The truth regarding the red button
And where is the suitcase?
Quelle: Getty Images
We know the atomic suitcase with the red button from the cinema. As Russian President, Putin actually has a suitcase called “Cheget”. But triggering such a nuclear world war is more complicated than you think.
Gif Hollywood is to be believed, presidents of nuclear powers make the decision to end the world by going into a bunker and opening the nuclear case there to press the famous red button. In view of the current developments surrounding the war in Ukraine, this is a horror scenario for many.
Most people would probably be amazed that these cases are actually rather oversized phones and mostly contain paper. The American President’s nuclear case, the so-called “football”, which is regularly carried by an officer just a few steps behind the US President, contains around ten kilos of documents. It mainly contains tables with codes and a wide variety of attack scenarios, options and targets.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has a very similar suitcase „Cheget“. It also contains a variety of papers and a communications system that can be used to trigger countless nuclear options. But unlike feature films, Putin cannot single-handedly command these options.
In fact, the deployment order is only sent to the Minister of Defense in encrypted form via the “Kavkaz” data system: each of the decision-makers has half of the complete code for authorizing a nuclear strike, the risk of unauthorized persons triggering the end of the world would be too great.
Only with both codes together can an attack order be transmitted to the general staff of the Russian armed forces. And this general staff also has its own code, which must now be transmitted to the nuclear forces together with the data sets that have been received. In principle, the order to attack and the orders for the nuclear weapons units flow together. Codes that are needed so that the nuclear weapons with their complicated triggers can be fired at all.
Without these “permissive action links” you basically just have radioactive paperweights where no nuclear explosion might take place. Some of the warheads are even secured with booby traps to prevent the wrong code being entered, in case they fall into the hands of crazy people.
Fortunately, initiating the end of the world is not quite as easy as Hollywood wants us to believe.
