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Showing Original Post only (View all)ALMOST EVERYTHING IN “DR. STRANGELOVE” WAS TRUE [View all]
The early permissive action links were rudimentary. Placed in NATOweapons during the nineteen-sixties and known as Category A PALs, the switches relied on a split four-digit code, with ten thousand possible combinations. If the United States went to war, two people would be necessary to unlock a nuclear weapon, each of them provided with half the code. Category A PALs were useful mainly to delay unauthorized use, to buy time after a weapon had been taken or to thwart an individual psychotic hoping to cause a large explosion. A skilled technician could open a stolen weapon and unlock it within a few hours. Todays Category D PALs, installed in the Air Forces hydrogen bombs, are more sophisticated. They require a six-digit code, with a million possible combinations, and have a limited-try feature that disables a weapon when the wrong code is repeatedly entered.
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Strategic Commandthe organization responsible for all of Americas nuclear forces-was investigated last summer for allegedly using counterfeit gambling chips at the Horseshoe Casino in Council Bluffs, Iowa. According to the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, a significant monetary amount of counterfeit chips was involved. Giardina was relieved of his command on October 3, 2013. A few days later, Major General Michael Carey, the Air Force commander in charge of Americas intercontinental ballistic missiles, was fired for conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. According to a report by the Inspector General of the Air Force, Carey had consumed too much alcohol during an official trip to Russia, behaved rudely toward Russian officers, spent time with suspect young foreign women in Moscow, loudly discussed sensitive information in a public hotel lounge there, and drunkenly pleaded to get onstage and sing with a Beatles cover band at La Cantina, a Mexican restaurant near Red Square. Despite his requests, the band wouldnt let Carey onstage to sing or to play the guitar.
The most unlikely and absurd plot element in Strangelove is the existence of a Soviet Doomsday Machine. The device would trigger itself, automatically, if the Soviet Union were attacked with nuclear weapons. It was meant to be the ultimate deterrent, a threat to destroy the world in order to prevent an American nuclear strike. But the failure of the Soviets to tell the United States about the contraption defeats its purpose and, at the end of the film, inadvertently causes a nuclear Armageddon. The whole point of the Doomsday Machine is lost, Dr. Strangelove, the Presidents science adviser, explains to the Soviet Ambassador, if you keep it a secret!A decade after the release of Strangelove, the Soviet Union began work on the Perimeter system-a network of sensors and computers that could allow junior military officials to launch missiles without oversight from the Soviet leadership. Perhaps nobody at the Kremlin had seen the film. Completed in 1985, the system was known as the Dead Hand. Once it was activated, Perimeter would order the launch of long-range missiles at the United States if it detected nuclear detonations on Soviet soil and Soviet leaders couldnt be reached. Like the Doomsday Machine in Strangelove, Perimeter was kept secret from the United States; its existence was not revealed until years after the Cold War ended.
http://m.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/01/strangelove-for-real.html