The Aptly-Named “Dead Hand”

Remember Dr. Strangelove? The Doomsday Machine? It turns out that something very like it, called the Dead Hand, was actually operational, in the USSR, from 1984 at latest, and its pieces may still be around today.

PD Smith, author of the book Doomsday Men, writes that the way it worked was “strikingly similar” to way the fictional one worked. “At its heart was a computer,” he writes. “As soon as the Soviet leadership detected possible incoming missiles, it activated the system… Part of the secret codes needed to launch a Soviet nuclear strike were released and the computerized process [was] set in motion. Then, like a spider at the centre of its web, the computer would watch and wait for evidence of an attack.”

But then he writes something truly scary, (as if we need more things to worry about): “As far as anyone knows, the Dead Hand remains operational… Former Soviet era officials will still not discuss it.”

Its name referred to its function of providing the USSR with second-strike capability in case the entire leadership was wiped out in a surprise attack; hence, a hand from the grave. But what I think of is the clichéd expression “the dead hand of the past” — the oppressive influence of the past on the present.

A recent Wired article goes into even more detail.