hckrnws
The Presidential Nuclear "Football" from Eisenhower to George W. Bush
by ohjeez
There are 2 speculative fiction books about nuclear war unfolding in present time. Both feature usage of the 'football'. The 'commission report' is my recommendation out of the two:
The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States [0] Nuclear War: A Scenario [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_2020_Commission_Report_on_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_War:_A_Scenario
> Nuclear War: A Scenario
I read the wikipedia article, but I don't see how this scenario seems probable, it notes the nukes have to pass by russia to strike North Korea, thus creating the world war.
But the US has nuclear subs with nuclear wardheads! Most likely there is one close to NK and then no need to pass over russia...
It's an awful book. In the scenario, the US does launch SLBMs from a submarine close to North Korea, and they hit in minutes. But for some reason the author thought that's is plausible that the US would also launch 50 land based ICBMs. Why?
The author's technical expertise is very limited. She thinks that satellites fall out of the sky if their electronics are destroyed by an EMP attack. There are many other mistakes, you are better off skipping this book.
No, it's a good book.
They launch 50 land-based ICBMs because:
1. They expect the attack to continue.
2. The ICBM silos are in static locations.
3. Not using the ICBMs in time removes the possibility to use them at all, because the enemy, knowing where they are, will obviously destroy them. Therefore: "use it or lose it".
4. Because of #1, #2 and #3 there is a a limited time to launch a counter-attack at all using the land-based ICBMs.
5. Because the chairman of the JSC is pushing hard for strike option Charlie, which the president ultimately caves in to.
As for the EMP and satellites, that part comes from an interviews with Yago and Pry as well as Pry's book. Satellites certainly won't drop from the skies like burning seagulls, but if they cannot course correct because their electronics are fried, they will fall back into the atmosphere and burn much sooner than otherwise.
Edit: I can't count to 5.
> Therefore: "use it or lose it".
Not really. It's more like "don't use it so you can lose it". The US has enough SLBMs that the ICBMs can all be lost without significant loss of deterrence capability. However their existence complicates tremendously the calculus of an adversary. If the US does not use its ICBMs in the early moves of a full-scale nuclear war, its adversaries need to allocate missiles to disable them. From wikipedia [1]:
> The solid fueled LGM-30 series Minuteman I, II, III, and Peacekeeper ICBM configurations consist of one LCC (launch control center) that controls ten LFs (launch facilities) (1 × 10). Five LCCs and their fifty associated LFs make up a squadron. Three squadrons make up a wing. Measures were taken such that if any one LCC was disabled, a separate LCC within the squadron would take control of its ten ICBMs.
> The LGM-30 LFs and LCCs are separated by several miles, connected only electronically. This distance ensures that a nuclear attack could only disable a very small number of ICBMs, leaving the rest capable of being launched immediately.
The US nuclear strategists have given a name to this: the "nuclear sponge". Most certainly the options given to the President account for this. Nobody without top secret security clearance can know, including the book's author, but it's highly unlikely that a pre-scripted nuclear counterattack of the US against a single NK ICBM would remove 50 missiles from this "sponge", when a much better alternative is to use SLBMs.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_launch_facility#Minute...
> It's an awful book. In the scenario, the US does launch SLBMs from a submarine close to North Korea, and they hit in minutes. But for some reason the author thought that's is plausible that the US would also launch 50 land based ICBMs. Why?
See my other comment, but to summarize - because they worry that an incoming attack would destroy the land-based ICBMs before they have a chance to launch them, taking out one third of the Nuclear Triad.
I don't think this was the book making up stories - the book is half fiction, half interviews with actual people who worked on these plans and gave inside info on them. This unfortunately appears to be a realistic scenario.
> they worry that an incoming attack would destroy the land-based ICBMs
We are used to mentally think of the Earth as seen in a sideways 2D projection. But if you look down from above the North Pole, you can appreciate how different an ICBM trajectory that goes from North Korea to Washington is from one that goes to Wyoming, Montana or North Dakota. There is no way to mistake one for the other, and the author does not even claim that this happened in her scenario; the incoming ICBM was fairly quickly identified as targeting something on the East Coast.
