How did you manage to get on that ship?!
I’ve long had the thought in my head of going on a different kind of “cruise” where instead of getting on a cruise ship I manage to make my way onto a container ship or another type of work boat.
Getting to spend time on a Soviet ice breaker sounds even more exciting!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Let_Pobedy
You'll also end up with a lot less $$ in your wallet:
https://www.quarkexpeditions.com/expeditions/north-pole-the-...
The bridge had largely been refitted to modern standards and design, but the engineering control room was a thing of beauty - blinkenlights and dials and levers and buttons like goddamned pornography. The aesthetic (cream, green, black, chrome, domed lamps, tactile light-up buttons) was almost identical to that of a soviet missile silo I visited a few years back near Pervomaisk, Ukraine - which isn’t altogether surprising, as they were likely built in the same shipyard - soviet control bunkers were basically submarines turned on end, mounted on shock absorbers, and shoved down a silo.
Fun aside: our guide was one of the button-men back in the day. He explained that two keys, spaced eight feet apart, had to be turned simultaneously to arm the launch controls. He then explained and demonstrated that the slot in the tip of the flag standard which stood proudly behind the control chairs was designed and curved such that you could hook the key in the control lock through it, sit down at the other key, hold the end of the standard, and give it a pull, which would turn the “out of reach” key as you turned yours. It was “officially unofficially official” in his (translated) words, to be done in the case of the incapacitation of the other launch control officer.
This is a reason why USSR never adopted a end-to-end PAL like US did. Union's PAL system only worked on the command chain level, and the remote launch command was only one of multiple options.
They feared that the US may attack the PAL link component, and it will prevent the launch. The same reason lead to mobile launchers being made one man operable, though even colonel level officers had little knowledge of the system operation besides "press buttons like on this picture if given code word blah-blah"
It is good that now we have Ukrainian launch officers that can divulge information on Soviet launch tech. The part of strategic rocket forces that stayed in Russia managed to keep secrecy perfect for 30 years.
Why is it good ? So that your country thinks they can "win" a nuclear war ?
In a perfect world there wouldn't be any nuclear weapon. But in our imperfect world I'd rather have MAD than some yahoo thinking first strike is a good idea because they think they can stop the opposite side from retaliating.
World with nukes appeared to be more peaceful than without. While nuclear superpowers have parity, conventional war between them is impossible. This is the reason why we we never had WWIII between Soviets/Russia/China and US/NATO. However, other measures like economical pressure and trade wars, espionage, proxy wars, and now informational war are still ongoing. I would leave as a statement that all these things are "much better" than real World War.
There's a lot of information that the USA only nominally had PAL. The military implemented PAL on orders from the President, but then set the PAL code to 00000000.
Incidentally I’ve always deeply respected Soviet officers for being very level-headed in situations that should have precipitated a ‘retaliatory’ launch, such as during the Cuban missile crisis and when one of their satellites mistook glints off lakes for the IR sigantures of a first strike launch.
Isn't the opposite mostly a security theater? As if a single person couldn't do it with some ingenuity anyway even on mechanisms that need two persons?
For starters, they could always point a gun to another person to make them turn the other key...
Arguably in some regimes chain-of-command is a greater incentive than a gun as retaliation against families (for "treason"/cowardice) seems reasonably common.
(no affiliation)