How Safe is Fail-Safe ?

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30188, 20 July 1963, Page 3

How Safe is Fail-Safe ?

Fail-Safe. By Eugene Bur-i] dick and Harvey Wheeler, i Hutchinson. 256 pp. This is a novel about a | United States nuclear attack on Moscow, launched by’ accident. impossible of recall, ; beyond the ability of the ' Russians to fend off, and fin- . ally to prevent total war. , avenged by the destruction , of New York at the order of I; the President himself. Fail-safe is a protective L system employed by the-: United States Strategic Air I Command and it is explained I in this book to a Congress-; man visiting an underground war headquarters: "What all this machinery assures us is < that if we do go to war it ; is not by accident or because of the act of some madman. This system is infallible.” 1 In this story, the system is no. infallible; tjie« authors argue that there are people who ought to know this, and ,

people who do know but do | nothing until six 1500-m.p.h. bombers are hurtling towards Moscow with 20-megaton bombs. The possibility of such an accident happening is real, say the authors in a preface. The laws of probability assure them that ultimately the accident will occur. But the events in their story do not seem to follow the laws of probability at all. The succession of failures in attempts to recall the attack after the “go" order has been given through an unmonitored technical fault is alarming, for the story is well told. But it is hardly credible. The dice are loaded. The unswerving horror course along which the authors steer events excites the feelings but blurs common sense. One of the important argu-i ments in the book is about the reaction of a nation to an accidental attack. At the i

moment of crisis, the most prominent adviser on the theories of defence sheds ttie sophistries by which he has earned a fat income and tells the Secretary for Defence: “(The Russians) will not allow the world to be destroyed. They aim to dominate it eventually and want it reasonably intact. So they would surrender."

He does not quite forecast the response the book attributes to Mr Khrushchev to withhold his counter-attack. Mr Khrushchev seeks only to be convinced that the attack is in fact an accident He demonstrates none of the opportunism one might expect. He demands no political advantage and accepts, rather sadly, the President's offer of an eye for an eye, a city for a city. It does not do him credit There is a bizzare, moralising telephone conversation on the "hot line” ending in agreement to disarm because both sides have put too much trust in their machines. It has been a struggle, the leaders agree, not with each other but against a big. rebellious, computerised defence system That is the message of this book.

There are more compelling and urgent reasons for disarmament than this one. which is supported by an incredible series of coincidences. But if this book leaves doubts about the odds favouring a fatal accident in the world’s most sophisticated defence mechanism, it leaves one nasty thought. The odds may be a good deal shorter in the less elaborately controlled systems of other nations. There the mistake may even be a simple, human error. Then perhaps, as the authors say, there will remain only a choice of disasters.