Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine

MMmmmm - would this be a good place for President Obama to start on nuclear weapons??

Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine

By Nicholas Thompson

The technical name was Perimeter, but some called it Mertvaya Ruka, Dead Hand.
Illustration: Ryan Kelly

Valery Yarynich glances nervously over his shoulder. Clad in a brown leather jacket, the 72-year-old former Soviet colonel is hunkered in the back of the dimly lit Iron Gate restaurant in Washington, DC. It's March 2009—the Berlin Wall came down two decades ago—but the lean and fit Yarynich is as jumpy as an informant dodging the KGB. He begins to whisper, quietly but firmly.

"The Perimeter system is very, very nice," he says. "We remove unique responsibility from high politicians and the military." He looks around again.