Which brings us to another thing. Geography is very funny, but it happens that an ICBM from NK to Washington overflies thousands of miles of Russian territory. An ICBM from Wyoming to NK overflies mabye a fifth as much, because it flies over a lot over the Bering Sea and the Sea of Ohotsk. Why are the Russians not worried when the NK ICBM overflies their country, but they are willing to commit suicide when the US counter overflies does the same, but over a much shorter distance? Well, they should not be worried in either case, because a missile can't just drop down in midflight, but an author that thinks satellites can fall from the sky can also think that a missile in suborbital flight can take 90 degree turns.
Look into the "Nuclear Triad". The US has three ways to fight back against a nuclear attack - land-based ICBMs, bombers, and submarines.
It is unknown how the US would react to a missile launched from NK, but for various reasons, it is likely to respond with a massive counter-attack. This is partially for deterrence (the whole idea behind the MAD doctrine), and partially for fear that if ICBMs are not launched right away, they could be deactivated by an incoming first strike.
Indeed, in the scenario laid out in the book (Spoiler Warning), after launching an ICBM, NK also launches missiles from a submarine that take out various parts of the US in minutes, far faster than the ~25 minutes for the ICBMs to get to the US from NK. Had the ICBMs not been launched before, it is probable they would be destroyed, taking out one leg of the "triad".
Nuclear War: A Scenario, is being turned into a movie by Dennis Villeneuve (Dune, Blade Runner...)
Thanks for the tip! He's also working on a "Rendezvous with Rama" adaptation.
I find it absolutely mad that you can write and release a fictional book that is named a government report, is written and printed like a government report, and features real named individuals from the government.
I assume it's all down to first amendment protections. Absent that protection I find it unlikely that any government would let you publish this.
> Absent that protection I find it unlikely that any government would let you publish this.
You can't be serious, surely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarfolk for one example of many.
Addendum: Reply to deleted comment:
Ok, you're talking about the libel law part, writing a book that mischaracterises an actual person and inserts them within a fiction?
Well, Brass Eye went further .. it fabricated fictional stories and fooled real people into taking part.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brass_Eye
Paedogeddon! takes the cake there. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5bg85g
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I found that the scene in The Day After [1] where this comes out was one of the most frightening things I've seen. That and when the missiles leave the silos and you realize you have less than 30 minutes left to live.
The moment you see icbms leave the silos it’s over. They are not scalpels for a tactical strike on a small area to prevent xyz, for that you would a submarine much closer or bombers or even a cruise missile.
They are the hammer and lots of them. If they fly, you can be sure it’s the big game. You are right, in about 30 minutes (probably less, when you take into account that the USA would only react with icbms) or closer to 10-15 minutes it’s Armageddon.
The first bombs would explode in the higher atmosphere and blind the electromagnetic spectrum aka radar detection fails and your only option is to fight back and hit hard in retaliation.
I don’t know if it’s (still) in service, but the USA had a rocket that would fly over the rocket fields and send the launch codes and fire the icbms. The fear was, that the soldiers were incapacitated and could not fire them itself. The backup.
Absolutely insane how in minutes everything would go to hell.
The communication rocket(s) seem to have been shut down in 1991.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/DRC-8_Emergency_Rocket_Co...
> I don’t know if it’s (still) in service, but the USA had a rocket that would fly over the rocket fields and send the launch codes and fire the icbms. The fear was, that the soldiers were incapacitated and could not fire them itself. The backup.
Truly terrifying as a citizen of a non-nuclear country that this is (or was) in place, and that a handful of countries (presuming they all have this capability) is willing to obliterate everyone else because they took it too far.
> Truly terrifying as a citizen of a non-nuclear country
I flicked back a page of your comments and saw " .. here in Sydney."
I'm in Australia like, I presume, yourself.
