How is the Doomsday Machine supposed to work?


Are we to believe that x number of bombs exploding in the (fictional) Zokov Islands are supposed to create the doomsday shroud that will envelop the entire earth. I could see it working if the Russians secretly buried bombs all over the world, but not if all their bombs were in just one location. Any opinions?

There is no "off" position on the genius switch.

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It's mutually assured destruction. One country sets off nuclear weapons to destroy another one, and the other country retaliates. Therefore everyone would end up dying. However, the real underlying meaning of the doomsday machine, in respect of the film's meaning, is that it doesn't really need to exist in order to prevent people bombing each other. The mere concept that it may or may no exist is enough to frighten people into being compliant with one another. Hence Dr. Strangelove himself noting that there's no point in having a doomsday machine if you're not going to tell the world about it.

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See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative

Part of the reason why the old USSR broke up.

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In the movie, the Soviet ambassador and Dr. Strangelove both describe the Doomsday Machine as having a set of circumstances programmed into a computer, which is connected to the rest of the country somehow. Then, if someone makes any kind of attack on the country, the computer reacts and detonates the Doomsday Machine. Thus, if someone attacks the country, everyone on Earth is destroyed. However, the Doomsday Machine is also programmed to detonate if someone ever attempts to untrigger it, so that both enemies can't hack and disarm it before and attack, and so the country can't disarm it themselves, maintaining the horrifying status quo.

The Doomsday Machine is located in the Zokov Islands, and since it's not being dropped from a plane the Soviets made the bombs as big as humanly possible. As Dr. Strangelove says, "When you merely wish to bury bombs, there's no limit to the size." Then the Soviet ambassador states that the bombs are coated with Cobalt-Thorium-G, so that whereas a regular nuclear weapon's radioactive fallout will deteriorate within 5-10 years (don't quote my math here), the ambassador states that Cobalt-Thorium-G has a radioactive half-life of about 100 years, preventing any combatants of the current war from living to see the aftermath.

Since these are land-based bombs, the huge detonation will kick a sh!tload of radiation and Cobalt-Thorium-G into the atmosphere, which will subsequently be carried eventually across the entire Earth by the winds and currents until everything on Earth has been poisoned and we're "as dead as the Moon."

The big thing is it has to be announced. The Premier of the Soviet Union wanted to announce it "at the Party Congress on Monday. As you know the Premier loves surprises," according to the Soviet ambassador. They were just unlucky enough that Ripper chose to launch his attack between the Doomsday Machine being activated and the Premier's announcement. If people know a device will destroy the Earth in the event of a war, and the West can't deactivate it, and the Soviets can't deactivate it, then war is basically over because there's no way to first-strike such a device without detonating the doomsday shroud. It's a terrifying status quo, but it would end war.

However, even Dr. Strangelove points out that the BRAND Corporation think-tank he led found that such a Doomsday Machine was impractical for "reasons which at this moment must be all too obvious." Basically, the supposedly rational leaders, such as the President or the Premier would never risk a war ever again because Mutually Assured Destruction is now guaranteed more efficiently than the real-life MAD ever could. However, there's always the wildcard that you can't predict and is almost guaranteed to happen eventually. There's always that one person who thinks they've outsmarted it or doesn't care. In this case, it was Gen. Jack D. Ripper who was suicidal enough and didn't care if he took the whole world with him (even though he didn't know about the Doomsday Machine).

Whoah, my post got a little long on me. Hope this helps!

Can't be too careful with all those weirdos running around.

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Excellent explanation, CovertThunder. But wasn't the name of the think-tank the "Bland Corporation"? That's what it's always sounded like to me, and it seems more in keeping with the deliberately silly names used in the movie.

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It probably is BLAND Corporation, I was aware of the real-life RAND which they're more than likely parodying but with Dr. Strangelove's goofy German accent I was never totally sure. BLAND actually makes more sense now that I think about.

There's also a real-life "Doomsday Machine" called Mertvaya-Ruka, which is Russian for Dead Hand. Basically if it detects a possible nuclear attack on the USSR, it would send a signal out to all the sub commanders, silo crews and mobile ICBM crews to check if they were alive. If you reported in, the computer realized it made an error, but if you were taking a p!$$ at the time then Mertvaya-Ruka would assume the human element had been wiped out in a sneak attack, take control of the Soviets' nuclear arsenal and fire 'em off.

For awhile people thought the number station UVB-76 was a placeholder for Mertvaya-Ruka, although after the Cold War ended UVB-76 was shut down, then reactivated, after which it started playing brief messages on rare occasions. Some experts are pretty sure the Russians dismantled Mertvaya-Ruka after the USSR collapsed and the Cold War ended, but others aren't so sure....

Can't be too careful with all those weirdos running around.

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The idea of a doomsday device was also in Kubrick's next film "2001: A Space Odyssey". In Arthur C. Clarke's novel, which
was written in parallel with the screenplay, the planet is encircled by satellites that contain nuclear bombs which would
be exploded in the event of a nuclear first strike ensuring world wide destruction. The first thing the star-child does is
detonate them all presumably destroying all human life. Clarke was a writer of hard science fiction. Kubrick took a mythological
approach to the story and omitted the satellites thus ensuring a hopeful ending for less evolved humankind.

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I guarantee Clarke did not intend his ending to be interpreted as destroying all human life. I can't put my finger on a direct quote to support my assertion but Clarke knew at least as much about nukes as I do and: The nukes are in orbit, not geostationary orbit (which would be more than 20,000 miles) if we accept what we see in the film. But even at a conservative 250 miles up, even the ridiculously overpowered Tsar Bomba at 58 megatons, would not cause damage on the ground.

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Land-based bombs only spread fallout a few 100km. You need thousands of fission-fusion-cobalt bombs delivered around the world detonating in the stratosphere.

The area around Chernobyl was still green even as it killed animals. Thriving now. Radiation comparable to hundreds of small nukes.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb

Theoretically, a device containing 510 tons of Co-60 can spread 1 g of the material to each square km of the Earth's surface (510,000,000 km2).

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There's no need to take it too literally. The very concept of a Doomsday Machine even being built is part of the very black humor of the film, in which all human energies & aspirations inevitably work towards death, despite our so-called intelligence. And that the power to implement such mass destruction is invariably in the hands of those least suited to wield power in the first place, i.e., obviously damaged people, psychologically stunted & warped, driven by unexamined inner forces & impulses that they can't see or acknowledge. Mandrake is the stand-in for the viewer, intelligent & humane enough to see the horrific absurdity of those death-centered power games, but helpless to do much to stop them.

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