Wired Senior Editor Nicholas Thompson wrote an article for the magazine's latest issue about the Soviet defensive weapon, known as Perimeter, but also frequently referred to as The Dead Hand. Thompson, author of The Hawk and The Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War, the system used sensors around Russia to look for evidence of nuclear attack. But don't worry: it had several safeguards built in:

Perimeter ensures the ability to strike back, but it's no hair-trigger device. It was designed to lie semi-dormant until switched on by a high official in a crisis. Then it would begin monitoring a network of seismic, radiation, and air pressure sensors for signs of nuclear explosions. Before launching any retaliatory strike, the system had to check off four if/then propositions: If it was turned on, then it would try to determine that a nuclear weapon had hit Soviet soil. If it seemed that one had, the system would check to see if any communication links to the war room of the Soviet General Staff remained. If they did, and if some amount of time-likely ranging from 15 minutes to an hour-passed without further indications of attack, the machine would assume officials were still living who could order the counterattack and shut down. But if the line to the General Staff went dead, then Perimeter would infer that apocalypse had arrived. It would immediately transfer launch authority to whoever was manning the system at that moment deep inside a protected bunker-bypassing layers and layers of normal command authority. At that point, the ability to destroy the world would fall to whoever was on duty: maybe a high minister sent in during the crisis, maybe a 25-year-old junior officer fresh out of military academy. And if that person decided to press the button ... If/then. If/then. If/then. If/then.

Here's Thompson appearing on NPR to explain more about this hair-rising device:

The really interesting part is that Perimeter wasn't a deterrent — nobody in the U.S. government ever knew the Soviets had built the thing, and even Russia's own arms negotiators didn't know. Rather, it was intended to cool down hotheads in the Soviet military, by reassuring them that they could still strike back at the U.S. later, even if they personally died first. That way, they'd be less likely to order preemptive strikes.

And yes, the Dead Hand still exists, and it's continuously being upgraded. The only question is, if the system were activated and some happenstance (an earthquake, a glitch) were to convince it that a nuclear attack had happened, would whoever's in charge be level-headed enough to avoid pressing the final button?

The whole article, over at Wired, is well worth reading. [Wired]

Ross's book Waiting for the End of the World contains photographs and accounts of bomb shelters from across America, Europe, and Asia. Below are photos from just a few of those shelters: shelters in Sanpete and Salt Lake City, Utah, the Phillip Hoag and Charlie Hull Shelters in Emigrant, Montana, oil tycoon's Ling Chieh Kung's shelter in Conroe, Texas, and a public shelter near Zurich.

Picture Show: Waiting for the End of the World [GOOD Magazine via Presurfer]

Kitchen in shelter in Sanpete, Utah
Entrance to shelter in Sanpete, Utah
Storage Shelves in Sanpete, Utah
Entrance to shelter in Salt Lake City, Utah
Traverse tunnel in shelter in Salt Lake City, Utah
Entrance to Phillip Hoag Shelter in Emigrant, Montana
Communications tower for Phillip Hoag Shelter in Emigrant, Montana
Entrance to Kung's shelter in Conroe, Texas
Jail cells in Kung's shelter in Conroe, Texas
Operating room in Kung's shelter in Conroe, Texas
Bedroom in Charlie Hull Shelter in Emigrant, Montana
Bedroom in Charlie Hull Shelter in Emigrant, Montana
Living room in Charlie Hull Shelter in Emigrant, Montana
Air filters in public shelter near Zurich, Switzerland
Doors to public shelter near Zurich, Switzerland
Personal unit in public shelter near Zurich, Switzerland

Marvel.com visited the set of Marvel's next big movie, and the short write-up is chock full of hints about the new movie:

• The workshop's floor is covered with a black reflective tile, to make it easier to project "holographic images" anywhere in the room.
• There's a new Iron Man suit, the Mark IV, which has "much broader shoulders and wrist guards compared to the Mark III, which still displays battle damage from the fight with Iron Monger."
• Iron Man is becoming a pop culture icon — the workshop includes an Iron Man "sillhouette" poster in the style of Barack Obama's campaign posters. Guess what you'll be sporting on your cubicle wall in a year or so?
• As Tony looks at that model of the Stark Expo (like the World's Fair, only sponsored by Tony's dad) he mutters "The key to the future is... where?" So maybe something his dad included in that Expo turns out to be important?
• Another scene involves Tony pacing and arguing with his computer butler Jarvis, and enlarging and reconstructing the Expo's pavillion holographically, leading to a breakthrough. Says Tony, "I am discovering — rediscovering — a new element."
• The Expo stuff, plus some giant signs from oil conglomerates, indicates the energy crisis will play a huge role in the new movie. The workshop also has blueprints, newspaper clippings, an old film projector, and NASA documents — all related to whatever Howard Stark was working on. Tony's dad also worked on the Manhattan Project, which may become significant.
• And yes, all this dredging up of the past does relate to the film's new Russian characters, including Black Widow and Whiplash. The sins of the Cold War are coming back again, by the sound of things.