The same country that has (along with multiple other installations) the Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Communication_Station_Ha...
which has always been a prime target in any first strike scenario .. given its primary function is communications with roving nuclear ballistic missile launch submarines.
Like it or not Australia's been part of the game since an Australian scientist first explained to the Americans how to build an atomic weapon and further convinced them that it was both feasible and essential.
TIL about Sir Mark Oliphant!
" . . . rocket that would fly over the rocket fields . . . "
A series of airplanes, called Looking Glass, was the first backup.
> I don’t know if it’s (still) in service, but the USA had a rocket that would fly over the rocket fields and send the launch codes and fire the icbms. The fear was, that the soldiers were incapacitated and could not fire them itself. The backup.
They can't actually be sat there just waiting for a radio signal, can they? Just waiting for some kid with a Flipper Zero to end the world?
" That's exactly right, bluescrn, kids simply had to hang about and record the launch codes used in one armageddon in order to reuse them to start the next. "
Unforgiveable snark aside I suspect they would have used some level of authorisation ... although there was that strong rumour to the effect that the default silo launch codes were 000 for many many years.
Which was, of course, just silly .. military intelligence would demand at least eight zero's.
Could involve a dead man's switch (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man's_switch ) such that the signal can only work if everyone in the control centre is already incapacitated, that combined with requiring the signal to be highly encrypted sounds fairly safe I think?
The explanation previous seems misleading, the rockets sent up to give codes for launch, humans still launched them. Presumably before satellites, redundant fiber networks, and robust national communications they wanted a fallback in case communications get disrupted.
So not a dead man's switch, just backup one way comms system.
It's probably worth considering a return to a fallback comms system. In the 1990s, telcos were the pinacle of reliability. Sure, AT&T had local issues from time to time, and that cascading failure incident [1] in 1990, but things were on a path towards even more reliability. Now, I expect a several hour, multistate outage of 911 about every other year. Nationwide single carrier cell phone outages aren't uncommon either.
I'm just going to assume a hostile first strike makes satellite comms difficult.
[1] http://users.csc.calpoly.edu/~jdalbey/SWE/Papers/att_collaps...
Ah, thanks for clarifying!
the dead mean switch
Is on YT : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOPaaHSjMcw
Thank you. Heard so much about this film and have never seen it.
Based on it being in Kansas, it could have a fun lore to the wonderful Land of Oz with transfigured beings.
I live in France and we usually complain about how our president, government, parliament, administration and whatnot is miserable. Until now (for all my life), it has just been general ranting because we knew that the system makes radical changes difficult.
It is only recently (late last year an this year) that there is sometimes a strange feeling that one guy (Putin) could blow all this stability up by raising tension in our region to the point where European governments are talking about war right here.
This is truly scary because so far war has been a remote thing - we knew that people were fighting somewhere in the world and we had armchair compassion at lunch.
I noticed a palpable hatred toward Putin rising in my circles because of this tension raising. People are less interested in politics but rather in the fact that, to our horror, the idea of a war is being invoked.
If Putin decides to unleash global Armaggedon, my only fear is NOT being at the epicenter of one of the nuclear detonations.
Same here, seriously. I live near Paris so there is hope that the blast will reach us. I had a look at a site that showed the area touched by specific bombs and I am at the edge.
It is really sad that such thoughts are for real and not just in a movie.
Move to Australia and get a couple months reprieve:
In the event of a nuclear armageddon, would anyone be nuking South America or Africa?
I assume such an armageddon would disrupt supply chains and cause social strife in other parts of the world, but are there parts where it would be business as usual? Africa? Maybe warlords would run out of ammunition, but they would still have machetes.
The thing is, there is less fear of a nuclear armageddon which would erradicate Russia as well, but the raising fear of a conventional attack of Russia against the rest of Europe. Of course that won't happen while Ukraine holds, but if we allowed Ukraine to fall due to lack of support, Putin is quite likely to turn against other European states.
