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.
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