Deep in the back of your mind. You've always had the feeling that there's something strange about reality. There is sugar like death, must nanopartic mechanical messiahis punch evolution. On our award winning science podcast Stuff About Your Mind, we examine neurological quandaries, cosmic mysteries, evolutionary marvels, and our trans human future. New episodes come out Tuesdays and Thursdays on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, and anywhere you get your podcast. Welcome
to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, they're brain Stuff. I'm Christian Seger. Have you ever had one of those days where you think to yourself, that is it. I'm gonna go and build a doomsday machine to destroy the world, just like all those supervillains in the movies. If so, it turns out you're not alone. See sometime during the
Cold War, the USSR had the same idea. They've built a real life doomsday device, something that could destroy most of civilization, and the creepiest thing of all is that it might still be around today. Let's move on, since we don't know how long we have until the world ends. This all started back during the Cold War, which took
place roughly from the late nineteen forties to nine. Tensions between the US and the Soviet Union, the world's greatest superpowers were high, and each country continually provoked the other. In the nineteen eighties, the US elected Ronald Reagan as president, believing that a show of strength would increase Western leverage
with the Soviet Union. The Reagan administration expanded the US nuclear arsenal and built a space based missile shield called the Strategic Defense Initiative, or as its critics like to call it, star Wars. This was meant to show that the US was not afraid of entering a catastrophic nuclear war with Russia, but it worked a little too well. Because the USSR assumed the US was actually planning to begin a nuclear war with mobile nukes and submarines in
an orbiting system to deflect Soviet missiles. These these are i C B m s or intercontinental ballistic missiles, the US would be less likely to take the full brunt of a Soviet retaliation. This meant that in a matter of as little as ten to fifteen minutes, the Soviet Union could be reduced to ashes, radiation, and corpses. Moscow's brightest minds flew into overtime. The details are sketchy, but historians currently believe they brought their answer online around nine.
It's called Mertva Ruka, or the dead Hand, at least informally. Dead Hand is the pet name for a monstrous thing known as perimeter. Perimeter when it was first built, was a network linking all of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons to one machine, and it ensured that the country could always respond to any new clear strike, even if the Soviet government had just been bombed out of existence. This
is scary stuff, right. What we know about it today is largely based on interviews with former Soviet officials, investigations by nuclear experts such as the Brookings Institutions, Bruce G. Blair, and cryptic open secret esque statements by Russian officials. Now the good news. First, it's not one big red button in some bunker somewhere. The local security guard can't have a bad day playing angry birds and then just destroy
the world. Here's here's how we think it works. Perimeter spends most of its time in a dormant phase, and it's only switched on by officials in a state of emergency. Once activated, It stays active for fifteen minutes before automatically shutting down. During this time, the system monitors the country through various arrays of radiation, seismic, and air pressure sensors.
According to David Hoffman, author of The Dead Hand, the untold story of the Cold War arms race in its Dangerous Legacy, three officers sit in the remote heart of Perimeter, a sphere shaped fortified bunker deep underground. The system had several stages. Perimeter would monitor the sensors for signs of a nuclear attack on Russian soil, and also attempt to
confirm communication with the national command authority. If there's no communication with military command and the sensors indicate there has been an attack, then the system grants the ability to launch to anyone who happens to be in the room. If the people or person in the room do decide to proceed, the Perimeter launches four small command missiles that fly across the country, activating all available nuclear weapons, including
those on submarines. There are no public indications that the Dead Hand has ever been activated, though it has been used extensively in war games. However, there's one bag question left. Is it still around today? People argue back and forth on this one. Many signs seem to indicate yes, or at least part of it exists, and if so, it may be more dangerous than before due to Russia's loss of key early warning satellites. When Blair brought this to the attention of the U S public in many government
officials were highly skeptical. Sure, they said, it's possible, but who would do it. Russian officials never confirmed the existence of the perimeter system. What we know comes from interviews with former officials and advisers, and in the then commander of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces confirmed at least part of its existence, that being the communication system to a
Russian newspaper. Check out the brain Stuff channel on YouTube, and for more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff work dot com.