Dead Hand

Dead Hand

2. A weapons system, implemented by the Soviet Union and by the Russian Federation as the successor state thereof, capable of closing a strategic nuclear strike control loop in the absence of normal command and control channels, analogous in concept to a dead man's switch, in anticipation of a decapitation strike.

   Sometimes people glibly speak as if the Dead Hand were a thing of the past, but it is foolhardy to assume so.

   • 2009 September 21, Nicholas Thompson, “Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine”, in Wired‎^[1], →ISSN:

     The system may no longer be a central element of Russian strategy—US-based Russian arms expert Pavel Podvig calls it now "just another cog in the machine"—but Dead Hand is still armed.

4. Any such system, whether the cardinal instance (the Soviet/Russian one) or another.

   The talk then turned darkly to the prospects for building a Dead Hand of their own.