>Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine

>

Chart source: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Natural Resources Defense Council

…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.

Yarynich is talking about Russia’s doomsday machine. That’s right, an actual doomsday device—a real, functioning version of the ultimate weapon, always presumed to exist only as a fantasy of apocalypse-obsessed science fiction writers and paranoid über-hawks. The thing that historian Lewis Mumford called “the central symbol of this scientifically organized nightmare of mass extermination.” Turns out Yarynich, a 30-year veteran of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces and Soviet General Staff, helped build one.

The point of the system, he explains, was to guarantee an automatic Soviet response to an American nuclear strike. Even if the US crippled the USSR with a surprise attack, the Soviets could still hit back. It wouldn’t matter if the US blew up the Kremlin, took out the defense ministry, severed the communications network, and killed everyone with stars on their shoulders. Ground-based sensors would detect that a devastating blow had been struck and a counterattack would be launched.

The technical name was Perimeter, but some called it Mertvaya Ruka, or Dead Hand. It was built 25 years ago and remained a closely guarded secret. With the demise of the USSR, word of the system did leak out, but few people seemed to notice. In fact, though Yarynich and a former Minuteman launch officer named Bruce Blair have been writing about Perimeter since 1993 in numerous books and newspaper articles, its existence has not penetrated the public mind or the corridors of power. The Russians still won’t discuss it, and Americans at the highest levels—including former top officials at the State Department and White House—say they’ve never heard of it. When I recently told former CIA director James Woolsey that the USSR had built a doomsday device, his eyes grew cold. “I hope to God the Soviets were more sensible than that.” They weren’t.

The system remains so shrouded that Yarynich worries his continued openness puts him in danger. He might have a point: One Soviet official who spoke with Americans about the system died in a mysterious fall down a staircase. But Yarynich takes the risk. He believes the world needs to know about Dead Hand. Because, after all, it is still in place.

The system that Yarynich helped build came online in 1985, after some of the most dangerous years of the Cold War….

You either launch first or convince the enemy that you can strike back even if you’re dead.

…

Perimeter ensures the ability to strike back, but it’s no hair-trigger device. It was designed to lie semi-dormant until switched on by a high official in a crisis. Then it would begin monitoring a network of seismic, radiation, and air pressure sensors for signs of nuclear explosions. Before launching any retaliatory strike, the system had to check off four if/then propositions: If it was turned on, then it would try to determine that a nuclear weapon had hit Soviet soil. If it seemed that one had, the system would check to see if any communication links to the war room of the Soviet General Staff remained. If they did, and if some amount of time—likely ranging from 15 minutes to an hour—passed without further indications of attack, the machine would assume officials were still living who could order the counterattack and shut down. But if the line to the General Staff went dead, then Perimeter would infer that apocalypse had arrived. It would immediately transfer launch authority to whoever was manning the system at that moment deep inside a protected bunker—bypassing layers and layers of normal command authority. At that point, the ability to destroy the world would fall to whoever was on duty: maybe a high minister sent in during the crisis, maybe a 25-year-old junior officer fresh out of military academy. And if that person decided to press the button … If/then. If/then. If/then. If/then.

Once initiated, the counterattack would be controlled by so-called command missiles. Hidden in hardened silos designed to withstand the massive blast and electromagnetic pulses of a nuclear explosion, these missiles would launch first and then radio down coded orders to whatever Soviet weapons had survived the first strike. At that point, the machines will have taken over the war. Soaring over the smoldering, radioactive ruins of the motherland, and with all ground communications destroyed, the command missiles would lead the destruction of the US.

The US did build versions of these technologies, deploying command missiles in what was called the Emergency Rocket Communications System. It also developed seismic and radiation sensors to monitor for nuclear tests or explosions the world over. But the US never combined it all into a system of zombie retaliation. It feared accidents and the one mistake that could end it all.

via Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine.

>Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine

>

Chart source: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Natural Resources Defense Council

…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.

