Living with Mega-Death

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action message" from a bunker at Fort Ritchie, Md., or from a National Emergency Airborne Command Post, nicknamed KNEECAP—actually, a souped-up Boeing 747 that has been "hardened" against nuclear effects (including EMP).

If the ICBM crews were crushed in their underground launch-control centers by a Soviet strike, their missiles could be launched, and in some cases even retargeted, by remote control from the Strategic Air Command's airborne command post, Looking Glass, which has a dual-key system. The firing could also be done automatically by the Emergency Rocket Communication System, a series of ultra-high-frequency radio packs launched into orbit in lieu of warheads by special iCBMs. If a submarine commander were cut off from communications, and if he were convinced that a nuclear war had begun, he would have no authority to fire his missiles—but he would have the capability.

These and other features of the American defense plan greatly increase confidence that the U.S. could mount a potent nuclear counterattack even if the Soviets were to strike first. The system also has numerous and sophisticated built-in safeguards that make the danger of accidental war quite remote. True, there have been false alerts, and Ground Zero's Roger Molander recalls a bizarre incident in the mid-1960s when a newly installed radar warning system mistook the rising of the moon for a massive Soviet missile attack. Still, the fear that a faulty computer chip, a flock of geese or a mad lieutenant could push a crisis beyond the point of no return has been exaggerated.

There is considerably less ground for confidence that the war would follow the scenarios developed by the planners and rehearsed many times by computers. Underlying the current debate over nuclear weaponry is a deep, widespread doubt—shared even by many of the experts and policymakers who helped design and refine the contingency plans—about whether those plans would work if put to the test of reality. Many fear that the detonation of even one nuclear weapon in a conflict would be like firing a particle into the nucleus of an atom; nuclear war would mimic nuclear fission. The result would be a chain reaction of chaos and cataclysm, warheads flying back and forth with increasing recklessness and ultimately random, total destruction.

Once again, the argument cannot be proved one way or the other; the doubts cannot be dissolved; everyone is guessing. President Reagan, General Jones, the Air Force commander of an ICBM site, the pilot of a B-52, the skipper of a missile-launching sub—they all know what is supposed to happen when the President authorizes TANGO ECHO BRAVO ROMEO NOVEMBER; but no one knows what will happen next, or after that.

If and when he ever opens "the football," the President has before him the recommended choices available on the Pentagon's vast and varied menu of destruction known as the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP). It was first put together in 1960 and has been revised several times a year ever since. In consultation with his advisers and with the help of computerized contingency plans, the President can strike against various combinations from among some 40,000 targets in the U.S.S.R., ranging from "hard" ones, such as the Soviets' underground ICBM silos and the Kremlin leaders' emergency bunkers, to