[Marvel via The HD Room]

Not that all that equipment you're seeing in the top photo is for communication with the outside world, of course. The shelter in Ligatne, Latvia, has separate rooms for the KGB, and they include direct phone lines to Moscow but also rows and rows of gray electronic devices that allow you to listen in on conversations taking place anywhere in the shelter. So even once you were entombed in the ground, hiding from an uninhabitable world, you still would have been under the thumb of the surveillance state at all times.

Somehow that single vase with its drooping flowers is the saddest thing of all.

My favorite part: the huge, monstrous facility only had enough food and supplies to last three months, meaning after months of claustrophobic repression, you still would have had to venture out into an atomic wasteland. Images by AP.

Posted by the Cold War International History Project, there are several notebooks that have been translated in their entirety, and it gives you a weird and intriguing glimpse of the spy mentality at the time. Here is one entry, from the so-called Yellow Notebook, kept by a spy in the early 1940s. He was trying to cozy up to nuclear scientists:

Report on a c/t dated 7.12.42. Charon reports that a certain Al. Marshak from Bransten's circle of acquaintance might be of interest: 37 years old, Jewish, works in the Genetics Dept. at the U. of California. He is described as being devoted to us and honest. M. believes he is related to the writer Marshak and is proud of this. M's parents lived in the south of Russia. He has professional ties to Lawrence's laboratory and to the physicist Oppenheimer. M. is supposedly in the know with regard to work on the cyclotron.

p.54 25.1.43 we replied to Charon that we are interested in Marshak, but that his family connection to the writer was not borne out. The neighbors have been cultivating Robert Oppenheimer since June 1942 Ë his recruitment does not seem possible.

So basically KGB spies were trying to recruit Oppehnheimer back in the early 40s. Wonder if he knew?

Check out more of the notebooks at the Cold War International History Project (thanks, Erin!)

According to Strange Maps, this map "shows the UN flag flying over Moscow, with the Eastern Bloc countries, the Baltic Soviet republics and Ukraine (but not Belarus) marked as ‘occupied’."

The Colliers editors wrote that the point of the issue is:

To warn the evil masters of the Russian people that their conspiracy to enslave humanity is the dark, downhill road to World War III; to sound a powerful call for reason and understanding between the people’s of East and West — before it’s too late; to demonstrate that if the war we do not want is forced upon us, we will win.

Ah, the good old days of Cold War science fiction.

via Strange Maps

The first Proton was launched in 1965. It was originally designed as one huge freaking Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, with a massive range and terrifying nuclear payload. Since the East coast of the U.S. is not currently a smoking radioactive crater, you can be sure it was never actually used this way. Instead, it was put to work hauling satellites into orbit, as well as chunks of the Mir space station. Despite some recent mission failures, Protons are still regularly contracted out by international companies who need to get something heavy into space. In this case, British company Inmarsat hired a Proton to put their 6-ton Inmarsat-4 (I4-F3) telecommunications satellite into orbit. By the time you read this, we'll know if it was deployed successfully.

This photo by Flickr user alexpgp shows a Proton being lifted into launch position at Baikonur.
If you head over to his Baikonur Campaigns page, you can see a huge gallery of cool insider photos taken inside Baikonur as engineers prepare for various launch missions (apparently alexpgp is an engineer with one of the companies that hires Proton rockets). Top image by: BBC News.

Proton rocket in return to flight. [BBC News]

(BTW, the trailer is very high-quality, so it may load slowly. If you're having trouble playing it, just hit "pause" and wait for the whole thing to load before restarting.) Here's the official synopsis:

November 9th 1989 - the last day of a divided Germany. As a bankrupt Soviet Empire retreats, Lieutenant NEVSKI (30) leads an ill-equipped team of reluctant Soviet conscripts and two East German civilians on an unofficial mission into a long sealed and forgotten bunker, deep under Berlin.

Bribed by SINDERMANN, a mysterious East German scientist, their aim is to blow up the bunker, destroying it's secrets before Berlin opens up to the West. As a fateful press conference takes place above ground, the East German, LISA MEYER, (28) a construction engineer cuts through the concrete that back in the 1960s was poured down to block access to the bunker where her father died.

Nevski's rag-bag team follow dim concrete tunnels finding an underground hospital, cobwebs and dust shrouding its Cold War secrets. Venturing into the eerie decaying wards and operating theatres, the team un-earth horrific evidence of human experimentation dating back to WWII.

Suffering their first casualties of the night, they realise the concrete blocking the entrance was not to keep intruders out, but to keep the results of failed experiments in - murderous, semi organic killing machines with weapons and gas masks moulded and growing as part of their armoured bodies.

As crowds gather at the wall, unification in sight, clandestine forces arrive from the West; heavily armed American commandos, also seeking the bunker's valuable secrets. Nevski's team find themselves not only struggling to escape the bunker's legacy of inhuman killers but also fighting in a darker, more unofficial Cold War battle for power and survival.

