US Nuclear Launch Code Was As Easy As Pie

Actually, pi would have been a heck of a lot better than this.

pal deviceFor nearly 20 years, the secret code to authorize launching U.S. nuclear missiles, and starting World War III, was terrifyingly simple and even noted down on a checklist.

From 1962, when John F Kennedy instituted PAL encoding on nuclear weapons, until 1977, the combination to fire the devastating missiles at the height of the Cold War was just 00000000.

This was chosen by Strategic Air Command in an effort to make the weapons as quick and as easy to launch as possible, as reported by Today I Found Out.

Yeah, I’m sure I am not the only one to think of this:

http://youtu.be/a6iW-8xPw3k

3 thoughts on “US Nuclear Launch Code Was As Easy As Pie”

  1. My father told me that, during the Cold War, the men in the silos had a standing order that if a 3 appeared on their screen, then a 2, then a 1, they were to fire. No questions asked. Asking for confirmation at this point was a Court Martial offense.

    One day, in one silo, a man saw a 3 appear on his screen. Then a 2. Then a 1. He disobeyed orders and asked his superior for confirmation, thereby risking his career. The 3 – 2 – 1 was a false alarm – they never did figure out why it appeared.

    (The man suspected that something could have been wrong because the man knew that Khrushchev was due to visit the UN that day.)

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