The Red Button

[Jonny69]

When I grew up there was always a running joke that somewhere in No.10 there was a red button that would fire off all the nukes in an emergency. What reminded me was I was watching the Ali G film last night on ITV2, reminiscing about old times living in Staines and there's a scene where he asks the Prime Minister to show him. the button and it's hidden in a drawer.

Now, a Foreign Office spokesperson I know denies knowledge of such a device even though I know they know I know they must know whether it exists or not. Can anyone confirm if it is indeed hidden in a drawer somewhere?

Or alternatively if there are any other exciting Doomsday devices like this hidden behind the scenes ready to blow up some poor country that stepped on our toes in the past please feel free to spill the beans right here :)

[Will]

It's absolutely frightening if it's true...

[Feek]

Have you not seen 'Flushed Away' ?

[Matblack]

My understanding is that there is no button per se and that nukes are operated from their bunkers by a firing team of two people on the issuing of command codes which are then confirmed by the firing team.

Lets face it a button just isn't fail safe is it? Some **** spills his up of tea on the unit and shorts it out thus instigating an extinction level even? With people like Bush in charge of things you don't have anything which is easy to set off or may look like a toy!

MB

[Pickers]

I'm sat on one at the moment.. so Pheebs tells me...
its more brown than red though

[Pebs]

You should get some wet wipes then you dirty boy!

[Dr. Z]

My understanding is that there is no button per se and that nukes are operated from their bunkers by a firing team of two people on the issuing of command codes which are then confirmed by the firing team.

Lets face it a button just isn't fail safe is it? Some **** spills his up of tea on the unit and shorts it out thus instigating an extinction level even? With people like Bush in charge of things you don't have anything which is easy to set off or may look like a toy!

MB

My understanding was that there are no bunkers any more - our entire nuclear arsenal is operated out of Falsane aboard Vanguard-class submarines armed with the Trident D5-IIs...

To actually fire a nuclear weapon takes a ridiculous amount of red tape, checks, counterchecks and whatnot. I used to have a fairly good knowledge of all of this kind of stuff (information from the previous generation of systems, of course) but it all seems to have seeped out of my brain :(

[Mark]

Wikipedia...

In contrast with the other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council), the United Kingdom currently operates only a single nuclear deterrent system since decommissioning its tactical WE.177 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WE.177) free-falling nuclear bombs in 1998. The present system consists of four Vanguard class (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard_class_submarine) submarines armed with up to 16 Trident missiles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident_missile), which each carry nuclear warheads in up to 8 MIRVs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targetable_reentry_vehicle) , performing both strategic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic) and sub-strategic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_nuclear_weapon) deterrence roles.

[Von Smallhausen]

No one person can launch.

In the US military system for example, nuclear weapons cannot be launched without the direct authority of the President and such authorisation is in conjuction with the Joint Chiefs for which access codes are required to be transmitted to a submarine, which has to be done with the commander and his XO.

[Mark]

I sincerely hope it's not entirely dependent upon the President. That would be a severe lack of redundancy. :)

[Dr. Z]

Even with automated systems, there still has to be a couple of levels of human oversight. Forget which year it was (but it was fairly recent, late 80s/early 90s I think) but the Russians were conducting a radar systems test which amounted to them connecting a simulated radar trace straight into their computers.

The test ran and was a success but they forgot to remove the test generator before switching the systems back live. Got all the way to the very top of government before the mistake was realised - pretty much every missile in Russia was fuelled, silo doors open, the full works :eek:

Another time a British launched weather missile was sent up from Norway with a pretty much identical signature to a Trident and was picked up by Russian sats that monitor for launch signatures - again we came close to annihilation - if it hadnt been called off when it was, 6 minutes later most of the West would have ceased to exist.