World peace and the A-bomb

The article Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine covers the subject of the Soviet ultimate atomic weapon. Which is not a proper weapon at all... It's an automated trigger that acts on condition of a nuclear attack on Russia. Even if the whole high command would be vanished - the so called Dead Hand (or Perimeter) would launch all Russian ballistic rockets after all.


Sounds scary? How would sound it, if I said that the Dead Hand is still in operation?


But let's be rational. Nuclear weapon is the greatest mean of keeping the World peace and the status quo. The usage principle of such weapon is simple - first of all scare off the opponents without using it! So far it worked pretty well. There is no better way to avoid a global military confrontation than to unfold a vision of total and ultimate annihilation.


Nobody wants such scenario - after an atomic war we would have no winners or the defeated. Thanks to the Atom we had no third world war yet - that's what I think. And I fully agree on the statement from the article that the Dead Hand was not only a  mean to prevent the American attack but also a way to avoid any Russian offensive actions. The hotheaded Soviet high command felt more comfortable being aware that the nuclear revenge would not miss the capitalistic West.