bunkered in an incredibly strange underground chamber.

As Hoffman told Lewis, the Perimeter system’s on-switch was “briefly” located in “a deep hardened underground bunker in the shape of a sphere, very deep and very hardened, probably the most secure place of all time in the Cold War.”

In this isolated spheroid room, “a couple of duty officers” would sit and wait for three conditions to be met: “predelegation,” decapitation, and active nuclear war.

Hoffman explains that the duty officers could make the perimeter system operational only if the Kremlin activated the system through a “predelegation switch,” if there was “a complete loss of communication with the national command authority,” and if “a complex system of sensors” had detected a nuclear detonation inside of the Soviet Union.

Three lights in the bunker had to be flashing the indicate the three criteria. The duty officers then had the option of issuing launch commands to small missiles that would fly the entire width of the Soviet Union and “give commands electronically to all the missile silos below to launch,” Hoffman said.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/a-spherical-bunker-in-russia-was...