Lex Friedman's podcast episode [1] with Annie Jacobsen, author of Nuclear War: A Scenario, is an extremely interesting one. They go into detail on what she found regarding the nuclear football, why it was created in the first place, and how insane it is to expect anyone to make such a decision.
Lex Fridman*
There is also a Lex Friedman who does another podcast but they are two distinct people.
Thanks! Autocorrect strikes again
Nuclear "suitcase" just doesn't have quite the same futurist cachet, does it.
I like nuclear satchel, myself.
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Well the suitcase itself is not radioactive, and contains "emergency" martial law declaration material that is not covered by the "nuclear" adjective. Given that the USA were built on genocide, and at that time, FBI/CIA were already conducting mass arrest/incarceration and targeted assassinations (COINTELPRO) it's more of a change in public scenery than an actual policy change.
But "emergency tyrant outfit" doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it?
Good 1990 movie about Cold War tension under launch, not a comedy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4SiM5uAtTE By Dawn's Early Light, great role for James Earl Jones.
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists argued in 2020 that it’s time to retire the football:
https://thebulletin.org/2020/10/trumps-covid-infection-shows...
It could be prudent to change these protocols before the next election, to avoid another situation like this:
’President Trump took the nuclear football with him to Walter Reed Medical Center, where he received treatment for COVID-19. According to Trump’s doctor, the president’s blood oxygen levels had dipped. And this, according to independent health experts, can impair decision-making ability. He is taking dexamethasone, which can cause mood swings and “frank psychotic manifestations.” Yet as far as we know, at no point did the president transfer his powers to the vice president, as allowed under the 25th Amendment.’
’To state the obvious, we should not entrust nuclear launch authority to someone who is not fully lucid. (Reagan transferred authority temporarily before planned surgery, as did President George W. Bush before a medical procedure that required his sedation.) A nuclear crisis can happen at any time, including at the worst possible time. If such a crisis takes place when a president’s thinking is compromised for any reason, the results could be catastrophic.’
The hospital stuff was the least of our concerns.[3]
The history of this actually gets better. Nixon was sloshed half the time and then rolled that fact into the furtherance of his nuclear brinksmanship[2] pioneering:
"If the president had his way," Kissinger growled to aides more than once, "there would be a nuclear war each week!" This may not have been an idle jest. The CIA's top Vietnam specialist, George Carver, reportedly said that in 1969, when the North Koreans shot down a US spy plane, "Nixon became incensed and ordered a tactical nuclear strike... The Joint Chiefs were alerted and asked to recommend targets, but Kissinger got on the phone to them. They agreed not to do anything until Nixon sobered up in the morning." [1]
No big deal.
"The allegation of flirting with nuclear weaponry is not an isolated one. Nixon had been open to the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam as early as 1954 and as president-elect in 1968 had talked of striking "a blow that would both end the war and win it". A Kissinger aide who moved over to the White House, David Young, told a colleague "of the time he was on the phone [listening] when Nixon and Kissinger were talking. Nixon was drunk, and he said, 'Henry, we've got to nuke them.'"[1]
Now we know where a certain warmonger gets their habit of threatening the use of tactical nukes.
I think the best system is probably some type of consensus system between military command elements. We have a fleet of EC-4 "Nightwatch" aircraft for this purpose, as a backup. It makes more sense to have your nuclear war decision makers comfortably aloft with the job being their primary vocation, as opposed to some dude waking up groggy at 3am being told they have 15 minutes to live while probably also being evacuated at the same time.
Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenzo once said about war?
Mandrake: No. I don't think I do sir, no.
Ripper: He said war was to important to be left to the Generals. When he said that, fifty years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/weekend/story/0,3605,362947,00.h...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/weekend/story/0,3605,362958,00.h...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory
[3] https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/09/23/the-real-gen-mi...
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Maybe many worlds quantum immortality is true. We are just in the timeline where we still exist.
