Adoomsday device is a hypothetical construction – usually a weapon or weapons system – which could destroy all life on a planet, particularlyEarth, or destroy the planet itself, bringing "doomsday", a term used for the end of planet Earth. Most hypothetical constructions rely onhydrogen bombs being made arbitrarily large, assuming there are no concerns about delivering them to a target (seeTeller–Ulam design) or that they can be "salted" with materials designed to create long-lasting and hazardous fallout (e.g., acobalt bomb).
Doomsday devices and thenuclear holocaust they bring about have been present in literature and art especially in the 20th century, when advances inscience andtechnology made world destruction (or at least the eradication of all human life) a credible scenario. Many classics in the genre ofscience fiction take up the theme in this respect. The term "doomsday machine" itself is attested from 1960,[1] but thealliterative "doomsday device" has since become the more popular phrase.
Since the 1954Castle Bravo thermonuclear weapon test demonstrated the feasibility of making arbitrarily large nuclear devices which could cover vast areas with radioactive fallout by rendering anything around them intensely radioactive, nuclear weapons theorists such asLeo Szilard conceived of a doomsday machine, a massive thermonuclear device surrounded by hundreds of tons of cobalt which, when detonated, would create massive amounts ofCobalt-60, rendering most of the Earth too radioactive to support life.RAND strategistHerman Kahn postulated that Soviet or US nuclear decision makers might choose to build a doomsday machine that would consist of acomputer linked to a stockpile of hydrogen bombs, programmed to detonate them all and bathe the planet innuclear fallout at the signal of an impending nuclear attack from another nation.[2]
The doomsday device's theoretical ability to deter a nuclear attack is that it would go off automatically without human aid and despite human intervention. Kahn conceded that some planners might see "doomsday machines" as providing a highly credible threat that would dissuade attackers and avoid the dangerous game ofbrinkmanship caused by themassive retaliation concept which governed US-Soviet nuclear relations in the mid-1950s. However, in his discussion of doomsday machines, Kahn raises the problem of a nuclear-armedNth country triggering a doomsday machine, and states that he didn't advocate that the US acquire a doomsday machine.[3]
TheDead Hand (or "Perimeter") system built by theSoviet Union during theCold War has been called a "doomsday machine" due to itsfail-deadly design and nuclear capabilities.[4][5]
Doomsday devices started becoming more common in science fiction in the1940s and1950s, due to the invention of nuclear weapons and the constant fear of total destruction.[6] A well-known example is in the filmDr. Strangelove (1964), where a doomsday device, based on Szilard and Kahn's ideas, is triggered by an incompletely aborted American attack and all life on Earth is extinguished.[6] Another is in the Star Trek episodeThe Doomsday Machine (1967), where the crew of theEnterprise fights a powerful planet-killing alien machine. InBeneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), a cobalt device destroys life on earth. However, doomsday devices also expanded to encompass many other types of fictional technology, one of the most famous of which is theDeath Star, a planet-destroying, moon-sizedspace station.[6]
Some works have also considered the erroneous activation of doomsday devices by external factors orchain reactions. An example of both isVirus (1980), where an earthquake is misdetected as a nuclear explosion and triggers a sequence ofAutomated Reaction Systems (ARS). Various types of fictional doomsday devices have also been activated as part of anAI takeover.[7] This includes the missile launch system in the movieWarGames (1983), control of which has been handed entirely to a computer, andSkynet's nigh-destruction of the human race inThe Terminator (1984).[7]
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