Lucky Numbers

Thanks to tcpip for this story:

Consider, for example, a fun Cold War-era fact from Bruce Blair, who is president of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information (home of Johnson's Russia List).

Blair was a Minuteman nuclear missile launch officer in the 1970s, and regularly ran through simulations in which he and his colleagues launched up to 50 missiles at the Soviet Union.

To launch a Minuteman in those days, one had to "unlock" the missile by dialing in a code -- the equivalent of a safety catch on a handgun. However, Blair reports, the U.S. Strategic Air Command was worried that a bunch of sissy safety features might slow things down. It ordered all locks set to 00000000 -- and in launch checklists, reminded all launch officers like Blair to keep the codes there. "So the 'secret unlock code' during the height of the nuclear crises of the Cold War," Blair says, "remained constant at 00000000."


In unrelated news: last night I rented Braindead from the video shop. (For those who haven't seen it, it's one of Peter Jackson's earlier films. Cute, but REALLY gory.)

Anyway, the film opens on a mysterious island where a New Zealand zoo officer has just caught a 'Sumatran Rat-Monkey'. It starts in a narrow canyon surrounded by steep cliffs of desolate grey rock... and suddenly it looked *very* familiar to me.

Paths of the Dead, anybody?