A short while ago, I published a story in Wired about how the Soviet Union in the 1980s constructed a system that would allow it to semi-automatically respond to an American nuclear strike, even if everyone in the Kremlin and Defense Ministries was killed. As I explained in the article, the system is almost certainly still active.
Yesterday I got a good question from a reader: “what happens when someone like Al Qaeda detonates a bomb on Russian soil in an attempt to have a response triggered against the US?”
The answer is: Likely nothing.
Assuming the system works the same way as when it was constructed, there are three safeguards that would prevent this launch. The first is that the system lies idle most of the time. It has to be turned on specifically, during a crisis, when Russia is worried that the US is considering a strike. Secondly, if the system can communicate with the humans in command of the arsenal, it turns off. And, lastly, humans have to push the final button to launch.
So, to succeed in starting a nuclear conflagration, Al Qaeda would have to strike when U.S. and Russian tensions were at an extraordinary level; it would have to blow up the main command and control centers in Moscow; and, somehow, the men manning the system in a bunker would have to be convinced that the strike came from the U.S. All of that happening is extremely unlikely.
