What is Russia's "Dead Hand?"

We’ve all seen movies with supervillains building catastrophic Doomsday devices – but has anyone ever built a real one? Join Christian to learn how the Cold War led to the most dangerous nuclear system in history: Russia’s legendary – and terrifying – Dead Hand.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Deep in the back of your mind. You've always had
the feeling that there's something strange about reality. There is
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(00:20):
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

(00:40):
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

(01:02):
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.

(01:24):
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

(01:46):
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

(02:08):
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

(02:32):
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

(02:54):
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,

(03:18):
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

(03:40):
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

(04:02):
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

(04:25):
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

(04:48):
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

(05:09):
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

(05:32):
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,

(05:56):
and for more on this and thousands of other topics,
visit how stuff work dot com.