Yarynich is talking about Russia’s doomsday machine. That’s right, an actual doomsday device—a real, functioning version of the ultimate weapon, always presumed to exist only as a fantasy of apocalypse-obsessed science fiction writers and paranoid über-hawks. The thing that historian Lewis Mumford called “the central symbol of this scientifically organized nightmare of mass extermination.” Turns out Yarynich, a 30-year veteran of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces and Soviet General Staff, helped build one.

The point of the system, he explains, was to guarantee an automatic Soviet response to an American nuclear strike. Even if the US crippled the USSR with a surprise attack, the Soviets could still hit back. It wouldn’t matter if the US blew up the Kremlin, took out the defense ministry, severed the communications network, and killed everyone with stars on their shoulders. Ground-based sensors would detect that a devastating blow had been struck and a counterattack would be launched.

The technical name was Perimeter, but some called it Mertvaya Ruka, or Dead Hand. It was built 25 years ago and remained a closely guarded secret. With the demise of the USSR, word of the system did leak out, but few people seemed to notice. In fact, though Yarynich and a former Minuteman launch officer named Bruce Blair have been writing about Perimeter since 1993 in numerous books and newspaper articles, its existence has not penetrated the public mind or the corridors of power. The Russians still won’t discuss it, and Americans at the highest levels—including former top officials at the State Department and White House—say they’ve never heard of it. When I recently told former CIA director James Woolsey that the USSR had built a doomsday device, his eyes grew cold. “I hope to God the Soviets were more sensible than that.” They weren’t.

The system remains so shrouded that Yarynich worries his continued openness puts him in danger. He might have a point: One Soviet official who spoke with Americans about the system died in a mysterious fall down a staircase. But Yarynich takes the risk. He believes the world needs to know about Dead Hand. Because, after all, it is still in place.

The system that Yarynich helped build came online in 1985, after some of the most dangerous years of the Cold War….

You either launch first or convince the enemy that you can strike back even if you’re dead.

…

Perimeter ensures the ability to strike back, but it’s no hair-trigger device. It was designed to lie semi-dormant until switched on by a high official in a crisis. Then it would begin monitoring a network of seismic, radiation, and air pressure sensors for signs of nuclear explosions. Before launching any retaliatory strike, the system had to check off four if/then propositions: If it was turned on, then it would try to determine that a nuclear weapon had hit Soviet soil. If it seemed that one had, the system would check to see if any communication links to the war room of the Soviet General Staff remained. If they did, and if some amount of time—likely ranging from 15 minutes to an hour—passed without further indications of attack, the machine would assume officials were still living who could order the counterattack and shut down. But if the line to the General Staff went dead, then Perimeter would infer that apocalypse had arrived. It would immediately transfer launch authority to whoever was manning the system at that moment deep inside a protected bunker—bypassing layers and layers of normal command authority. At that point, the ability to destroy the world would fall to whoever was on duty: maybe a high minister sent in during the crisis, maybe a 25-year-old junior officer fresh out of military academy. And if that person decided to press the button … If/then. If/then. If/then. If/then.

Once initiated, the counterattack would be controlled by so-called command missiles. Hidden in hardened silos designed to withstand the massive blast and electromagnetic pulses of a nuclear explosion, these missiles would launch first and then radio down coded orders to whatever Soviet weapons had survived the first strike. At that point, the machines will have taken over the war. Soaring over the smoldering, radioactive ruins of the motherland, and with all ground communications destroyed, the command missiles would lead the destruction of the US.

The US did build versions of these technologies, deploying command missiles in what was called the Emergency Rocket Communications System. It also developed seismic and radiation sensors to monitor for nuclear tests or explosions the world over. But the US never combined it all into a system of zombie retaliation. It feared accidents and the one mistake that could end it all.

via Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine.

>Dust storms spread deadly diseases worldwide

>

Dust storms like the one that plagued Sydney are blowing bacteria to all corners of the globe, with viruses that will attack the human body. Yet these scourges can also help mitigate climate change

Huge dust storms, like the ones that blanketed Sydney twice last week, hit Queensland yesterday and turned the air red across much of eastern Australia, are spreading lethal epidemics around the world. However, they can also absorb climate change emissions, say researchers studying the little understood but growing phenomenon.

