The President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs should have sacrificed their lives before giving up their Cerberus codes.
And the government should have placed the interests of the nation and the world above the life of a single man, the President.
Agreed. Also, SecDef & Chairman would have given up their lives before putting the President in danger.
If the "cerberus" system was really so insanely brain-dead that 1) it could not be disabled from outside the White House and 2) would somehow detonate enough nuclear weapons to kill millions of Americans, you would hope the Americans would know this about their own system if the North Koreans knew it worked that way.
I can't say how I would stand up to torture, especially if the North Korean commandos were experts in torturing people, but I would try and last as long as possible if I knew millions of people would die if I gave up my code.
Someone else also pointed out that likely 2 codes are given. 1 is the real code and the other is the "I've been taken hostage" code which acts exactly like the real code except the system knows it's not the real one so the system won't be activated.
The more I think about it, the sillier it seems.
The Speaker of the House was acting President, and the government was intact.
If I was in charge and knew a madman was in the process of torturing them to potentially kill millions of Americans AND destroy America's nuclear arsenal I would have immediately sent in a large military ground assault with instructions to as quickly as possible penetrate the bunker and eliminate the threat, even if that meant killing the President, Vice President and various members of his cabinet.