Being a layperson who doesn’t spend his time über-hawkishly writing science-fiction (though I’ll be the first to admit to occasional paranoia), I’ll even go so far as to hazard the guess that there are even smaller odds that my fellow commoners have really any idea about one particularly lifeless vestige of Cold War era fail-deadly deterrence: Russia’s Dead Hand. It’s what we think of as the proverbial Doomsday Device.The goal then – it’s believed Dead Hand was implemented just prior to Russia’s arsenal peak in the late 1980’s – was to be able to land the cruelest of cruel comebacks, a final, strategic-strike punchline capable of being dropped even after, say, both the Kremlin and Moscow’s top brass were obliterated by, oh I don’t know, an American bomb. Dead Hand, William Broad once wrote, "takes this defensive trend to its logical, if chilling, conclusion.Read the rest at Motherboard.
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