Nuclear Launch Codes

[tangaroa]

A rather amusing/frightening story. President Kennedy ordered code-based locks placed on every US nuclear missile. Strategic Air Command told DC they'd done it, then got around to installing them on some missiles in 1977 and set the launch code for every missile to the same number: 00000000.

All of the Spaceballs jokes are being made over at Fark. I have a vision of rewriting those Hollywood action movies to where the bad guy steals the nuclear launch codes, takes a glance at them, hands them back, and says "You guys have problems."

Comments

[siliconshaman]

You know they did launch verification tests during the 90's [checking to see if the darn things worked as the missiles were ageing out by then]... only 1 in 3 missiles worked as intended, most launched, but either blew up during the boost phase, or the navigation failed and they came down some place unintended.

They stopped testing, because they couldn't hide the tests from the Russians. [mind you, no-one knows how well the Russian's arsenal would work.]

and yeah, I know about the code locks, and there's all the back-doors the launch crew put into the software so they could pass tests. [rather than show the true status.]