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Comment by rkagerer | Hacker News Reader

Better take some recordings to play back in case the "Dead Hand" theory is correct.

Could be a movie idea for a post-apocalyptic world where one crazy old nerd living in a trailer has been holding off annihilation and looks for someone to pass the torch to before he dies (reminiscent of Deccan Ribobe in Pratchett's Moving Pictures).

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The dead hand theory is almost certainly incorrect, because the transmission is fairly unreliable and regularly experiences technical faults or goes off the air entirely.

time delay. would have been silly to build a system that triggers instantly, seeing as a geomagnetic storm or whatever would initiate nuclear annihilation

Sure, but how do you balance the time between that needed for recovery from a Carington-level event, and leaving it too long such that the adversary has taken out your silos and subs?

I would speculate it's not a one part scheme. First, a network of international spies would surface, then they could do whatever, even use the enemy nuclear weapons against them

> The Carrington Event was the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history, peaking from 1 to 2 September 1859 during solar cycle 10. It created strong auroral displays that were reported globally and caused sparking and even fires in multiple telegraph stations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event

The whole point of having subs is that they are meant to be stealthy and survive the initial strike. If you took them out it's game over and the dead hand system is useless.

the soviets had and the russians have survivable second-strike capability

You'd hope there would be multiple transmitters that have to go dark (and confirmation from multiple receivers that they've in fact done so).

> one crazy old nerd living in a trailer has been holding off annihilation and looks for someone to pass the torch to before he dies

LOST?

Aye, brother

Interesting thought. That would be a very good Argument against the dead Hand. I wonder why its not beging jammed also

The buzzer and its colleagues are being actively jammed as we speak

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z3fgJCJ_daE

They are also transmitting codewords one or twice per week. A trivial part of the dead hand protocol would be to verify that the codewords progress according to schedule or the determined order.

Yeah, akin to one-time pad encryption.

isn't that just the plot of Pirate Radio

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