Monthly Archives: September 2009

The dead hand

Soviets Built a Doomsday Machine; It’s Still Alive

led me to Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine

That’s right, an actual doomsday device—a real, functioning version of the ultimate weapon, always presumed to exist only as a fantasy of apocalypse-obsessed science fiction writers and paranoid über-hawks. The thing that historian Lewis Mumford called “the central symbol of this scientifically organized nightmare of mass extermination.” Turns out Yarynich, a 30-year veteran of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces and Soviet General Staff, helped build one.

Dead Hand is continuously being upgraded.