Not climate change — nuclear war is humanity’s most immediate threat.  During these tumultuous times, we’re burdened with Biden, an obstreperous oaf who has sole authority to launch nuclear weapons.  That’s not propitious for the future of life.

There has been legitimate consternation over the geriatric nature of our leaders, especially Biden.  That has led to a chorus of calls for cognitive tests.  They will help identify intellectual infants including Biden, but when it comes to the most impactful decision a commander-in-chief can make, there’s something else we must do.  To give us more time to deliberate the fate of humanity, we must end sole authority to access the “nuclear football” via a vote in Congress.

Concomitantly, we’d have to mollify our hair-trigger posture by reducing reliance on land-based ICBMs in favor of our submerged Boomers.  Actually, our undetectable Ohio-class SSBNs have enough warheads to incinerate our glorious Pale Blue Dot over and over. 

Since we can ensure Mutually Assured Destruction with the submarine element of our nuclear triad, decision-makers (notice that’s plural) will have more time to assess whether those radar stations are tracking geese, swans, space junk, a satellite launch, or actual nuclear-tipped missiles. 

In fact, there have been so many perilously close nuclear mishaps that it’s a wonder we’re still here, able to indulge the observer selection effect.  These resulted from such trivial things as faulty cheap chips in computer systems, faulty software, and faulty communications escalating to faulty alarms.  With all our technical sophistication, we are probably even more vulnerable to miscalculation now, with more advanced weapons, insidious cyber-attacks, A.I., and a faulty president who’s detrimental to the future of life.

Thank goodness there was no “sole authority” to launch from the Soviet sub that nearly unleashed nuclear-tipped torpedoes during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

As Soviet crewmen were on tenterhooks and under horrendously stifling and stressful conditions around Cuba, the Sub B-59 was alerted with grenades and non-lethal depth charges from the USS Beale.  Fearing they were under attack, and without radio communication to confirm the start of WWIII, two of the three Soviet officers required to unanimously authorize the launch were convinced.  However, Captain (not of this particular sub) Vasily Arkipov prevented the launch.  In large part, the future of life persists because the launch required unanimity among the empowered decision-makers.

Here’s another example that suggests that one way to lower the odds of the unthinkable is to eliminate sole authority to launch in conjunction with reducing retaliatory reliance on vulnerable land-based nukes.

Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov of the Soviet Air Defense Forces has been described as “the man who saved the world.”  The early-warning satellite system he was monitoring during heightened tensions in 1983 detected five incoming ICBMs.  If he had alerted his “superiors,” protocol suggests they’d likely launch a counterattack.  With immediacy paramount, Petrov determined that the alarm was false, reasoning that the U.S. would send more than five missiles in a pre-emptive strike.  Posterity supported his intuition: turns out the Soviet satellites mistook sunlight reflecting off clouds for missiles.

Petrov indeed deserves the “Future of Life” award.  Nevertheless, no one, especially Biden, needs to be so beholden to an early-warning system because of the need to use them or lose them.  No one person should be compelled into making decisions about the future of our planet in mere minutes.  As Max Korda of the Federation of American Scientists points out (PDF, page 6), “even without the ICBMs, an adversary could never hope to destroy every US bomber and nuclear-armed submarine in an attempted first strike.” 

With confidence in our submerged SSBN deterrent — even the GAO has concluded that the survivability of the SSBN fleet would not be in question — we can minimize Russia’s potential to miscalculate by adopting transparent “no sole authority” and “no first use” policies.  Indeed, in the spirit of “trust but verify,” we could separate nuclear warheads from land-based missiles, a process known as “de-mating” that is practiced in China.

As the Arkipov and Petrov episodes illustrate, we’ve been lucky in testing providence’s patience.  Pre-eminent physicist Max Tegmark noted that with even a 1% chance of nuclear war, that’d mean we’d probably have one within a century.  Stephen Hawking was equally dire.

Many other scientists concede that nuclear weapons, not global warming, pose the biggest threat to Earth’s habitability.  Even “America’s top banker,” Jamie Dimon, admits this may be “the most dangerous time the world has seen in decades.”  So who you gonna call when the early-warning display lights up?

In an effort to portray sagacity born of experience, previous presidential aspirants have run “3 A.M.” ads.  A somber voice queries: “It’s 3 A.M., and your children are safe and asleep.  Who do you want answering the phone?”  Rather than the hyperbole of many political ads, this one resonates.  In fact, in 1980, a technological glitch prompted surveillance computers to indicate 200 inbound missiles from the Soviet Union.  The “call” came in to the White House at 3 A.M.  Fortunately for future life, the false alarm was detected just before waking up Carter.

Can you imagine the alternative?  There’s not much need to harp on about sleepy Biden’s incapacity to process “the call” — it’s obvious.  But not just Biden. 

No single individual should have that awesome responsibility even with perfect information, let alone trying to discover technological gremlins. 

No single individual needs to make a hasty decision that conflagrates our resplendent blue orb floating in the dark void of space. 

Who you gonna call?  At least within cloistered ops rooms, or a reinforced national security sanctuary, there’s a bit of time for select advisers to ascertain threat authenticity and deliberate responses before turning our majestic Earth into a lifeless Venus look-alike.

Image: Curtis Gregory Perry via Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.