Editing Doomsday device (section)

==History==
Since the 1954 [[Castle Bravo]] thermonuclear weapon test demonstrated the feasibility of making arbitrarily large nuclear devices which could cover vast areas with radioactive fallout by rendering anything around them intensely radioactive, nuclear weapons theorists such as [[Leo Szilard]] conceived of a doomsday machine, a massive thermonuclear device surrounded by hundreds of tons of cobalt which, when detonated, would create massive amounts of [[Cobalt-60]], rendering most of the Earth too radioactive to support life. [[RAND Corporation|RAND]] strategist [[Herman Kahn]] postulated that Soviet or US nuclear decision makers might choose to build a doomsday machine that would consist of a [[computer]] linked to a stockpile of hydrogen bombs, programmed to detonate them all and bathe the planet in [[nuclear fallout]] at the signal of an impending nuclear attack from another nation.<ref>{{cite book | last=Kahn | first=H. | title=On Thermonuclear War | publisher=Transaction Publishers | series=War and Peace Research | year=2011 | isbn=978-1-4128-1559-8 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EN2gtPTjFd8C | page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=EN2gtPTjFd8C&pg=PA145&dq=%22doomsday%20machine%22 145] }}</ref>

The US and its doomsday device's theoretical ability to deter a nuclear attack is that it would go off automatically without human aid and despite human intervention. Kahn conceded that some planners might see "doomsday machines" as providing a highly credible threat that would dissuade attackers and avoid the dangerous game of [[brinkmanship]] caused by the [[massive retaliation]] concept which governed US-Soviet nuclear relations in the mid-1950s. However, in his discussion of doomsday machines, Kahn raises the problem of a nuclear-armed [[Nth Country Experiment|''N''th country]] triggering a doomsday machine, and states that he didn't advocate that the US acquire a doomsday machine.<ref name="Kahn">{{cite book | title=On Thermonuclear War | url=https://archive.org/details/onthermonuclearw00kahn | url-access=registration | publisher=Princeton University Press | last=Kahn | first=Herman | year=1960 | location=Princeton, NJ, USA }}</ref>

The [[Dead Hand]] (or "Perimeter") system built by the [[Soviet Union]] during the [[Cold War]] has been called a "doomsday machine" due to its [[fail-deadly]] design and nuclear capabilities.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113242681|title=Dr. Strangelove's 'Doomsday Machine': It's Real |work=NPR |date=September 26, 2009}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |title=Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine|url=https://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-10/mf_deadhand?currentPage=all |work=Wired |date=2009-09-21 |first=Nicholas |last=Thompson |volume=17 |issue=10 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20090927153018/https://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-10/mf_deadhand?currentPage=all |archivedate=2009-09-27}}<!-- active URL from original source, but missing images from original: https://www.wired.com/2009/09/mf-deadhand/ --></ref>