Introduction The Norwegian rocket incident, also known as the Black Brant scare, occurred on 25 January 1995 when a team of Norwegian and American scientists launched a Black Brant XII four-stage sounding rocket from the Andøya Rocket Range off the northwestern coast of Norway. The rocket carried scientific equipment to study the aurora borealis over… Read More
Introduction On 26 September 1983, during the Cold War, the Soviet nuclear early warning system Oko reported the launch of one intercontinental ballistic missile with four more missiles behind it, from the United States. These missile attack warnings were suspected to be false alarms by Stanislav Petrov, an engineer of the Soviet Air Defence Forces… Read More
Introduction The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (abbreviated to ICAN, pronounced /ˈaɪkæn/ EYE-kan) is a global civil society coalition working to promote adherence to and full implementation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The campaign helped bring about this treaty. ICAN was launched in 2007. In 2022, it counted 661 partner… Read More
Introduction In the United States military’s strategic nuclear weapon nuclear command and control (NC2) system, an Emergency Action Message (EAM) is a preformatted message that directs nuclear-capable forces to execute specific Major Attack Options (MAOs) or Limited Attack Options (LAOs) in a nuclear war. They are the military commands that the US military chain of… Read More
Introduction A permissive action link (PAL) is an access control security device for nuclear weapons. Its purpose is to prevent unauthorised arming or detonation of a nuclear weapon. The United States Department of Defence definition is: A device included in or attached to a nuclear weapon system to preclude arming and/or launching until the insertion… Read More
Introduction The Samson Option (Hebrew: ברירת שמשון, b’rerat shimshon) is the name that some military analysts and authors have given to Israel’s deterrence strategy of massive retaliation with nuclear weapons as a “last resort” against a country whose military has invaded and/or destroyed much of Israel. Commentators also have employed the term to refer to… Read More
Introduction Dead Hand (Russian: Система «Периметр», Sistema “Perimetr”, lit. “Perimeter” System, with the GRAU Index 15E601, Cyrillic: 15Э601), also known as Perimeter, is a Cold War-era automatic nuclear weapons-control system (similar in concept to the American AN/DRC-8 Emergency Rocket Communications System) that was constructed by the Soviet Union. The system remains in use in the… Read More
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