During the approximately 45 years of the Cold War, America and the USSR spent endless amounts
of time, a massive amount of brain power and billions of dollars creating military technology
with the intention of protecting their country and destroying the other side.
The USSR secretly created the ultimate weapon, a weapon that could be deployed if the USSR
was no more.
In fact, the raison d'etre for this weapon was to strike the US if the USSR had been
cripped by a nuclear attack.
Officially it was called Perimeter, but some call it Mertvaya Ruka--Dead Hand.
It’s Russia’s doomsday machine.
When the 40th president of the US Ronald Reagan was elected in 1981, he took a much harsher
stance against the Soviet Union than previous president Jimmy Carter.
The new administration began implementing tough tactics such as building up the US nuclear
arsenal and holding US naval exercises close to Soviet waters.
In 1983, President Reagan publicly announced that the US was going to develop the Strategic
Defense Initiative, commonly known as Star Wars, a shield of ground and space based lasers
and nuclear weapons in space to defend against Soviet strategic nuclear ballistic missiles.
Previously the idea of MAD or mutually assured destruction held both sides in check.
After the actions taken and rhetoric spilled by the Regan government the USSR became worried
that the US was now willing to start a war.
As a result they set out to build a weapon that would allow them to strike the US even
if the USSR had already been obliterated by US nuclear bombs.
No matter how widespread the US destruction was, even if the government was wiped out
and the communications infrastructure was destroyed, the new weapon would ensure that
Russia could strike back.
Perimeter came online in 1985.
Though some aspects of how Perimeter functions are murky, here’s generally how the system
works: First, Perimeter must be turned on by a human.
Generally, it would be activated by a high ranking official of the military or the Russian
government during a crisis.
Once Perimeter is activated, the system begins monitoring to determine if Russia has been
hit by a nuclear weapon.
The system gathers data from a variety of sources, such as early detection systems and
air pressure, atmospheric density, radioactivity and seismic sensors scattered throughout Russia.
The system performs four if/then propositions: If it was turned on, it would attempt to discover
if a nuclear weapon had hit Soviet soil.
If it seemed like Russia had been hit, the system would scan radio frequencies and communication
network activity to see if normal transmissions are happening, specifically checking to see
if communication links to the war room of the Soviet General Staff remained.
If the war room’s communication network was still running and a specified amount of
time had passed without further indications of attack, Perimeter would assume officials
were still living who could order the counterattack and shut down.
However, if the communication links to the General Staff were down, then Perimeter would
deduce that Russia has suffered a severe nuclear strike.
Then the system bypasses layers of normal command authority and immediately transfers
launch authority to whoever is manning the system at that time deep inside a protected
underground bunker.
Then the prerogative to press a button to initiate a launch that will ultimately destroy
the world would be on the shoulders of whoever was on duty be it a junior officer or a high
ranking official sent in during the crisis.
Perimeter may also function as a dead man’s switch and upon determination of apocalyptic
destruction of Russia institute the launch itself.
Either way once trigger, the system launches a commanding rocket from a special, protected
silo.
The rocket would be a 15P011 command missile with a special 15B99 warhead that contains
a radiation-hardened radio transmitter.
The command missile would travel through Russia’s airspace, transmitting command signals to
override or replace all of the presumably destroyed ground-based communications, to
receiving devices on all surviving strategic nuclear missiles in the former Soviet Union
including submarine-based launchers.
The rocket’s instructions would be to launch a retaliatory strike at predetermined targets
across the Northern Hemisphere.
While the US built similar technologies, such as creating the Emergency Rocket Communications
System and developing seismic and radiation sensors to monitor for nuclear explosions,
the US chose not to integrate everything into a single autonomous retaliatory system.
Instead, for a significant part of the Cold War, from 1961 to 1990 the US ran Operation
Looking Glass, a 24/7 airborne command and control center with the capacity and authority
to communicate with missile silos and give the launch order for retaliatory strikes if
ground-based command centers were ever destroyed.
The US feared accidents and complete reliance on machinery.
There is no coming back from a system such as Perimeter making a mistake.
While the Soviet Union was told about Looking Glass by the US as a deterrent, the USSR kept
Perimeter a secret for many years.
In fact, much of the Soviet government wasn’t told of the doomsday machine’s existence,
including lead civilian arms negotiators.
Justifications abound as to why the USSR kept Perimeter a secret.
Of course they didn’t want the US to attempt to destroy it, but the main reasons seems
to be that the Soviets built the weapon to deter themselves.
Since Perimeter offered assurance that the Soviet Union could launch a counterattack
no matter what, cooler heads could prevail over impatient officials from launching prematurely
during a crisis.
Previously there were several nuclear false alarms such as a flock of Canadian geese triggering
the Distant Early Warning Line radar system or a malfunctioning chip in a minicomputer
erroneously generating a warning that Soviet missiles had been launched at America.
With revenge made certain through Perimeter, if a signal was picked up that looked like
a nuclear attack, officials could fully evaluate and take their time instead of making split
second decisions thereby avoiding a tragic mistake.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the break up of the Soviet Union, word of the
Perimeter system began to slowly leak out.
However, it wasn’t until 2009 when Wired magazine published an article interviewing
Colonel Valery E. Yarynich, one of Perimeter’s creators that the machine became more widely
known.
Yarynich spent most of his career perfecting various nuclear weapon systems.
However, in his later years he became troubled by building weapons of mass destruction.
He came to believe the US and Russia should share the secrets of command-and-control.
He thought this would be the best method of deterrence.
So at possible risk to himself from the Russian government, he told the world about Perimeter.
Until his death at age 75 in 2012, Yarynich continued to speak out on deterrence and advocated
for taking missiles off launch-ready alert.
Since then, the Russian government has rarely mentioned Perimeter and refused to answer
questions regarding the machine.
Currently there’s a lot of discussion as to whether the US and Russia are engaged in
a new Cold War.
Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election and its ongoing strategy of political
warfare against the West via disinformation campaigns, support for far-right political
parties in Europe, and cyberattacks have helped to cool American-Russian relations.
The U.S. expelled 60 Russian diplomats in response to Russian agents attempting a nerve
agent poisoning of a former Russian intelligence officer living in the UK.
Congress has also forced the Trump administration to impose more sanctions on Russian businesses
and oligarchs.
On February 1, 2019, citing Russian violations, President Trump formally suspended the US
from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces [INF] Treaty, which banned the two nations'
short medium-range 310–620 mi (500–1,000 kilometers) and intermediate-range 620–3,420
mi (1,000–5,500 km) land-based ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and missile launchers.
This treaty eliminated some 2,692 missiles.
The U.S. and Russia own similar amounts of nuclear warheads; together, these two countries
possess over 90% of the world's nuclear warheads.
One day after the US suspended the treaty, Russia also suspended the treaty.
The US formally withdrew from the treaty on August 2, 2019.
In 2018 when President Trump first announced withdrawal from the INF Treaty, Viktor Yesin
who held several high ranking positions in the Ministry of Defense including commanding
Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces during the 1990s was interviewed by Zvezda, a Russian
newspaper.
Yesin said that if the US starts deploying intermediate-range missiles in Europe, Russia
will contemplate adopting a doctrine of a preemptive nuclear strike.
He claimed that the Perimeter system was still functioning and had in fact been improved.
While his claims cannot be verified, both the US and Russian have recently began to
focus on modernizing their nuclear weapons arsenals.
Are the US and Russia are engaged in a new Cold War?
Why?
Tell us in the comments!
Now go watch “Is It Safe To Live in Russia!“ where we’ll tell you about things even crazier
than a dead man’s switch!
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