We will soon have to make a decision on one of the components of the Perimeter system. I hope everyone has familiarized themselves with the documents? Our chief expert in this field points to the need to introduce one more, official post with a nuclear terminal. Let me remind you that, in addition to the three official ones, there are two more secret ones controlling the first three posts No. 1. An exception is the Soviet-era Perimeter system, which, in the event of the death of the country's leadership, presupposes a decision to launch a nuclear strike by a group of combat duty officers. This system is also in effect in modern Russia. The terminal stores the codes to activate the nuclear arsenal. Using the nuclear suitcase, the top official contacts the strategic missile forces and orders a nuclear strike. The President's nuclear suitcase is part of the Kazbek automated control system for strategic nuclear forces. The suitcase is set up with a special conference call that cannot be jammed or blocked. There are missile warning stations on the Russian border that monitor the situation via satellite communications. If a nuclear missile launch toward Russia is detected, the data is transmitted to a central command center where the top military commanders are on duty around the clock. Information about an attack is cross-checked through other channels. After the missile aggression is confirmed, the duty officer puts all three suitcases on alert. With this signal, the order is given to unlock the missiles, and the duty officers on the launchers press the buttons. The signal must be sent exactly from the three suitcases. Only then will the system be activated. The officers accompanying the first responders with the nuclear suitcase in their hands are called operators. The operator is required to be in close proximity to the official. I'm done. Any questions, suggestions?
Yuri Vasilyevich fell silent.
Yes," replied the Head of the Department for Control of Censorship of Ethno-cultural and Political Information on Africa and Asia.
Vasilievich looked at her in silence.
I suggest that this issue be left to the decision of the heads of the military and power block.
Thank you, I understand you," replied the head of the center, paused for a moment and concluded: "This is a political decision. We will consider the decision taken. Let's move on to another topic. And it is as follows: "The consequences of the changes in the internal and foreign policy of Greece after the introduction of new canons, changes in the catechism of the Church and the corresponding ethno-cultural and moral-spiritual postulates".
***
Another morning, Vasilievich followed Rutra into the office and announced that they needed to go to a special room styled like a UN employee's office.
There will now be a videoconference with the General Staff, the Federation Council, the United Nations Disarmament Commission and the Presidential Administration on the report of the United States Department of State on the exchange of telemetry information and the implementation of the START III Treaty. Russia's representative to the UN is reporting. According to the legend, we are employees of the UN Commission. Get used to it, but don't get used to speaking English.
That's right," Ruthra replied jokingly.
You give me a break with this stuff, or you'll get me a nunnery. We're on, automatic translation system is working.
Faces appeared on the screens, assistants were making connections, greetings passed.
A U.N. official began the report:
The U.S. State Department has provided a briefing on the progress of the implementation of the U.S.-Russian Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (START-3). According to this information, Moscow had 1,492 deployed nuclear warheads at the start of the treaty, while Washington had 1,737. According to the US State Department's data on the progress of START-3 implementation, the United States has 760 nuclear warhead carriers in service, while Russia has 523. The number of warheads on deployed carriers is 1,534 for the United States and 1,645 for Russia.
After listing many details, the speaker stated.
The report is over, thank you for your attention.
There was a moment of silence. It was obvious from the faces of the participants that they wanted to end the conference as soon as possible.
We, as UN representatives, should ask something, clarify. Ask something," Vasilyevich whispered to Rutra.
Rutra looked at him questioningly, but he was not confused, nodded, and, after quickly reviewing the entire report, asked about the numbers that interested him because of their inconsistencies with START-3.
Please explain the following point," Rutra began his question in English. You said that the United States has 760 deployed nuclear warhead carriers, while Russia has 523.
Yes, it turns out so. I note that this is according to the US State Department.
And you said that Washington is satisfied with the way START-3 is being implemented.
Yes, such a statement was made.
Yuri Vasilyevich stepped lightly on Rutra's heel. Rutra took the hint and said:
Thank you, I'm all set.
Any other questions? asked a representative of the Presidential Administration.
Everyone was silent.
Since there are no questions, I suggest that we work through the program to clarify data, extent, and prospects for implementation before the next meeting, which will be in six months. Notification will be sent out in advance.
Invite a representative of the U.S. State Department to the next meeting," Yury Vasilyevich suggested unexpectedly.
Put it in the minutes," a representative of the Presidential Administration pointed to someone. Any other suggestions, questions?
Everyone was silent.
I declare this regular meeting adjourned. Thank you, goodbye! said the representative of the Presidential Administration.
Goodbye! Goodbye! came from the speakers.
The monitor turned off.
Now that's the time to check out all these organizations.
The State Department, too? Rutra asked, smiling.
Also," Vasilievich replied seriously.
Chapter 7.
The Doomsday Problem
Rutra became increasingly aware that the true purpose of their organization was, to put it mildly, a little different. After the assertion of the U.S. State Department vetting, this became clear. "So who will be vetting him? In what role?" Rutra asked himself.
Vasilievich noticed this and gestured him to the corridor. They silently went there, then went into the elevator and, having gone down, came out at a small dark station. It wasn't a station as such; there were no tracks, tunnels, or locomotive cars. It was a large room with dim lighting; there was a single sliding iron door on the opposite wall from the elevator. Beside this door was a small bench on which they sat down.
Vasilievich smoked occasionally, very high quality rare cigarettes. Now he took out a cigarette. Rutra did not smoke, but he could afford to smoke "very high quality, rare cigarettes," as he put it, "once every five years," so he did not refuse the chief's offer. After the second puff, Vasilievich began the conversation in the tone of a veteran who had lived a long life:
Did you really think that all this fuss is just to control the powerful, the smart guys who want to invent something, and their customers who want to control society with it. Analyze charts on monitors, spy on transactions, accounts, uncover hidden channels of funding and control of citizens' activities. Yes, it's very important. But there is something without which all of this loses its meaning. This is an even more important problem. The fate of the world depends on whether we can solve it or not!
Peace?
Yeah, you heard right. It may not surprise you anymore, but it's true. It's a doomsday issue. The whole world could die. One of the most monstrous inventions of the Cold War could completely destroy life on Earth.
Ruthra was genuinely surprised that Vasilyevich had called him here to tell him such a story. He was astonished. He decided to resort to his favorite tactic of keeping silent and letting his interlocutor open his mind. So he did he made a surprised face and at the same time an expression of interest. Vasilievich continued:
The authors of this name were science fiction writers. The idea itself goes back centuries, when the losers of battles preferred surrender to collective suicide. Preferably together with their enemies.
As long as the number of warheads was in the hundreds and the means of their delivery were pre-flood, both the US and the USSR believed that it was possible to win a nuclear war. You just had to strike first in time. Or you could repel the enemy's strike by shooting down airplanes and missiles and strike back. But at the same time, the risk of being a victim of the first strike and losing with a bang was so great that the idea of a terrible retaliation was born.
Wouldn't the missiles fired in response be such retaliation?
No, it wouldn't. First, a surprise enemy strike would disable half of the nuclear arsenal. Second, it would partially repel a retaliatory strike.
The Soviet Union was the first to do so, testing a hydrogen bomb of monstrous power, over 50 megatons, known in the West as the "Kuzkin Mother". It was pointless as a weapon of war too powerful, too heavy to be delivered by airplane to American territory. But it was perfect as the very powder cellar that would be blown up by the last surviving defenders of the Land of the Soviets. In fiction novels there are other options, for example, super-powered hydrogen bombs were located on special space platforms. They were supposed to automatically, a few months after the defeat of the United States, drop their cargo at the poles. The monstrous explosions would not only melt the ice caps, causing a new global flood, but would also shift the Earth's axis. Predictions of sci-fi writers, as we know, sometimes come true. And sometimes interesting ideas are borrowed from them. By the way, our F department is doing the same thing. Who could have believed 50 or 60 years ago that Russia would be at war with Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and that a black man would become president of America?
By the early 1980s, the size of nuclear arsenals had reached such a scale that their use, even with the deduction of those destroyed, would lead to global radioactive contamination of the planet. In the mid-1980s, the Soviet Perimeter nuclear strike control system emerged, which was something like Skynet from Cameron's famous movie. The main part of the defensive system was the command center. It is known to the public as Kosvinsky Kamen. Deep in the Ural Mountains hides a huge bunker with a special nuclear button. In fact, it is one of the clusters of the system, and it, like all other clusters of the system, can function autonomously. The button can be pressed by only one person, a certain officer, if he receives confirmation from the "Perimeter" system that the nuclear war has begun, Moscow has been destroyed, and the government bunkers have been destroyed. And then the question of retaliation would be entirely in his hands.
Vasilievich looked carefully at Rutra.
