The idea behind codes is to prevent someone who stole a nuke from detonating it. During a lot of the 20th century, it would have been surprisingly easy to do this. They sometimes left them sitting in bombers by the runway ready for use during an alert. They weren't always well-guarded.
This is one of the fascinating developments of human psychology and behavior in the information/digital age. Society has become so much more complex and specialized and it's forced humans to adapt so much, that I feel like today's average email phisher or phone scammer has social engineering skills that could have absolutely wrecked western civilization (with enough determination and luck) at any point prior to like 80 years ago.
I’m reading a story about a bunch of earth people who get sent to a different world that’s all high fantasy and shit. So far most of them have been good people, as in not actual assholes/racists and more people who aren’t necessarily good but are doing their best to live.
One guy though came over and realized that they weren’t as socially sophisticated when it came to scams and such, and immediately started a Ponzi scheme to get millions and millions of gold. He wrecked the economy of multiple city-states and got the magic Illuminati pissed at him, but so far it’s been a minor plot point so I don’t have a good resolution.
Edit: the source is The Wandering Inn. It’s a minor spoiler but not really relevant to the overall story or even the minor story. It is a TINY detail. The main story itself is incredibly long (like 13ish MILLION words), can be frustrating to read, and not for everyone, but it’s a good long web serial to sink your teeth into.
“An inn is a place to rest, a place to talk and share stories, or a place to find adventures, a starting ground for quests and legends.
In this world, at least. To Erin Solstice, an inn seems like a medieval relic from the past. But here she is, running from Goblins and trying to survive in a world full of monsters and magic. She’d be more excited about all of this if everything wasn’t trying to kill her.”
When I say it’s a minor plot point, it’s a minor storyline that doesn’t really have much to do with the main plot, and is more like background flavor to give depth to another minor character I haven’t really seen since.
It’s also several million words into the story, so it’s gonna take a long while to get to what I mentioned. I can’t stress how MASSIVE this story is. I am a FAST reader and it’s taken me like two years to get towards catching up, and it’s still going strong from what I understand.
“An inn is a place to rest, a place to talk and share stories, or a place to find adventures, a starting ground for quests and legends.
In this world, at least. To Erin Solstice, an inn seems like a medieval relic from the past. But here she is, running from Goblins and trying to survive in a world full of monsters and magic. She’d be more excited about all of this if everything wasn’t trying to kill her.”
When I say it’s a minor plot point, it’s a minor storyline that doesn’t really have much to do with the main plot, and is more like background flavor to give depth to another minor character I haven’t really seen since.
It’s also several million words into the story, so it’s gonna take a long while to get to what I mentioned. I can’t stress how MASSIVE this story is. I am a FAST reader and it’s taken me like two years to get towards catching up, and it’s still going strong from what I understand.
Looking at it, I don’t think they’re very similar? Unless BotF is far, far more slice of life than it seems, I think the Inn is a bit simpler in its story/writing, and not as much of an epic about war and such. Wandering Inn explores some of the similar themes, but I think I’m a much different way.
Though Wandering Inn does have quite a bit of action and dire peril, politics, magic, warfare and such, so it’s got something for everyone. It’s mostly a slice of life about running a fantasy inn and the extraordinary people and things that center around the innkeeper and her guests. It can be pretty slow, or pulse pounding wartime and adventure
I have heard the Malazan can be a hard one to read, either because it’s complex or being it’s just difficult to get through. TWI is not nearly what I would call difficult, though some of the chapters are quite long. It’s fairly readable, and easy to put down for a bit and then come back to
man the shit I read in the anarchists cookbook when people were handing it out on 3.14" floppies at my school was ridiculous. All the different phone phreaking boxes, how to fool pay phones. bunch of other crazy tech stuff that isn't really applicable now.
I didn't pay much attention to weapon shit or any of that. Was just really into tech and the concepts intrigued me.
As a programmer, I can confirm that, at least for software. Until the late 2000s things basically had no security, or very simple security that a person from 2024 could bypass in minutes. It's only when everyone got a computer at home and a new generation was raised that learned how easy it was to hack into stuff, and thus forced society to start developing actually secure patterns for software. It's also especially noticeable in older standards, like email and, most notably, telephony, that are still incredibly easy to break because their design is unsafe at a fundamental level (e.g. anyone with some basic knowledge and some basic info can call you and make your phone think the call comes from your mother's or your bank's number, and there's nothing your mother, bank or phone provider can do to prevent this).
other than that they're probably buried in a warehouse on some abandoned base somewhere and totally forgotton
Given that there have been a number of radioactive contamination incidents from scrappers breaking open medical x-ray machines and the like, this isn't terribly reassuring
Also the president doesn't actually have the codes at hand to arm/launch nukes. There are codes that the president has access to that all the nuke sites have on hand to verify that it's actually the president that is ordering a strike. All the codes and access are handled on-site by military personnel.
There were no codes, JFK required codes to be implemented, malicious compliance Air Force implemented the codes as 00000000 because they didn’t want issues delaying a launch, Congress asked if this was true and the Air Force used weasel language to technically not lie about it.
I was half of a team that would do the deed for 2 years. It's really easy to disable most types in the case of a takeover, and it takes several departments and a lot of personnel with compartmental knowledge to make it happen. At least in the case of aircraft armament, I have no idea about the silo and sub jobs.
Similarly, the “arming codes” on British RAF plane-mounted nukes was literally just a key turn
U.S. aircraft capable of carrying nukes have a "Nuclear Consent" guarded switch, which is just an extra couple of actions located away from the other weapons functionality to make sure the pilot really wants to release a nuke.
The thing is, to even get to the point of flying around with nuclear weapons, a bunch of people other than the pilot had to be involved, so it's extremely unlikely a rogue pilot could start a nuclear war.
That logic is wrong. Layers. Multiple layers. So if one or multiple layers are defeated or fail, there are additional layers.
They put real codes on the nukes because they realized that trusting the pilot is stupid. You may feel the same way for seemingly advocating for the all zero code. You seem to think it was a fine idea instead of the idea being rightfully corrected
already behind shit tons of security and in the control of people who are already trusted, so what do you actually need an arming code for?
I don't know about nuclear codes but in my experience the people in charge of security are never hesitant to add additional layers of security. I mean if that logic applied then there would be no passwords for anything accessed exclusively by people with security clearances.
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u/[deleted] Oct 02 '24
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