Dr. Very Strangelove

Global nuclear destruction, psychology and a healthy dose of self-knowledge all come together in the Soviet Union's development of a real-life doomsday machine, which by the way is still running.

From Wired...

In the 1980s, the Soviets built a Doomsday Machine — and it’s still active.

The system would have allowed the USSR to respond in semi-automatic fashion to an American nuclear strike — even one that had knocked out the Kremlin and the Defense Ministries. And one obvious question that people ask when they learn about this system is “Why didn’t the Soviets tell us?” As we all know from Dr. Strangelove, the point of a Doomsday Machine is to convince the other side in a conflict that attack is futile.

The answer to that question is the most interesting thing I learned in my research. Yes, the Soviets were extremely secretive; and, yes, they were worried that, if they told us, we could disable it. But the more interesting reason is that they also built the system to deter themselves.

By guaranteeing that Moscow could hit back, Perimeter was actually designed to keep an overeager Soviet military or civilian leader from launching prematurely during a crisis. The point, says [former Soviet space official Alexander] Zhelenyakov says, was “to cool down all these hotheads and extremists. No matter what was going to happen, there still would be revenge. Those who attack us will be punished.”