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Official development blog for the PARANOIA roleplaying game. No description is available at your security clearance. The Computer is your friend.

Sunday, November 06, 2005

PARANOIA in the real world: 00000000 

From a blog titled Damn Interesting:
America’s gaggle of “Minuteman” long-range nuclear missiles went on line for the first time during the Cuban missile crisis in 1960. But the world was supposedly protected from Mutual Assured Destruction by the “Permissive Action Links” (PALs) which required an 8-digit combination in order to launch. Robert McNamara, then the U.S. Secretary of Defense, personally oversaw the installation of these special locks to prevent any unauthorized nuclear missile launches. He considered the safeguards to be essential for strict central control and for preventing nuclear disaster.

But what Secretary McNamara didn’t know is that from the very beginning, the Strategic Air Command (SAC) in Omaha had decided that these locks might interfere with any wartime launch orders; so in order to circumvent this safeguard, they pre-set the launch code on all Minuteman silos to the same eight digits: 00000000.

For seventeen years, during the height of the nuclear crises of the Cold War, the code remained all zeros, and was even printed in each silo’s launch checklist for all to see. The codes remained this way up until 1977, when the service was pressed into activating the McNamara locks with real launch codes in place. Before that time, the lack of safeguards would have made it relatively easy for a small group of rogue silo officers or visitors to implement an unauthorized nuclear missile launch.
Posted by: Allen Varney / 8:48 AM

Comments:
Is it so wrong that I find this humorous? (the linked source adds a bit more "caveat citizen- do you trust your government" spin to it.)

Actually, one of my close friends was in the SAC - during the early 80s if I remember correctly - and is a software engineer now so if he hasn't already heard this one, I'm pretty sure he'd appreciate the humor value. :)

"To err' is human, to forgive is not SAC policy".
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : November 06, 2005 12:07 PM
 
Oh, and I'd like to complain about the fact that Blogger transposed my name to all lowercase, That voilates *so* many HPD&MC grammar and semantics codes. ;p
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : November 06, 2005 12:10 PM
 
ATTENTION CITIZENS. A PRODUCTION ERROR AT THE TACTICAL NUCLEAR ORDINANCE FACILITY IN ZZW SECTOR HAS ALLOWED 20,000 TACNUKES TO BE CIRCULATED WITH THE SECURITY CODE 00000000. ALTHOUGH THIS CODE PROVED TO BE 2.34% MORE EFFICIENT TO ENTER THAN THE AVERAGE CODE, IT ALSO PROVED TO BE 873% LESS SECURE. AS SUCH
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : November 06, 2005 12:53 PM
 
Actually, the default security code actually seemed useful. In case a nuclear war occurs, you don't want to shift through paperwork, go to hunderds of PLC clerks, and get CPU approval before you get to launch the tacnuke back...your entire country would be destroyed, and the enemy nation would not be hit at all.

For the theory of MAD (Mutally Assured Destruction) to work and save all nations from all nuclear wars, each party with nuclear weapons must believe that if a nuclear war starts, both sides will kill each other. Won't happen when bureacracy gets in the way of killing the bastard nation that lobbed the bombs at you.

Of course, the possiblites of some rouge idiot starting a nuclear war increases, but that's just a small price to pay.
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : November 06, 2005 6:05 PM
 
Heh. Turns out that this story may be a pack of commie bull. According to afformentioned former SAC-man, even if you had the security codes, controll of the base, an army behinc you, etc., you had to have the power turned on. That could only be done by enlisted folks stationed in a seperate facility. "A little detail they Hollywood tended to leve out".
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : November 06, 2005 7:56 PM
 
I love tales of the Cold War. I don't remember if this link has already been published here in the past, but anyone who wants to see how close the world has been to the Classic Paranoia Origin Story, take a read here...

http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issues/accidents/20-mishaps-maybe-caused-nuclear-war.htm

...and be reminded that the phrase "brink of nuclear war" isn't just a sexy-sounding buzzphrase, it was the actual state of the entire planet for more than *forty years*.
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : November 06, 2005 9:15 PM
 
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