> at no point did the president transfer his powers to the vice president
Well of course he wouldn't transfer power to his VP; in about 4 months after this event he would unleash a mob aimed at murdering his VP. I take the above quote as "don't give lunatics the Presidency". As you mentioned, other past Presidents have taken the duties of the office seriously. Trump has not nor will not.
If Trump loses and RFK Jr isn't given a chance, we'll still be left with a president likely incapable of making nuclear strike decisions in 6 minutes at a moment's notice.
Biden's cognitive ability gets wildly exaggerated, but I think its totally reasonable to assume he isn't always 100% prepared for such a decision and 4 more years would just make that harder.
I honestly don't know how anyone makes such a decision with limited knowledge in the moment and 6 minutes to act, so it's not like the problem is only related to age or medical concerns.
[dead]
There is very little risk of anyone launching a major nuclear attack onto the US. The US would always be able to retaliate against such a strike. I would be more concerned about Trump doing something silly, either launching a nuclear strike or provoking a situation in which nuclear weapons might get used.
It doesn't actually require another country launching first. The US system has a matter of minutes from the first automated detection of launch, to a secondary confirmation, and presenting options to the president. Its also our policy to return fire before absorbing an impact, meaning we don't wait to confirm a nuclear strike was on our soil.
Granted its still a really unlikely scenario, but we only need to detect what appears to be a nuke with a trajectory that could be pointed at a US target.
Regardless, while Trump may seem a bit crazy and I'd personally write in a vote for Empty Chair before picking him, I don't really feel comfortable with anyone having exclusive power to launch nukes.
Here's the thing. If launch detection and land based ICBMs make mutually assured destruction a credible deterent, then the decision time is short: upthread, 6 minutes was posted.
Coming to consensus in 6 minutes with a committee sounds pretty hard. It kind of does need to be one person, or you need more time.
OTOH, even though it's one person with authority, you've still got to convince a lot of people to act. You've got to get the person with the football to bring it over and open it up. And it's not a button to push to launch the missiles, it's a radio to reach the Strategic Air Command, to give a command to launch the missiles, that will need to be disseminated.
When the Commander in Chief gives a command, you're expected to carry it out, but there's an opportunity to object or disobey. And then there's the people who actually push the buttons.
I really so understand logically why they got to the solution of a single person to make the decision, but play that out. When mutually assured destruction ultimately fails, and it inevitably will, what happens.
The US detects a launch that appears to be aimed at their soil, the president picks from a menu of response options and launches. Do they launch to warn the enemy and create an opening for escalation? Do they launch for complete annihilation? And remember, that can all be triggered by a false positive that was never a launch targeting the US.
Mutually assured destruction kind of made sense with two nuclear powers, maybe can hold with a few more, but it simply doesn't scale. Even with a short list, eventually someone will launch. We won't see those weapons and anything worse to come go completely unused forever.
> When the Commander in Chief gives a command, you're expected to carry it out, but there's an opportunity to object or disobey. And then there's the people who actually push the buttons.
No single human being should have this power. It’s absurd.
Anyone can have a stroke, a medication reaction, or experience a mental health crisis for any other reason.
Anyone of sound mind and health can still make a bad decision in the moment. I'd argue ever launching nukes is a bad decision, at which point we might as well disconnect the football and just not tell anyone.
Make it a glitter bomb.
I like this version better (also for the reason that it won't end the world) : https://hackaday.io/project/183892-cyberdeck1
I love this genre! Here's another one that I saw on HN recently:
r/cyberDeck is a good resource if you want to see more stuff like this: https://old.reddit.com/r/cyberDeck/
Fourth and infinity
Flag on the play. Pass interference. Defense, number 74. Ball will be placed at the spot of the foul. Automatic first down.
Now it's 1st and infinity. We haven't made any progress. We can do better.
Flag on the play. Pass interference in the endzone. Defense, number 74. Ball will be placed at the 1 yard line. 1st and goal.
Now we are getting somewhere.
Ok but to get the conversation we had to start living in a mineshaft and murder a few billion people. What game are we playing again?
Crafted by Rajat
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