spare parts for this product are made in St. Petersburg, and in considerable quantities. And the product itself began to be stamped somewhere in the eighties. And you can relax, it stands and buzzes in the bunkers like it’s cute. Moreover, it is clear that we have it, it is difficult to say what the Americans or the Chinese have, but there is no reason to think that the Pindos and Chinese did not bother with a similar system. There are no proofs either, because it’s pativen. So that. And it still inspires. Also Kuzka's mother.
At the same time, as it turned out, a similar cunning plan was brewing in the minds of the Americans. Quickly realizing that since the Japanese are afraid of tsunamis, then whoever manages to cause them will tremble them, the tsunami creation system was seriously tested off the coast of New Zealand. True, the main difference between this system and the proposal developed in the Soviet Union was the use of a large number of conventional bombs, located at regular intervals along the coast, and detonated according to a pre-calculated pattern. This was the fault: according to Yankee calculations, to create a tsunami comparable to Fukushima, it would only take a few thousand bombs, which, although a difficult task, can be completely solved using the army method. Actually, in this case, the presence of bombue no longer initiated, but closed down the project: the prudent Yankees decided that a fried Japanese was no worse than a drowned one, and the absence of the need for the sea made it possible to spread the life-giving experience to other places on the globe.
In the collective unconscious
In virtualities there are many DDDs, thousands of them. Mainly, cinematography: mega-villains work tirelessly to build DDD, but they don’t allow testing. The second place is occupied by toys (where, for example, in strategies, the entire game plot can end with the creation of a DDD).
In this case, DDD is a useless device by definition (since if everyone is cut out, then there will be no one to take advantage of the joy of the Brave New World), but the righteous genius is beyond doubt. However, the aforementioned Strangelove provides the following argument: a country that has built DDD and notified everyone about it can be calm about an enemy attack using missiles/bombs, since the enemy will not attack, understanding that in any case win ≡ fail: The government, backed to the wall, will press the red button. If the system is automated, the situation improves - even a decapitation blow or a cowardly button operator will not be able to stop the launch of DDD, and a war with such a country becomes futile at all. In that movie (spoiler:fucked up happened precisely because the Russians, who built DDD, did not have time to notify the Pindos about it, as a result of which the B-52 that bombed the USSR caused global fuckery.)
Due to the dominance of humane positions on the issue under consideration, all works where DDD did work (that is, no happy ending) already by design stand out from the gray mass of their comrades.
Selected Quotes
|
All three smoked in silence for several minutes. Then Peter asked, “So this is how you think it eventually broke out?” After the Russians attacked Washington and London? Osborne and Towers stared at him in amazement. “The Russians didn’t even think about bombing Washington,” Dwight said. - In the end they proved it. Now Peter looked in amazement. - I mean the very first attack. - That's it. The very first attack. Russian IL-626 long-range bombers attacked, but their pilots were Egyptian. And they flew from Cairo. |
| Source of copy-paste by Peysatel. Neville Shute, "On the Shore" |
|
This was after the Big Mistake, but before the Earth became uninhabitable. Usually we visited the estate when there was a “remission” - this vague term meant short (from ten to eighteen months) periods of calm between planetary spasms. At this time, the black mini-hole, which the Kiev Group planted in the very center of the Earth, seemed to be digesting the contents of its womb in anticipation of the next feast. And when the “period of activity” began again, we went “to Uncle Kove,” that is, to a terraformed asteroid located beyond the orbit of the Moon, which was towed there even before the exodus of the Vagrants. |
| Dan Simmons, Hyperion. Example of successful use |
|
And when He opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for what seemed like half an hour. And I saw seven angels who stood before God; and seven trumpets were given to them. And another Angel came and stood before the altar, holding a golden censer; and a great deal of incense was given to him, so that with the prayers of all the saints he would place it on the golden altar, which was in front of the throne. And the smoke of incense ascended with the prayers of the saints from the hand of an Angel before God. And the Angel took the censer, and filled it with fire from the altar, and threw it to the ground: and there were voices, and thunder, and lightning, and an earthquake. And the seven Angels, having seven trumpets, prepared to blow. The first angel sounded, and there came hail and fire, mixed with blood, and fell to the earth; and the third part of the trees was burned up, and all the green grass was burned up. The second angel sounded his trumpet, and as it were a great mountain, burning with fire, was cast into the sea; and the third part of the sea became blood, and the third part of the living creatures that lived in the sea died, and the third part of the ships perished. The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a lamp, and fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of this star is “wormwood”; and a third of the waters became wormwood, and many of the people died from the waters, because they became bitter. The fourth angel sounded, and a third part of the sun and a third part of the moon and a third part of the stars were struck, so that a third part of them was darkened, and a third part of the day was not light, just like the nights. And I saw and heard one Angel flying in the middle of heaven and saying with a loud voice: Woe, woe, woe to those who live on earth from the rest of the trumpet voices of the three Angels who will blow! |
| Apocalypse |
|
Somewhere in the vastness of the Galaxy there is a place where an asteroid belt circles around the red sun. Several centuries ago, we discovered intelligent arthropods there that called themselves “willis.” It was not possible to establish contact with them. They refused offers of friendship and cooperation from all known races of intelligent beings. In addition, they killed our ambassadors and sent us their bodies in dismembered form. When we first met them, the Wilis only had interplanetary ships. However, after very little time, they mastered the secret of interstellar travel. They robbed and killed wherever they appeared, and then disappeared back into their system. Perhaps the Wilis did not imagine the strength of the intergalactic community at that time, or they simply did not care about it, but, nevertheless, they correctly judged that a lot of time would pass before we agreed to present a united front. In fact, interstellar war is an extremely rare occurrence. The Peyans are the only race that had any idea about it. And when all our attacks were repulsed, and the remnants of the combined fleet were recalled, we began to fire at the planet from afar. However, the jeeps had more advanced technology than we first expected. They had an almost perfect missile defense system. In the end, we retreated, taking them into the blockade ring. But they did not stop their raids. Then the Name-Bearers came to the rescue. Three worldformers - Sang-Ring of Kreldea, Karf'ting of Mordea and myself - were chosen by lot to carry out the operation. We had to combine our forces. And so, in the Willis system, far from the orbit of their home planet, the asteroid belt began to gather into something resembling a planetoid. It grew fragment by fragment, gradually changing its orbit. We and our machines were located outside their solar system, controlling the formation of a new world and its progress towards the intended goal. When the Wilis realized what was happening and tried to destroy it, it was already too late. But they did not ask for mercy, and not one of them tried to escape. They waited and the day came. The orbits of the two planets intersected, and now only a ring of fragments of the once inhabited world revolves around the red sun... After that, I drank continuously for a whole week. |
| Roger Zelazny, "Isle of the Dead" |
Also
- DDD is a graphical front end for a couple of debuggers.
- DDD is a trio of brothers - Dagon, Dagnu and Dagan (aka "BLACK BLOOD BROTHERS") - the pit bosses of the Elan location from the online game RF Online - the source of the most epic jewelry in terms of characteristics, as well as no less epic AOE attacks that can significantly exceed the health reserves of any character of any level, with the exception of particularly exhausted and equipped tanks.
- DDD - coding for dual-chamber atrioventricular biocontrolled pacemakers.
- DDD is Problem Driven Design, coined by one Eric Evans.
- The subject of the article is devoted to a thematic ballad from the racial Pindos ensemble Devourment, called Fifty Ton War Machine.
see also
Links
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