Dear US of A, please don't f*** up

[Desroko]

Sqrl said:

@Desroko,

Yup, I am familiar with the process =) The president uses the "Biscuit" for authentication to give his orders and that authorizes them to access the codes. The two officers required to launch any nuclear device don't have the codes on them. Instead they usually have a key or a passcode to a secure location where the codes can quickly be accessed but it requires both of them to open it and both have standing orders to never open it without prior authorization which can come only directly from the president with 100% unambiguous authorization.

In any case the codes are probably rediculously long and since nobody on the plane had access to them I have to say I find it far less worrying than a president leaving the one thing that actually can detonate a nuke behind and unguarded (other than the one guy its probably attached to).

@Hus,

It could leak radiation, but nothing like a dirty bomb. A dirty bomb is a device actually designed to spread the radiation in some form, usually a cloud of radiation etc... In this case it would be the shielding on the bomb being penetrated somehow (which is probably not very likely in the first place) and then it would slowly leak out radiation to a small area and the radiation would never really spread anywhere.

There is a lot of information out there and a lot of it is a very interesting read if you don't mind being on the government watch list lmao...btw that was a joke =P

Leaving the codes behind is less worrisome than you think. Two military officers need to agree that the order was valid before the weapons can be armed and launched. If somebody happens to find the President's card, he'd not only need to guess the correct sequence, but he'd have to contact the personnel of a delivery system and convince them that he's George W. Bush. Maybe Will Ferrell could usher in Doomsday, but most people can't. 

The real problem is that these safeguards are only useful while the weapons are in the hands of military personnel. If they're lost, the triggers can be reconfigured to be detonated in any manner you like. What if these idiots had loaded the weapons on a plane or any delivery system that was going to participate in an exercise, or an actual war zone? It's not far-fetched at all, given that they're trained to treat every situation involving nukes with the utmost care. The weapons wouldn't be armed, but once they're launched God only knows where they could end up.