After watching Dr. Strangelove, I did some reading and read the Soviets might have deployed a “doomsday machine” that would automatically launch the remainder of their weapons should they be hit first. Called the Perimeter and nicknamed Mertvaya Ruka or Dead hand. According to Wikipedia and Wired article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_hand_(nuclear_war), http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-10/mf_deadhand?currentPage=all there is disagreement among various sources as to whether it actually ever existed, and if it did, if it is still operational. To quote Dr. Strangelove, “The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret! Why didn’t you tell the world?”
Can anyone in the know opine as to if this device ever made it past the blueprint stage, and if so, if it would still be operational today?
You might find the following book by David Hoffman, The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy of interest. It did after all win the 2010 Pulitzer for General Nonfiction. I have not read it, but the reviews of it seem to agree with your post. However, as this blogger notes, it is important to distinguish between Perimeter and Dead Hand. Per him, Perimeter refers to the communications system set up in the former Soviet Union that would automatically route nuclear command and control messages where they needed to go. This is distinct from Dead Hand, which relied on a number of sensors to determine whether existing Soviet C3I was incapacitated, and if so, utilize automatic protocols to launch a retaliatory strike, without any additional human input. The blogger indicates that Dead Hand was never activated. Of course, how would he know?
There are threads on the Dope where this has been discussed further.
re: Gray Ghost
I had searched “soviet dead hand” to prevent creating a redundant thread and didn’t find anything concrete. If you have any links I would enjoy reading them.
Not a redundant thread, but this thread was the third result (the first was this thread) for this Google query:
site:straightdope.com soviet dead hand
It’s usually not even worth using the site’s own search for a simple keyword search.