Russia’s Real-Life Automated Doomsday Machine

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In the classic 1964 Stanley Kubrick dark comedy Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, a rogue American general, believing water fluoridation to be a communist plot to poison the American people’s “precious bodily fluids”, orders his nuclear bombers to attack the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, American politicians scramble to warn the Soviets and recall the bombers, only to make a shocking discovery: the Soviets have built a “Doomsday Machine”, which, upon detecting an enemy first strike, automatically detonates a series of Cobalt-salted bombs and wipes out all life on earth. Whoopsie-doodle! Despite their best efforts, the Americans are unable to recall all their aircraft, and in an iconic ending the world blows up to the strains of We’ll Meet Again sung by Vera Lynn.

Thankfully, however, this apocalyptic weapon was a work of fiction, created to show the absurdity of the Cold War doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction.

Right?!?!?

Well, when the Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991, the world learned to its horror that the Soviets actually had built a doomsday machine, which, like its fictional counterpart, was designed to detect an enemy nuclear strike and automatically launch nuclear weapons in response. This prevented Soviet nuclear forces from being disabled by a preemptive “decapitation” strike against Moscow or military command centres. Even more horrifying, this system is still in operation, adding an alarming existential dimension to the ever-escalating war in Ukraine. This is the story of the ‘Dead Hand’, Russia’s Real-life ‘Doomsday Machine’.

Host: Simon Whistler
Author: Gilles Messier
Editor: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Samuel Avila