Sadly, the website mentions they're still seeking funding to finish this movie... so I hope it actually gets made. It sucks that all the movie money in Germany is going into crappy TV miniseries about the Moon making the Eiffel Tower collapse. [Cold Storage, via Nuendo]

In the pages of Popular Science, the post-nuke scenario sounded less like the potential end of life as we know it than an opportunity for plucky do-it-yourselfers to explore the exciting world of atomic science. Understanding the two types of fallout meters was as easy as a leisurely drive in the family car. Ratemeters measured how fast you soaked up radiation in roentgens per hour, "just as a speedometer on a car measures how fast you are piling up mileage." Dosimeters measured one's total exposure to radiation in straight roentgens, "the way the mileage counter on a car tells how far you have traveled."

A high reading on the ratemeter warns of immediate danger but not necessarily irreparable harm—like seeing the needle touch 95 in a car. A high reading on the dosimeter means you've had it—like seeing 95,000 on the odometer of a jalopy.

Popular Science then explained the "stiff" requirements set by the U.S. Office of Civil Defense:

A civilian meter must be small, light, almost unbreakable, simple enough for your wife to use and your TV man to repair, and fairly accurate (plus or minus about 25 percent) even after you have fished it out of a puddle.

The over-the-top Starve Trek appeared in the British socialist magazine New Internationalist in the early 1990s. This was roughly the same era as Tintin: Breaking Free, the crazy anarchist comic where our intrepid reporter has a political awakening. Captain Jerk and the crew of the Starship Appetize go around bringing free-market economics to poor planets and fighting the commie Klingonists. Further sign of sledgehammery unsubtlety: Dr. "McCoil" wears a Ku Klux Klan hood.Every episode of Starve Trek deals with another threat to free-market economies. In "Plague of the Mind," the Starship Appetize encounters "a life-form that causes the mind to ask questions." It makes Dr. McCoil start to wonder if free trade is a rip-off, and Mr. Squat starts selling a Socialist Vulcan newspaper. In "The Trigellion Factor," a poor third-world planet overthrows its Starfleet-approved dictator and starts trying to eliminate poverty and hunger within a decade. It's up to Captain Jerk to put a stop to this Klingonist-engineered subversion. And then there's "The Abundance Machine," which sucks the natural resources out of planets and creates endless consumer goods. Can our heroes escape its clutches and figure out a way to exploit it?I hated these comics back when they came out, but now I find them hilarious. They come from a moment when the Cold War had ended and people could dissect narratives like the original Star Trek for their Cold War paranoid overtones. And Starve Trek's critique of globalization presages the 1990s WTO protests. But mostly, I just like it for the kitschy sight gags, like the fact that the Appetize's saucer section is a trash-can lid, or a scale, or a big metal donut. That never gets old. Unfortunately, the Internationalist's site has gotten buggy since I last looked a few months ago, and the comics are displaying weirdly. [Starve Trek]

It depends on whether Del Toro can do for this uber-Cold War storyline what he did for Franco-style fascism in Pan's Labyrinth: translate it for modern audiences, while simultaneously exposing its underbelly. So much of our science fiction media is in the throes of Cold War nostalgia, it would be great to see a sharper take on those narratives.

Del Toro Adapts British Sci Fi [Cinema Blend]

Famous names: Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons

Crunchy goodness: 5

Spinoffs/Sequels/Copycats: A Watchmen movie has been in development forever, but recently seems to have been picking up momentum, with Zach (The 300) Snyder directing and Billy Crudup playing the all-powerful Dr. Manhattan. It's set to bow in March 2009.

Backstory: Moore was supposed to have a free hand to tell a story about a set of characters published by Charlton Comics, which DC Comics had just bought. They included Blue Beetle, the Question, Captain Atom and Nightshade. At the last moment, the suits changed their minds, and Moore had to create a whole new set of characters.

Design breakthrough: The interlocking narratives, including excerpts from books the characters have written, and a horrific pirate story, form a much more complex piece of storytelling than any superhero comic before or since.

Fighting Evil, Quoting Nietzsche by Tom Shone

Famous names: Steve Holland, Irene Champlin, Joseph Nash, Edward Gruskin

Crunchy goodness: 1

Spinoffs/Sequels/Copycats: Before it was a television show, Flash was a newspaper comic strip and a 1930s movie serial. After this show, Flash went on to star in a 1980 movie. We've also heard rumors of a 2007 television revival, but have never been able to find anybody who's watched a whole episode.

Sights you'll never unsee: Holland, as Flash, wearing the world's tightest T-shirt with a big lightning bolt on it, and an honest-to-Zarkov girdle scrunching his tummy.

The shit: Dale Arden isn't just the girlfriend or sidekick, she's a space fighter in her own right, showing great bravery whenever she's threatened with a death ray or "the breath of death" or whatnot.

Flash Gordon and The Planet of Death (1954).