Wow, that is positively horrifying. It just stuns me to think that we, collectively speaking, have equivalent of three billion tons of TNT theoretically aimed at population centers all over the globe. It's like a push-button holocaust that would make the Nazis look like amateurs. To think that a crisis over anything on this planet could justify such an escalation does not make sense to me. Like I said before, I don't really understand how MAD makes us safer; I get the idea that if we just make war so terrifically horrible enough nobody will wage war anymore, but that logic does not feel convincing or comforting given human history. It seems like there are people out there who would let the world burn if it would make them king of the ashes afterwards.

That was an interesting link about Dead Hand as well, seems like even some Russians got a little nervous about too much automation. I guess you have to trust that groups with nuclear weapons are rational actors, because without that caveat, MAD goes from borderline nonsensical, to downright batshit insane.