You have to admit, it is not an easy task to be alone when your whole country has been destroyed and in one move send the rest of the world into tatters. I am deeply convinced that the concept of the doomsday machine has done a lot of good. The threat of mutual annihilation has cooled down the hotheads a bit. It's largely responsible for World War III never starting. For now.
Ruthra nodded. He wanted to ask what Yuri Vasilyevich wanted to tell him about what he had brought him here. What the subject was, he realized, but what the story was about, he couldn't decide yet. In any case, he decided not to ask any counter-questions, so as not to prolong the story.
Vasilievich took out more cigarettes, offered them to Rutra, and continued:
What is it? Ruthra dared to ask.
It's a general concept of the problem of humanity," Zhidkov replied calmly, looking at the opposite wall. It's not just a fantasy. A thermonuclear dirty bomb could fill the atmosphere with radioactive substances, destroying all life on the planet. Sometimes a doomsday machine is also referred to as a system that is supposed to launch an automatic nuclear salvo if a nuclear attack is detected, like the Perimeter system.
I understand. But, uh.
So listen up. A key feature of the doomsday machine is its publicity, designed to prevent a preemptive strike that would result in the automatic destruction of all warring parties. In the movie Dr. Strangelove, the Soviets fail to announce the machine's existence in time, thus destroying all of its positive effects. Have you seen it?
Watched it," Rutra replied a bit stretched out. There, American General Jack Ripper, obsessed with anti-communist paranoia, initiates a nuclear attack on the USSR, which is carried out by means of strategic bombers. It is only then that Soviet ambassador Alexei Sadetsky reports the existence of a doomsday machine. Despite the joint efforts of the U.S. and USSR, and thanks to the courage and determination of the bomber crew, one plane, whose radio communications have been damaged by the Soviet air defense system, drops a bomb on the Soviet military base in Kotlas.
Vasilievich nodded in understanding and added:
The doomsday machine works. But the movie "The One" shows a different scenario.
Ruthra looked at his superior, smiled slightly, and began to quote:
If we have ten million megatons for each other, what difference does it make where they come from? Everyone will die! Why spend billions on missiles and control computers? As soon as we detect the first Soviet missile fired at us, we'll blow up New York, Texas and Florida. You're doomed!
Vasilievich liked the fact that Rutra was entering into a dialog. He began to talk more animatedly:
In Chapter 11, Richard discovers the "major American secret": it turns out that American missiles have no control systems, not even engines. Only the warheads on these missiles are real, and the rest is "cardboard and paint". Their simultaneous detonation will cause a doomsday machine effect, no matter whether they explode on their own territory or on someone else's.
In the movie War Games, the term "doomsday machine" is not directly used, but a fully automatic nuclear strike response system is described. An experiment conducted showed that many missileers were not prepared to launch missiles in response to a nuclear strike. Believing that they have selected "quite reliable people" and that "the problem is not in them, but in what we require of them," the U.S. Army leadership decides to replace the people on the launchers with automatic devices. The attack is to be ordered by the president. Did you watch it?
No," Ruthra answered honestly.
He had already realized that the chief would cite all cases that described variants of the apocalypse, and pre-programmed ones at that.
In the movie, high school hacker David Lightman, trying to infiltrate the network of a computer game company, makes successive phone calls looking for modems with the terminal input of Joshua, an artificial personality inserted into the Crystal Palace's mainframe. Coincidentally, "Joshua" is the call sign and slang designation of the North American Joint Aerospace Defense Command, NORAD. Thinking that he has safely penetrated the company's computers, David launches the program "World Thermonuclear War", which is actually a simulated training and debugging program that creates a complete illusion of a Soviet nuclear attack on the terminals in the Crystal Palace. The military decides to hold off on launching a retaliatory strike until there is direct confirmation of the attack, i.e. the destruction of the first military base, which of course does not happen. However, Joshua is seriously carried away by the process of the "game" and intends to go through it to the end, launching real American missiles at the USSR. He manages to stop him thanks to the fact that he is a joint program, able to extend his experience gained in one area of activity to other areas. David forces Joshua to play countless games of tic-tac-toe with himself, thus leading the computer to the conclusion that some games are fundamentally impossible to win. Generalizing his newfound experience, Joshua tries it on the game "World Thermonuclear War" and, analyzing countless variations of strikes and counterstrikes, becomes convinced that in this game both sides are always destroyed. With the words "Strange game! The only winning strategy is not to play at all," Joshua abandons his original intention.