Nuclear Armageddon?

By Michael Walton

**Flaming
Feather**

adamiani@umich.edu wrote:

> So what stops a couple of Shedim from posessing the president and declaring world war three? Or, for that
> matter, from grabbing ahold of a couple of army officers on a nuclear submarine somewhere and turning the keys to
> launch fiery death down upon millions?


It's a bit more complicated than that.

For one thing, there's the whole DefCon system -- if anyone, even the President, tries to initiate a launch at anything above DefCon 1, the order is recognized as not being legit. There are a number of things that can cause DefCon to change immediately from 5 to 1, but all of them would take concerted effort to arrange (a nuclear strike would do it). That's a bit more than 2-3 demons could handle alone.

Then there's the security in the silos themselves. They can't launch without the codes, which have to be released to them. I forget the exact procedure (my brother, who used to be a Launch Control Officer, explained the non-classified parts to me once), but suffice to say that two guys in a silo can't just launch their birds on a whim.

Finally there's the problem of target selection. There are only so many missiles, so you can only hit so many targets. We've all heard the statistic that there's enough nuclear firepower to destroy all life on Earth many times over. That's true -- if that firepower is distributed more-or-less evenly. But all the world's nuclear missiles are aimed at a small number of targets. Changing the targets on a majority of the missiles would take time or a lot of demons working simultaneously -- and how many demons outside of Technology (and maybe the War) know enough computer science, mathematics and geography to be able to plot those firing solutions?

All those factors taken together make that particular path to Armageddon a logistical nightmare for Hell. And that's before you factor in angelic interference.

**Flaming
Feather**

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