The Sydney storm, which left millions of people choking on some of the worst air pollution in 70 years, was a consequence of the 10-year drought that has turned parts of Australia’s interior into a giant dust bowl, providing perfect conditions for high winds to whip loose soil into the air and carry it thousands of miles across the continent.

It followed major dust storms this year in northern China, Iraq and Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, east Africa, Arizona and other arid areas. Most of the storms are also linked to droughts, but are believed to have been exacerbated by deforestation, overgrazing of pastures and climate change.

As diplomats prepare to meet in Bangkok tomorrow for the next round of climate talks, meteorologists predict that more major dust storms can be expected, carrying minute particles of beneficial soil and nutrients as well as potentially harmful bacteria, viruses and fungal spores.

“The numbers of major dust storms go up and down over the years,” said Andrew Goudie, geography professor at Oxford University. “In Australia and China they tailed off from the 1970s then spiked in the 1990s and at the start of this decade. At the moment they are clearly on an upward trajectory.”

Laurence Barrie is chief researcher at the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) in Geneva, which is working with 40 countries to develop a dust storm warning system. He said: “I think the droughts [and dust storms] in Australia are a harbinger. Dust storms are a natural phenomenon, but are influenced by human activities and are now just as serious as traffic and industrial air pollution. The minute particles act like urban smog or acid rain. They can penetrate deep into the human body.”

Saharan storms are thought to be responsible for spreading lethal meningitis spores throughout semi-arid central Africa, where up to 250,000 people, particularly children, contract the disease each year and 25,000 die. “There is evidence that the dust can mobilise meningitis in the bloodstream,” said Barrie.

via Dust storms spread deadly diseases worldwide | World news | The Observer.

>LSD returns to university labs

>

LSD is back in labs after years of disrepute, joining other hallucinogens as legitimate subjects of research, a researcher in Santa Cruz, Calif., said.

The first new studies of LSD in human subjects started at Harvard University last year. Scientists are looking into it as a treatment of cluster headaches, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Sunday.

A second research project is under way at the University of California San Francisco.

“Psychedelics are in labs all over the world and there’s a lot of promise,” Rick Doblin, director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies said. “The situation with LSD is that because it was the quintessential symbol of the ’60s, it was the last to enter the lab.”

“What poisoned the well was the widespread abuse being promoted by scientists to the public,” Dr. John Mendelson, an associate professor of medicine and psychiatry at UCSF who is helping run the LSD study, said. “That put a lot of researchers off, and it made it very hard for researchers to justify getting back into the field. And there were no pressing health needs, no pressing treatments other than curiosity.”

Private and non-profit groups are seeking funding sources, but it isn’t easy to get an LSD study off the ground. Researchers first need approval from the U.S. food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Administration. They then need permission to use a specific batch of the drug.

It’s also difficult to find volunteers. Subjects need to have done LSD previously, Mendelson said.

“You don’t want people who are looking for a legal way to get a first experience,” he said. “This isn’t fun. There’s no Grateful Dead music playing. This is serious business.”

via LSD returns to university labs – UPI.com.

>Potent Placebos

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In 1962, after a rise in birth defects, the U.S. Congress passed an amendment requiring pharmaceutical trials to include enhanced safety testing and placebo control groups, making Henry Beecher’s double-blind placebo-controlled RCT the new standard in testing. Beecher wrote a paper in 1955 that described how the placebo effect had undermined the results of over a dozen trials by causing improvements mistakenly attributed to the tested drugs. His findings have been proven true once again, after the success of mood enhancing drugs in the 80’s and 90’s enticed Big Pharma to promote remedies for a variety of disorders related to higher brain function, essentially attempting to dominate the central nervous system. However, it is exactly those types of ailments that are susceptible to the placebo effect described by Beecher.

