File:Doomsday Machine.jpg

Nuclear Weapons: Risks of Cataclysmic Destruction

The Doomsday Machine by Dan Ellsberg

• https://www.amazon.com/Doomsday-Machine-Confessions-Nuclear-Planner/dp/1608196739/

• http://strategicdemands.com/doomsday-machine/'

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Doomsday_Machine-Daniel_Ellsberg-Recalling_the_Vietnam_Moratorium_Oct-Nov_1969.jpg

SJS / Siterunner: The "Dead Hand", in reality, is not just a premise and scenes in a Stanley Kubrick movie...

The Doomsday Machine, the "Dead Hand" as revealed by Dan Ellsberg (2017)

• https://www.strategicdemands.com/?s=Dead+Hand

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yfXgu37iyI

• http://billmoyers.com/story/ellsberg-upcoming-book-warns-trump-nuclear-dangers/

• http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/11/daniel-ellsberg-on-the-doomsday-machine.html

• https://www.strategicdemands.com/?s=hair+trigger

• http://strategicdemands.com/let-us-warn-of-consequences-now/

• https://www.strategicdemands.com/us-nuclear-posture-review-released/

• http://strategicdemands.com/nuclear-debate-on-first-use/

○

In Stanley Kubrick’s iconic film Dr. Strangelove, the American president is informed that the Soviet Union has created a secret deterrence system which will automatically wipe out humanity upon detection of a single nuclear explosion in Russia. With US bombs heading towards the USSR and unable to be recalled, Dr Strangelove points out that “the whole point of this Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret – why didn’t you tell the world, eh?” The Soviet ambassador replies that it was to be announced at the Party Congress the following Monday: “The Premier loves surprises”.

Daniel Ellsberg – leaker of the Pentagon Papers which helped end the Vietnam War and Nixon presidency – claims in his new book The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner that Dr. Strangelove might as well be a documentary. After attending the film in Washington DC in 1964, he and a military colleague wondered how so many details of the nuclear systems they were constructing had managed to leak to the filmmakers.

The USSR did in fact develop a doomsday machine, Dead Hand, which probably remains active today.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand

If the system can’t contact military leaders, it checks for signs of a nuclear strike. Should its computers determine that an attack occurred, it would automatically launch all remaining Soviet weapons at targets across the northern hemisphere.

As in the film, the Soviet Union long kept Dead Hand completely secret, eliminating any strategic benefit, and rendering it a pointless menace to humanity.

You might think the United States would have a more sensible nuclear launch policy. You’d be wrong.

○

The Doomsday Machine, Dr. Strangelove by Stanley Kubrick (1964)

• https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/daniel-ellsberg-doomsday-machines

○