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0 pointslivueta2y ago0 comments

Well...

https://sgs.princeton.edu/00000000

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/launch-code-for-...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_action_link

> According to nuclear safety expert Bruce G. Blair, the US Air Force's Strategic Air Command worried that in times of need the codes for the Minuteman ICBM force would not be available, so it decided to set the codes to 00000000 in all missile launch control centers. Blair said the missile launch checklists included an item confirming this combination until 1977.[7] A 2014 article in Foreign Policy said that the US Air Force told the United States House Committee on Armed Services that "A code consisting of eight zeroes has never been used to enable a MM ICBM, as claimed by Dr. Bruce Blair."[8] The Air Force's statement (that 00000000 was never used to enable an ICBM, i.e. the weapons were not actually launched) does not contradict Blair's statement (that 00000000 was the code for doing so).

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lukan2y ago

It is probably a miracle, that no nukes were used by accidents or random madmen yet. But those sort of incidents really don't make me feel save, by all that destruction potential guarded by 00000000. I don't really trust, that today it somehow became really save. Even if they changed it, it probably is still attached in a pinup note next to it.

sillywalk2y ago

There were a lot of near nuclear incidents. The madmen part reminded me Nixon, and this article, about an ICBM crew member doing training in the '70s:

"Maj. Hering decided to ask his question anyway, regardless of consequences: How could he know that an order to launch his missiles was “lawful”? That it came from a sane president, one who wasn’t “imbalance[d]” or “berserk,” as Maj. Hering’s lawyer eventually, colorfully put it?

Hering needed a lawyer because as soon as he asked the question he was yanked out of missile training class, and after two years of appeals, eventually had to leave the Air Force, trade in a launch key for the ignition keys to an 18-wheeler.

[0] https://slate.com/human-interest/2011/02/nuclear-weapons-how...

arethuza2y ago

Well at least they have codes - the UK nuclear weapons are ultimately controlled by a set of hand-written letters.

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