For more than half a century, a terrible urban legend about the "Doomsday machine" has been circulating in the media. It all started with Stanley Kubrick's cult film Doctor Strangelove, or How I Stopped Being Afraid and Love the Bomb. The hero of this black comedy, in a fit of anti-communist hysteria, directs strategic bombers with nuclear warheads against the Soviet Union.
GENERAL RIPPER
The general who made such a crazy step, and had a suitable name - Jack Ripper, which in Russian sounds like Jack the Ripper. At the decisive moment, our ambassador informs the "Washington regional committee" about the existence of a "Doomsday machine" in the USSR, which automatically launches missiles if at least one bomb falls on the territory of the Soviet Union.
Then Dr. Strangelove, as a strategy expert, explains to the American authorities the extreme effectiveness of such a system, such that, if activated, it is impossible to counteract it. The bombers manage to recall, but one still breaks through and drops a bomb on the Soviet base in Kotlas - a thermonuclear hell has begun. Most likely, the filmmakers did not expect that the invented image of the "apocalypse control system" would give rise to a new apocalyptic genre.
… BY "PERIMETER"
Kubrick himself admitted that the idea of the "Death Machine" was born under the impression of Soviet tests of a super-powerful 50-megaton hydrogen bomb. This monstrous thermonuclear charge, dubbed "Kuz'kina's mother" by American journalists, has generated many fantastic speculations and conspiracy theories.
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The same apocalyptic system of destruction appears in the famous novel by the master of horror Robert McCammon "Song of Swan", in which the world is threatened by space platforms with "Heavenly Claws" thermonuclear missiles. In the event of the defeat of the United States, they must blow up the poles, melt the eternal ice and cause the Flood with a shift in the earth's axis.
The creativity of science fiction writers and journalists gave rise to rumors about Soviet thermonuclear land mines planted off the coast of the United States and Europe. This legend is called "Perimeter". Articles by the current president of the World Security Institute, Bruce Blair, and the author of The Doomsday People, PD Smith, played a role in its dissemination. According to them, in the early 1990s, defectors from the post-Soviet space became aware of a carefully covert system for managing a massive nuclear strike.
The version of the "Russian machine of the apocalypse" was clearly influenced by the famous James Cameron film "The Terminator" with its eerie electronic brain Skynet. According to Blair, if Perimeter's sensors confirm a nuclear strike and lose contact with the main command post, preparations for a retaliatory attack begin immediately. Then the command missiles are launched, equipped with a special generator of control signals. Reception of code signals triggers immediate autonomous execution of the order. Thus, in a fully automatic mode, a guaranteed retaliatory strike is ensured - even if the entire command staff is killed.
The myth of the "dead man's button" in the depths of the Urals is complemented by Stephen M. Meyer, an expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He colorfully paints the command center "Kosvinsky Stone", allegedly still hiding at a kilometer depth in the rocks. This giant autonomous bunker contains a “nuclear button” that can only be pressed by an authorized Perimeter officer after receiving the signal to destroy Moscow. However, the "doomsday relay" can be started by default if there are no more living operators left …
The curtain of secrecy reliably hides the development of the Soviet military complex. However, this system could become a real prototype of the "Doomsday machine". Meanwhile, interesting information is periodically thrown into the media. Recently, a well-known politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky spoke on one of the state channels about the "global perimeter", which includes dozens of thermonuclear weapons planted around North America and Europe. Vladimir Volfovich argued that the detonation of these land mines would cause a catastrophic movement of the lithospheric plates with the subsidence of the crust of the European and North American continents …
IMPACT "PERIMETER"
The fact is that when tectonic plates break apart or collide with each other, colossal pressure drops occur, which sometimes concentrate in one place. It is enough to deliver at a critical point a series of powerful blows, say, with the help of 25-30 megaton thermonuclear charges, and everything will start moving. One plate will rise, the other will remain stationary or begin to fall.
All this will cause an unprecedented storm, accompanied by 10-point earth and seaquakes. Tectonic activity will be expressed in the appearance of giant faults, subsidence of the continental soil and swelling of the seabed, filled with molten rock. In a short moment, a kind of spring of mutual pressure of several plates will straighten, and the released energy will begin to crush the earth's crust. Extinct volcanoes will revive, and an ocean of hot lava will flood vast territories. Simultaneous eruptions of several hundred volcanoes will inevitably lead to the prototype of "nuclear winter", and the Earth will be enveloped in an impenetrable veil of smoke, ash and gases …
It is quite possible that something similar on a planetary scale has already happened.
BELT OF ASTEROIDS
Scientists have long been wondering about the reasons for the appearance of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. After all, there should have been a planet! Astronomers even gave it a name - Phaethon. Who just tried to unravel the fate of this mysterious space body! For example, the Soviet science fiction writer Georgy Martynov in his trilogy "Star-Floaters" explained the cause of the planet's death with too high forward speed. As a result of this, the elliptical orbit of Phaethon eventually turned into an unwinding spiral.
With each revolution around the Sun, Phaeton's orbit increased, relentlessly bringing it closer to the huge Jupiter. Having reached a critical distance, the mysterious planet was torn apart by the colossal gravitational field of the gas giant.
