The Soviet doomsday machine

(NY Times) - David E. Hoffman's “The Dead Hand”
(Amazon.com: http://xrl.us/DeadHand ) takes its title from
a Soviet doomsday machine first conceived under Brezhnev.
Because the Soviets feared “decapitation” — the killing of
its leaders in one fast, huge American nuclear strike —
they developed an automatic retaliatory system to launch
their missiles even if their command structure no longer
existed. Thus the fate of the planet would rest on the
shoulders of a few low-ranking officers sweating in a
concrete bunker. Those officers were the twitching fingers
of a dead hand.

In “The Dead Hand” Hoffman delivers a readable, many-
tentacled account of the decades-long military standoff
between the United States and the Soviet Union. He touches
the usual bases, from the dawn of mutual assured
destruction through the Nixon-era attempts at détente to
Reagan’s unshakable devotion to the Strategic Defense
Initiative, aka "Star Wars".

What’s particularly valuable about Mr. Hoffman’s book,
however, is the skill with which he narrows his focus (and
his indefatigable reporting) down to a few essential areas.
Thanks to interviews and new documents, he provides the
fullest — and quite frankly the most terrifying — account
to date of the enormous and covert Soviet biological
weapons program, developed in defiance of international
treaties at the same time that the Soviets appeared to be
earnestly interested in reducing their weapons stockpile...

Continued: http://xrl.us/DeadHandReview
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