Living with Mega-Death

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more important order from the Commander in Chief.

An alert order would also activate a classic scramble—klaxons blaring, red lights flashing, beepers going off on crewmen's belts—at 19 Strategic Air Command bases around the U.S. In a matter of minutes, B-52s, each armed with four hydrogen bombs, would be lumbering into the air. The pilot of each plane, wearing a flame-retardant flight suit and metallic flash protector on his helmet, would have to watch his ascent on a pair of television screens. The cockpit windows would be covered with heavy curtains to protect the crews from being blinded by enemy bomb blasts. Once airborne, the pilot would await the "execution message." He would compare it, letter by letter, with the sealed authenticator aboard his plane. If it matched, he would know where to go and what to do.

Contrary to mythology, neither the President nor any one else can send the missiles on their way simply by pushing a button. The procedures for authorizing a nuclear attack are designed to involve as many high officials as possible, partly as a safeguard against the danger that any single madman, including a President, could start the war on his own. Shortly before Richard Nixon's resignation, when there was some concern about his emotional stability, his Secretary of Defense, James Schlesinger, explicitly reminded the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of what had long been implicit in the chain of command: that a presidential order to go to war would have to be relayed through both of them. In a crisis, they would presumably be either with the President or standing by at the Pentagon's National Military Command Center, where the go-ahead order would be received.

Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev does not have a briefcase-toting aide continually at his side. When he leaves the country, war-making authority remains with his comrades in the collective leadership, presumably with stay-at-home members of the secrecy-shrouded Defense Council, of which Brezhnev is chairman. Those few men have first claim and fastest access to an estimated 75 underground command posts in Moscow; around the U.S.S.R. there are hardened concrete shelters for another 110,000 members of the national leadership. The Soviets have their own equally elaborate procedures for issuing orders and turning keys. The Soviet army's nuclear arsenal is under the joint control of the elite Strategic Rocket Forces and, representing the civilian leadership, the Committee for State Security, better known as the KGB. Compared with the U.S. arsenal, the intercontinental warheads at the Kremlin's disposal are less numerous (8,040) but considerably larger, with more than twice the power of destruction—7,868 megatons.

If, in the "exchange" that followed the opening salvo, most of the weapons on both sides were to be exploded, the earth would momentarily flicker back at the distant stars—and then perhaps go out, the very life of the planet extinguished. Versions of that nightmare have haunted mankind for 37 years, since the U.S. detonated the first atom bomb at Alamogordo, N. Mex. Stunned and horrified by what he and his fellow scientists had wrought—a puny puff by today's standards—Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer recalled the incantation of the Hindu god Vishnu as he transformed himself into the avatar of apocalypse: