Dead Hand

But there is a second theory, a darker theory.

Some intelligence experts believe the buzzer is the audible heartbeat of a system the Russians called Perimeter, and what the West calls the Dead Hand.

Now, during the Cold War, the Soviets were terrified that an American nuclear strike could wipe out Moscow and their top generals before they had a chance to give the order to fire back.

So they built a doomsday machine, a fully automated system hooked up to their nuclear silos.

The theory goes that the buzzer is the Dead Hand's pulse.

So as long as that annoying, monotonous buzz is broadcasting on 4625 kilohertz, the doomsday machine knows that the Russian military command is still alive, still sitting in their chairs, still running the show.

But what if America struck first? What if Moscow was reduced to rubble and glowing glass in the blink of an eye and the power grid melted down? Well, the buzzing would stop.

And down in the dark silos, the computers would listen to that silence, and they would wait.

As you can probably guess, there's no coming back from the activation of a doomsday device.

once the ball begins rolling on this device life on earth essentially comes to a halt over a relatively short period there's no real defined plan for how this would be done but it's entirely likely that cobalt bombs would be used the soviet union developed its dead hand system also called perimeter which could automatically launch all of the soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles at once if u.s nuclear missiles were already inbound here's the scary part it's thought that at least some of this could be triggered without human input if that doesn't sound scarily like skynet from the terminator franchise then i don't know what does and to make it all even worse there are rumors that the system is still active although the russians are kind enough to keep it switched off most of the time There's absolutely no suggestion that cobalt is being used by the Russians with their bombs in the Dead Hand System, but if a nation wanted to create a doomsday device that they could park in a garage somewhere just in case somebody fired a nuclear weapon at them and they wanted to end the world, it would probably include some cobalt.

While these bombs remain very much a theoretical horror show, their destructive potential is clear for everybody to see.

The thing about weapons for primitive rocks, swords, guns, and nuclear bombs is that they can be used to strike an opponent without harming yourself.

But there is a second theory, a darker theory.

Some intelligence experts believe the buzzer is the audible heartbeat of a system the Russians called Perimeter and what the West calls the Dead Hand.

Now, during the Cold War, the Soviets were terrified that an American nuclear strike could wipe out Moscow and their top generals before they had a chance to give the order to fire back.

So they built a doomsday machine, a fully automated system hooked up to their nuclear silos.

The theory goes that the buzzer is the Dead Hand's pulse.

So as long as that annoying, monotonous buzz is broadcasting on forty-six twenty-five kilohertz, the doomsday machine knows that the Russian military command is still alive, still sitting in their chairs, still running the show.

But what if America struck first? What if Moscow was reduced to rubble and glowing glass in the blink of an eye and the power grid melted down? Well, the buzzing would stop.

And down in the dark silos, the computers would listen to that silence, and they would wait.

Which leads us conveniently to a device built to press all the wrong buttons, even if no one's left alive to press them.

The Dead Hand Soviet doomsday device.

If nuclear war was ever a game, the Soviets built a machine to make sure no one ever won it.

It was called Perimeter, nicknamed Dead Hand by the West.

Not a weapon in the traditional sense, more like an automated tombstone for the human race.

You've heard of mutually assured destruction, but this, this was the logical endpoint.

Think Able Archer, think Reagan's evil empire rhetoric.

Think chess, but with the board wired to explosives.

Well, with this exciting announcement behind us, let's turn to today's topic, and, uh, and it's one very interesting one.

So over the past several weeks, a series of reports, investigations, and videos have generated renewed interest in one of the most mysterious components of Russia's nuclear command and control architecture, the so-called dead hand system, known in Russia as Perimeter.

A recent investigation suggests that Russia has invested heavily in modernizing and expanding Facility 1335, uh, a massive underground command complex sort of buried beneath the Ural Mountains, and long associated with strategic, uh, nuclear command and control.

Uh, procurement records reportedly show tens of thousands of tons of steel, massive quantities of concrete, hundreds of kilometers of cable, and extensive communications and real life support infrastructure are being added to this, uh, site.

And so these reports ra- raise an important question: Why would Russia devote such a significant resource to a Cold War-era facility? And so for our listeners of our podcast, this topic should, uh, should sound somewhat familiar.

In fact, today's discussion connects directly to an idea that's generated significant debate in the United States.

Our own Adam Lowther and Curtis McGiven entered that debate in 2019, I believe, in a War on the Rocks article called "America Needs a Dead Hand," and revisited the concept in 2024 with "America Needs a Dead Hand Even More." Okay, and their argument was not-

Now more than ever.