Speaker 1: Deep in the back of your mind. You've always had
Speaker 1: the feeling that there's something strange about reality. There is
Speaker 1: sugar like death, must nanopartic mechanical messiahis punch evolution. On
Speaker 1: our award winning science podcast Stuff About Your Mind, we
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Speaker 1: to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, they're brain Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Christian Seger. Have you ever had one of those
Speaker 1: days where you think to yourself, that is it. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go and build a doomsday machine to destroy the world,
Speaker 1: just like all those supervillains in the movies. If so,
Speaker 1: it turns out you're not alone. See sometime during the
Speaker 1: Cold War, the USSR had the same idea. They've built
Speaker 1: a real life doomsday device, something that could destroy most
Speaker 1: of civilization, and the creepiest thing of all is that
Speaker 1: it might still be around today. Let's move on, since
Speaker 1: we don't know how long we have until the world ends.
Speaker 1: This all started back during the Cold War, which took
Speaker 1: place roughly from the late nineteen forties to nine. Tensions
Speaker 1: between the US and the Soviet Union, the world's greatest
Speaker 1: superpowers were high, and each country continually provoked the other.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen eighties, the US elected Ronald Reagan as president,
Speaker 1: believing that a show of strength would increase Western leverage
Speaker 1: with the Soviet Union. The Reagan administration expanded the US
Speaker 1: nuclear arsenal and built a space based missile shield called
Speaker 1: the Strategic Defense Initiative, or as its critics like to
Speaker 1: call it, star Wars. This was meant to show that
Speaker 1: the US was not afraid of entering a catastrophic nuclear
Speaker 1: war with Russia, but it worked a little too well.
Speaker 1: Because the USSR assumed the US was actually planning to
Speaker 1: begin a nuclear war with mobile nukes and submarines in
Speaker 1: an orbiting system to deflect Soviet missiles. These these are
Speaker 1: i C B m s or intercontinental ballistic missiles, the
Speaker 1: US would be less likely to take the full brunt
Speaker 1: of a Soviet retaliation. This meant that in a matter
Speaker 1: of as little as ten to fifteen minutes, the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union could be reduced to ashes, radiation, and corpses. Moscow's
Speaker 1: brightest minds flew into overtime. The details are sketchy, but
Speaker 1: historians currently believe they brought their answer online around nine.
Speaker 1: It's called Mertva Ruka, or the dead Hand, at least informally.
Speaker 1: Dead Hand is the pet name for a monstrous thing
Speaker 1: known as perimeter. Perimeter when it was first built, was
Speaker 1: a network linking all of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons
Speaker 1: to one machine, and it ensured that the country could
Speaker 1: always respond to any new clear strike, even if the
Speaker 1: Soviet government had just been bombed out of existence. This
Speaker 1: is scary stuff, right. What we know about it today
Speaker 1: is largely based on interviews with former Soviet officials, investigations
Speaker 1: by nuclear experts such as the Brookings Institutions, Bruce G. Blair,
Speaker 1: and cryptic open secret esque statements by Russian officials. Now
Speaker 1: the good news. First, it's not one big red button
Speaker 1: in some bunker somewhere. The local security guard can't have
Speaker 1: a bad day playing angry birds and then just destroy
Speaker 1: the world. Here's here's how we think it works. Perimeter
Speaker 1: spends most of its time in a dormant phase, and
Speaker 1: it's only switched on by officials in a state of emergency.
Speaker 1: Once activated, It stays active for fifteen minutes before automatically
Speaker 1: shutting down. During this time, the system monitors the country
Speaker 1: through various arrays of radiation, seismic, and air pressure sensors.
Speaker 1: According to David Hoffman, author of The Dead Hand, the
Speaker 1: untold story of the Cold War arms race in its
Speaker 1: Dangerous Legacy, three officers sit in the remote heart of Perimeter,
Speaker 1: a sphere shaped fortified bunker deep underground. The system had
Speaker 1: several stages. Perimeter would monitor the sensors for signs of
Speaker 1: a nuclear attack on Russian soil, and also attempt to
Speaker 1: confirm communication with the national command authority. If there's no
Speaker 1: communication with military command and the sensors indicate there has
Speaker 1: been an attack, then the system grants the ability to
Speaker 1: launch to anyone who happens to be in the room.
Speaker 1: If the people or person in the room do decide
Speaker 1: to proceed, the Perimeter launches four small command missiles that
Speaker 1: fly across the country, activating all available nuclear weapons, including
Speaker 1: those on submarines. There are no public indications that the
Speaker 1: Dead Hand has ever been activated, though it has been
Speaker 1: used extensively in war games. However, there's one bag question left.
Speaker 1: Is it still around today? People argue back and forth
Speaker 1: on this one. Many signs seem to indicate yes, or
Speaker 1: at least part of it exists, and if so, it
Speaker 1: may be more dangerous than before due to Russia's loss
Speaker 1: of key early warning satellites. When Blair brought this to
Speaker 1: the attention of the U S public in many government
Speaker 1: officials were highly skeptical. Sure, they said, it's possible, but
Speaker 1: who would do it. Russian officials never confirmed the existence
Speaker 1: of the perimeter system. What we know comes from interviews
Speaker 1: with former officials and advisers, and in the then commander
Speaker 1: of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces confirmed at least part
Speaker 1: of its existence, that being the communication system to a
Speaker 1: Russian newspaper. Check out the brain Stuff channel on YouTube,
Speaker 1: and for more on this and thousands of other topics,
Speaker 1: visit how stuff work dot com.