The point of the system, he explains, was to guarantee an automatic Soviet response to an American nuclear strike. Even if the US crippled the USSR with a surprise attack, the Soviets could still hit back. It wouldn’t matter if the US blew up the Kremlin, took out the defence ministry, severed the communications network, and killed everyone with stars on their shoulders. Ground-based sensors would detect that a devastating blow had been struck and a counterattack would be launched.
The technical name was Perimeter, but some called it Mertvaya Ruka, or Dead Hand. It was built 25 years ago and remained a closely guarded secret.
The scary thing is that Perimeter still works today. At least according to Valery Yarynich, a former Soviet colonel now 72 years old. Yarynich should know, though: He worked 30 years at the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces and Soviet General Staff helping to build it.
US Officials won’t even like to mention it, but with the Cold War over and Russia being more or less a friend, why risk having such a system in place? I really don’t like the idea of something going wrong in a rusty 25-year-old piece of Soviet-era technology.
Not when it can automatically launch a nuclear attack capable of taking out Humanity out of the map. [Wired]
Corey Evans
Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 7:26 AMWow, no one bump that switch!
matt
Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 9:33 AMwow, thats M.A.D taken to extremes.
except its not, cause they kept it a secret.
basically it was designed to be used when the entire USSR had been destroyed. so it was just for revenge really.
Daniel
Monday, September 28, 2009 at 2:40 PMThe solution here is easy, don’t piss the russians off and you’ll be fine!
The americans are just gonna have to keep it in their pants a bit haha.
They only need to be worried if they know they’re most likely to provoke the russians, which they shouldn’t be doing anyway!
Ser Korz
Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 12:16 PMPerimeter, is an open secret , not a secret . All that need to know , know.
Dead hand is an insurance policy to guaranty a pay off to a first strike on Russia.
it was and is to keeps WW3 from happening mostly; not just a matter of revenge : An Avenger ; to any one that is stupid to nuke The Russ People.
May be this is what Yamantau Mountain (Russia’s Magic Mountain) is for .
[ WASHINGTON -- Deep in the Urals, in the region of Beloretsk, rises a mountain called Yamantau. It is believed to conceal one of Russia's darkest nuclear secrets -- a secret President Clinton, members of Congress and the U.S. military top brass have raised repeatedly with Russia's leaders, without ever receiving a response.
Some U.S. analysts believe the secret underground complex beneath Yamantau Mountain betrays a lingering belief among top Russian leaders that they must continue to prepare to fight and win a nuclear war. Russians say they still fear the U.S........................... Today, Russia may be conducting nuclear deception on a far vaster scale beneath Yamantau Mountain, where it has dug out a gigantic underground military complex designed to withstand a sustained nuclear assault. U.S. intelligence sources tell WorldNetDaily that the Yamantau complex is but one of some 200 secret deep underground nuclear war-fighting sites in Russia, many of which have been significantly upgraded over the past six years at a cost of billions of dollars.............."The only potential use for this site is post-nuclear war," Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., told WorldNetDaily. Bartlett is one of the handful of members of Congress who have closely followed the Yamantau project.
The Yamantau Mountain complex is located close to one of Russia's remaining nuclear weapons labs, Chelyabinsk-70, giving rise to speculation it could house either a nuclear warhead storage site, a missile base, a secret nuclear weapons production center, a directed energy laboratory or a buried command post. Whatever it is, Yamantau was designed to survive a nuclear war.
In response to repeated U.S. inquiries, the Russian government has provided no fewer than 12 separate and contradictory explanations for the site, none of them believed to be credible. The Clinton administration admits that the Russian government has refused to provide any information on the underground complex. Despite this, administration officials tell Congress not to worry.
A 1997 Congressional Research Service report said that the vast sums invested to build the Yamantau Mountain complex "provide evidence of excessive military modernization in Russia." Russia is pouring money into this and other underground nuclear sites at the same time U.S. taxpayers have provided billions of dollars in aid to Russia to help dismantle nuclear warheads taken off line as a result of START I and START II.
"Yamantau Mountain is the largest nuclear-secure project in the world," said Rep. Bartlett. "They have very large train tracks running in and out of it, with enormous rooms carved inside the mountain. It has been built to resist a half dozen direct nuclear hits, one after the other in a direct hole. It's very disquieting that the Russians are doing this when they don't have $200 million to build the service module on the international space station and can't pay housing for their own military people," he said.
The Russians have constructed two entire cities over the site, known as Beloretsk 15 #16, which are closed to the public, each with 30,000 workers. No foreigner has ever set foot near the site. A U.S. military attaché stationed in Moscow was turned back when he attempted to visit the region a few years ago....... ./\].| .
June 6, 2000, By Kenneth R. Timmerman,………..]
S.K.