From: jxxl@taurus.cs.nps.navy.mil (John Locke)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies,alt.war
Subject: Technical Criticisms of "Fail-Safe"
Date: 4 Sep 92 23:09:01 GMT
Followup-To: rec.arts.movies
Organization: Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey CA


The following is for fans of "Fail-Safe," novel or movie. Spoilers galore.
The novel was written by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler and was a
bestseller in the early sixties. The below quoted comments are from "The
Fail-Safe Fallacy," by Sidney Hook, 1963. Hook was responding forcefully
to the novel (the movie was yet to be made), but many of his comments are
applicable to the movie, which followed the novel closely. Judging from
TFSF, though, the novel was more strident in its alarmism, pushing the
argument that an accident of the kind depicted was not only possible but
inevitable. Hook's thesis:

"The authors assume that a failure in a single computer can lead to an
unauthorized nuclear attack, that the failure cannot be traced to its
source and identified for several hours, that multiple efforts to recall
the flight crews or abort their machines are unsuccessful, that two
bombers can penetrate the entire system of Soviet defense (*) even when the
Soviets are given advance warning, and that in the face of an openly
admitted error, which the Americans desperately try to rectify, war or
the nuclear destruction of the country's largest city must result. To
assume all this is to compound a series of unrelated improbabilities to
the point where they transcend the sober limits of scientific credibility."

(*) a pre-Mathias Rust point of view?

Following are the contentious plot elements and Hook's responses:

In the story, the failure of an electronic component triggers the
accident: "One can devise systems capable of reporting instantly the
malfunction of any machine. Even the most primitive methods, such as
using two machines that cross check each other, go a long way towards
eliminating the type of mistake around which the story is built."

Hook also criticizes the authors for being vague about which part
actually fails.

The failure of the part causes the go ahead message to be sent to the
planes reaching the fail-safe point: "In fact, any failure in the
communications system would automatically *prevent* the sending of such
a message...The standard orders in the control procedures are that unless
a bomber at the fail-safe point receives a positive command to attack
from the highest American authority it must automatically return."

The President orders New York to be bombed to convince the Soviets that
the accident was truly an accident: "If the avowal of error were openly
made by the offending side, coupled with an offer to make appropriate
compensation, a nuclear war would *not* necessarily result. It is only
when a reported mechanical failure is interpreted as part of a strategy
of political deception that it is likely to provoke a response and lead
to war."

Attempts to recall the planes fail when the airmen conclude that the
President's voice is an enemy ruse: "The President's voice is easy to
mimic and they have been warned against precisely that trick. But they
obviously have also been informed how to tell when it is *not* a trick."

As a final unrelated note, Hook points out that the civilian advisor,
Groteschele (Walter Matthau), is intended to represent Herman Kahn, the
author of "On Thermonuclear War." I had always assumed it was supposed to
be Kissinger.

[Followup-To: rec.arts.movies}

John