Everyone listened to the announcement in silence, glancing around, though some showed no reaction.

– So, what are we dealing with, what is the problem: the Perimeter system is known in Europe and the United States as the "dead hand". It is a complex of automatic control of a massive retaliatory nuclear strike, created in the USSR at the height of the Cold War. It is designed for guaranteed delivery of combat orders from higher levels of control to command centers and individual launchers of strategic missiles on alert, in case of emergency, when communication lines may be damaged. The Perimeter system is an alternative command system for all branches of the armed forces with nuclear weapons. It was created as a backup communications system in case key nodes of the Kazbek command system and communications lines are destroyed by a first strike in accordance with the U.S. concept of "limited nuclear warfare." Let me tell you about the Kazbek system right away. It is known to the general public thanks to the Cheget subscriber complex, or nuclear suitcase. The Cheget subscriber complex is a retaliatory strike tool. It is activated only after receiving a signal of a missile attack on Russia. First, a signal is received from the early warning system about a missile attack. It is checked by the duty general of the command center in Solnechnogorsk. Only then is the Kazbek system put into combat mode. The suitcase contains communication equipment with the General Staff and the command of the Strategic Missile Forces. Hereinafter I will use the abbreviation RVSN. Roughly speaking, it is a telephone, but the information is transmitted not by voice, but by encrypted symbols. It is impossible to block communication. There are three Chegetas on permanent duty: the Head of State, the Minister of Defense and the Chief of the General Staff. There are also duplicate ones. "The main button" in the suitcases is there – it transmits to the command centers of the Strategic Missile Forces a code authorizing the use of nuclear weapons. But missiles will be launched only if commands to do so are received from all three consoles. As I said, the total number of suitcases is more than three, the system is duplicated, but only a very narrow circle of people know about it. In addition, they are changed, checked, repaired. How many of them there are, only Department "C" knows.

Yuri Vasilyevich thought for a couple of seconds and said:

– The only time Cheget was used was on January 25, 1995, after the world's largest meteorological missile, the Black Brant XII, was launched from an island off the coast of Norway. Its flight trajectory resembled that of an American Trident ICBM fired from a submarine. Its final destination could have been a high-altitude nuclear explosion, disabling Russian missile warning radars. The Norwegians' notification of the missile launch got lost in the Foreign Ministry, and the next day Boris Yeltsin said that for the first time he used his briefcase for emergency communication with military advisers. This is a very interesting story in terms of why this happened. I will tell you about it separately, because, as one knowledgeable general said, it was a surprise only for Boris Yeltsin. By the way, I can say that if anyone thinks that such situations are funny, he is very mistaken. To give you an example, let me tell you about some of these situations. Do you remember those very radio sockets in old apartments that broadcast two programs? They were of great importance as a stand-alone, power-independent civil defense warning system in the USSR. There was a similar system in the U.S., and it was regularly tested to make sure it worked. All radio and television stations sent out test messages with alarm codes to check the operability of communications. This was and is handled by a special center at NORAD, i.e. the North American Aerospace Defense Command. At 9:33 a.m. on a February Saturday morning in 1971, a teletype operator at the National Civilian Warning Center ran an erroneous message into the system accompanied by the code Hatefulness, which meant a real emergency, not a drill. 5,000 radio stations and 800 television transmission centers received a message that read, "Attention! This is an emergency message coming directly from the President of the United States. Immediately cease normal broadcasting and begin broadcasting emergency messages beginning with the appropriate code. Stand by for further instructions." Panic broke out across the country and lasted for nearly 40 minutes until a retraction was issued.