An even more original hypothesis was expressed by the patriarch of Soviet science fiction, Alexander Kazantsev. He adopted a long-standing idea from Frederic Joliot-Curie. Back in the 30s of the last century, this outstanding French physicist, after discovering artificial radioactivity with his wife Irene Joliot-Curie, expressed the idea of a "global chain reaction in the body of the Earth." He believed that radioactive transformations of an explosive nature of some elements into others can cover all the substances that make up our planet, and in this case a global catastrophe of a cosmic scale is simply inevitable …
Having supplemented Joliot-Curie's ideas with colorful sci-fi details, Kazantsev in his novel "Faetias" convincingly showed what a monstrous cataclysm the hypothetical Phaeton could have as a result of his civilization's unreasonable use of nuclear energy. Has the “Doomsday machine” been used near us? Then, perhaps, the alarming "great silence of space" is caused by the fact that each civilization at a certain stage invents a system of total destruction, and then loses control over it?
LORD OF THE STORM
Here is the time to remember the famous inventor Nikola Tesla, who has repeatedly talked about a new science - telegeodynamics, which literally allows us to split our planet into parts.
Some researchers of Tesla's work believe that he managed to create a scheme for the operation of a real "telegeodynamic machine". And the tests of this unit caused the Tunguska phenomenon, mistaken for a meteorite. Indeed, the inventor himself in several interviews emphasized that during the launch of the system, a "resonant emission of electrical ether energy" could occur somewhere over the expanses of Siberia.
The words of the great inventor are indirectly confirmed by the strongest electromagnetic storm that broke out in the upper atmosphere during the Siberian explosion. Similar phenomena were observed during Tesla's laboratory experiments. Among the heliophysicists studying our star, a hypothesis was even born about the ejection of solar matter, "wrapped" by the lines of the Earth's magnetic field. So, maybe a similar plasmoid was born over the expanses of Siberia during the meeting of two "standing waves" launched by Tesla's "etheric resonator"? Why didn't the great inventor pass on to the scientific community the schematics of the internal structure of the "electric ether unit"?
Many years later, shortly before his death, Tesla tried to answer this question. According to the inventor, firstly, his "Doomsday machine" was very imperfect, so that the peaks of "resonance vibrations" could meet anywhere between Alaska and the North Pole. Second, the explosive burst of energy was too destructive. Here you can recall Tesla's words at a press conference at the end of 1908: "When I saw with my own eyes the catastrophic consequences of not fully thought out the use of my telegeodynamic system of energy transmission, I realized the premature of its use."
Thus, Tesla did everything in his power to prevent his accidental discovery from falling into the hands of the militarists.
END OF WORLD OPTIONS
The enchanting effects of the described apocalyptic "machines" may seem too complicated and energy-consuming against the background of spraying artificially created strains of deadly bacteria and viruses in the atmosphere. Indeed, for example, from the "Spanish flu" (influenza virus) in 1918-1919 killed more people than in the entire First World War. But what if the bulky thermonuclear charges in the Perimeter system were replaced with “fireworks” filled with horrific airborne viruses? Such a lethal system, if it does not completely destroy humanity, will certainly throw it back into the Stone Age …
There is an even more original project of the "Doomsday machine" - self-replicating nanorobots, no matter how strange it may sound. The mass of such aggressors, uncontrollably filling the earth's surface, will literally strangle humanity in their arms. Myriads of nanorobots, rapidly multiplying, will be able to very quickly process any living mass that comes their way.
The idea of creating such microdevices was submitted in 1986 by one of the "fathers of nanotechnology" Eric Drexler. In his book "Creation Machines", he proposed a scheme when self-replicating subminiature cybers, having gained freedom, will begin to use the flora and fauna of our planet, including you and me, as raw materials for replication …
According to Drexler's calculations, it will take only a few days for the nanobots to completely destroy the planet's surface. Interestingly, long before Drexler, science fiction writer Stanislav Lem had already described something similar in the brilliant story "Invincible". There, the terrible "metal termites" practically destroyed the alien civilization. Thus, invisible to the eye, tiny robots claim to be the most ideal version of the "Doomsday machine." And given that developments in the field of nanotechnology are considered a priority all over the world, such a fantasy may become a reality already in the current century.
Many observers believe that the "infernal machine" has been trying unsuccessfully for several years to destroy not even civilization, but our entire planet … And the name of this unit is the Large Hadron Collider!
Physicists have long been developing theories explaining that our universe - as we know it - is unstable and can turn into another, more stable, with different properties. This transition will be accompanied by the release of enormous energy and destruction of matter as we know it.
Collisions of particles in the collider can give an impetus to the birth of this more stable universe, which will begin to grow at the speed of light and destroy our universe. In another catastrophic scenario, it is assumed that there may be some exotic particles or other objects that will begin to absorb ordinary matter and destroy the Earth. The same collider will be able to activate them.
It is possible that even now somewhere the deadly timer of the "Doomsday machine" is ticking, counting down the last hours of our world. However, whether it really exists is unknown. And it is rather difficult to imagine what this sinister creation of the military-industrial complex looks like. One thing is clear - humanity has long entered an era when the thoughtless use of weapons of mass destruction is quite capable of destroying all life on our planet.
Oleg FEYGIN