From 2001 to 2006 the percentage of new products cut from development after Phase II trials (when drugs are first tested against placebo) rose by 20 %, and now half of all drugs that fail in late-stage trials are due to their inability to compete against sugar pills. Disorders engaging the higher cortical centers that generate beliefs and expectations, anticipate rewards and otherwise interpret social cues have been effectively treated with placebos.

Big Pharma is finally getting the message about how powerful the brain really is, requiring only the expectation of getting better in order to self-heal.

via Reality Sandwich | Potent Placebos.

This is another reason going to the doctor can make us feel better.  I believe in this healer’s great powers (even though I am skeptical by nature) and this kicks in my body’s healing powers based on my expectations.

>HIV’s Ancestors May Have Plagued First Mammals

>

The retroviruses which gave rise to HIV have been battling it out with mammal immune systems since mammals first evolved around 100 million years ago – about 85 million years earlier than previously thought, scientists now believe.

The remains of an ancient HIV-like virus have been discovered in the genome of the two-toed sloth [Choloepus hoffmanni] by a team led by Oxford University scientists who publish a report of their research in this week’s Science.

‘Finding the fossilised remains of such a virus in this sloth is an amazing stroke of luck,’ said Dr Aris Katzourakis from Oxford’s Department of Zoology and the Institute for Emergent Infections, James Martin 21st Century School. ‘Because this sloth is so geographically and genetically isolated its genome gives us a window into the ancient past of mammals, their immune systems, and the types of viruses they had to contend with.’

The researchers found evidence of ‘foamy viruses’, a particular kind of retrovirus that resembles the complex lentiviruses, such as HIV and simian retroviruses (SIVs) – as opposed to simple retroviruses that are found throughout the genomic fossil record.

‘In previous work we had found evidence for similar viruses in the genomes of rabbits and lemurs but this new research suggests that the ancestors of complex retroviruses, such as HIV, may have been with us from the very beginnings of mammal evolution,’ said Dr Aris Katzourakis.

via HIV’s Ancestors May Have Plagued First Mammals.

Some ideas about the origin of AIDS are opposed to the scientific consensus.  This study is iteresting:

We examined beliefs about the origin of HIV as a genocidal conspiracy in men and women of four racial/ethnic groups in a street intercept sample in Houston, Texas. Groups sampled were African American, Latino, non-Hispanic white, and Asian. Highest levels of conspiracy theories were found in women, and in African American and Latino populations (over a quarter of African Americans and over a fifth of Latinos) with slightly lower rates in whites (a fifth) and Asians less than one in ten). Reductions in condom use associated with such beliefs were however only apparent in African American men. Conspiracy beliefs were an independent predictor of reported condom use along with race/ethnicity, gender, education, and age group. Data suggest that genocidal conspiracy beliefs are relatively widespread in several racial/ethnic groups and that an understanding of the sources of these beliefs is important to determine their possible impact on HIV prevention and treatment behaviors.

via NIH.GOV

>Tsunami warning issued for New Zealand after 8.3 Pacific quake

>

The tsunami generated in the Pacific is predicted to hit New Zealand’s East Cape at 9.44am and will be approximiately one metre high.

Samoan reports say the wave that hit in Apia was 0.7 of a metre while the second, larger wave in Pago Pago was measured at 1.7 metres.

Most low lying coastal areas of Apia have been affected with damage to many homes but there are no reports of deaths or injuries at this time.

Sea level readings indicated a tsunami was generated in the Pacific and Warwick Smith, senior seismologist at GNS, told Breakfast that if there is a tsunami, it will hit the East Cape first at 9.44am.

It would then hit Gisborne at 10.00am, Napier at 10.40am, Wellington at 10.50am and Auckland at 11.12am.The warning is in effect for American Samoa, Samoa, Niue Island, the Wallis and Futuna Islands, the Tokelau atolls, the Cook Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Kermadec Islands, the Baker and Howland Islands, Jarvis Island, French Polynesia and the Palmyra Islands, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said.

New Zealand’s Ministry of Civil Defence Director, John Hamilton, says the Ministry has alerted the country’s regional Civil Defence Emergency Management CDEM Groups, Police, Fire Service, Ministry of Health, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and other government agencies, and media.

The Ministry has activated the National Crisis Management Centre and is co-ordinating central government response.

The Civil Defence Emergency Management sector is activating its emergency plans. Regional Civil Defence Emergency Management Groups are working urgently with local authorities, local emergency services and local media to warn and if necessary evacuate coastal areas at risk. – co.nz

>Adolf Hitler suicide story questioned after tests reveal skull is a woman’s

>

Adolf Hitler’s suicide in his Berlin bunker has been called into question after American researchers claimed that a bullet-punctured skull fragment long believed to belong to the Nazi dictator is, in fact, that of an unknown woman.

The four-inch skull fragment has a hole where a bullet reportedly passed through Hitler’s left temple when he shot himself and is kept in Russia’s federal archives along with what are said to be his jawbones. Together, they are all that is left of Hitler’s body, the charred remains of which Soviet forces first recovered in 1945. For years, the Russians have held up the artefacts as proof that Soviet troops found Hitler’s body in the ruins of Berlin and that he died on April 30 when he shot himself just after taking cyanide.

But a History Channel documentary programme broadcast in the US called Hitler’s Escape claims the skull fragment belongs to a woman under 40 and not Hitler, who was 56 when he died. It quotes Nick Bellantoni, an archaeologist and bone specialist who took DNA samples from the skull in Moscow and had them tested at the University of Connecticut. He and his colleagues are sceptical that the skull fragment could belong to Eva Braun, Hitler’s long-time companion, since she is thought to have committed suicide by cyanide rather than with a gun.

The findings are likely to revive conspiracy theories suggesting that Hitler did not die in 1945 but survived and fled to South America or elsewhere. Proponents of that theory believe Soviet troops found only his body double.

via Adolf Hitler suicide story questioned after tests reveal skull is a woman’s – Telegraph.

>World’s tallest man on vacation

>

Sultan Kosen, the tallest man in the world, has taken his second international holiday, leaving his native Turkey to visit Austria, where he reflected on the problems of being 8 feet, one inch high.

The 27-year-old farmer – whose towering status has been certified by Guinness World Records – signed hundreds of autographs and shook thousands of hands at a sun-kissed gathering of record holders in Prater park.

“I don’t consider myself a star, but rather as a champion because I am the tallest,” said Kosen, who surged in height from the age of 10 due to a tumour that caused too much growth hormone to be released from his pituitary gland.

“The advantages of being so tall are balanced by the inconveniences,” he said, such as “the difficulty in finding clothes that fit and the acrobatics involved in getting into a taxi.”

Kosen was in London earlier this month on his first trip ever outside Turkey, where his four siblings are all normal-sized.

Also appearing at the Vienna Recordia event on Sunday was Austrian strongman Franz Muellner, who set a world record for car-flipping as he overturned a red sedan eight times in five minutes.

via World’s tallest man goes on holiday – Telegraph.

>World’s tallest man on vacation

>

Sultan Kosen, the tallest man in the world, has taken his second international holiday, leaving his native Turkey to visit Austria, where he reflected on the problems of being 8 feet, one inch high.

The 27-year-old farmer – whose towering status has been certified by Guinness World Records – signed hundreds of autographs and shook thousands of hands at a sun-kissed gathering of record holders in Prater park.

“I don’t consider myself a star, but rather as a champion because I am the tallest,” said Kosen, who surged in height from the age of 10 due to a tumour that caused too much growth hormone to be released from his pituitary gland.

“The advantages of being so tall are balanced by the inconveniences,” he said, such as “the difficulty in finding clothes that fit and the acrobatics involved in getting into a taxi.”

Kosen was in London earlier this month on his first trip ever outside Turkey, where his four siblings are all normal-sized.

Also appearing at the Vienna Recordia event on Sunday was Austrian strongman Franz Muellner, who set a world record for car-flipping as he overturned a red sedan eight times in five minutes.

via World’s tallest man goes on holiday – Telegraph.