http://nfttu.blogspot.com/2006/01/pinnacle-nucflash.html To the left: the "football". This is the satchel that follows the US President with him wherever he goes. It contains the "go codes" to launch nuclear strikes. Take any good nuclear Armageddon movie, from Dr. Strangelove, to Fail Safe, to The Sum of All Fears, there.s always a scene in which the erstwhile lightly engaged president is either tendered an urgent note or handed a telephone by his top aide. Cut to a closeup on the president's face. His expression changes immediately, the color drains from his face, followed by a sound-on-sound slash cut that takes the viewer to an underground bunker, deep under a Virginia mountain. There, a collection of grim faced, high-ranking military men work determinedly to avoid a global catastrophe. . . What words are written on that note, what could it say that can make the President go white in an instant? What are the words that the president never wants to see on a note thrust into his hand while he is busy giving a speech? I believe the answer is .PINNACLE/NUCFLASH.. Pinnacle/nucflash is the military communications code word designation that instructs all military communication personnel to stop whatever else they.re doing and transmit the message that immediately, because there's some bad news, really, really bad news that you need to act on right now. There is a set of instructions that describes exactly how information relating to military threats to the USA is designated, prioritized, and delivered. The rules are spelled out in precise military fashion in a document called OPREP-3, the US Military.s written guideline for operational reports relating to important events involving nuclear weapons. .PINNACLE/NUCFLASH. are the flagwords or header that presages an electronic transmission through the U.S. military's command and control structure that reports an actual or possible detonation of a nuclear weapon. Not only that, these code words mean that the explosion was not an accident and the risk of nuclear war is imminent. As one might expect, .PINNACLE/NUCFLASH. has the highest precedence in the OPREP-3 reporting structure. Men and women train for months, years, in order to be able to coolly and efficiently handle the communications that follow an OPREP-3 PINNACLE level flagword. There are several OPREP-3 code word designators with a chilling cold war/Tom Clancy/John Lecarre ring to them. None of these foreshadow good news. I'll write more on those later. Well, going back to the movies mentioned in the first paragraph, do you know of any other nuclear armaggeon movies? Any movie in which the bomb actually went off? I'm making a list. (I like to make lists of movies. Sometime I'll share my list of movies with trebuchets.) posted by Bill Gurstelle at 6:35 AM 45 Comments: * The details of the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) are certainly a fascinating area of military protocol. The SIOP, which includes 5 Major Attack Options and 165 Limited Attack Options is the plan that is initialized by the nuclear football. I know that it takes two people from a list in order to order a strike, and that they do so through the STRATCOM headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska. Redudant facilities that can serve this purpose include the National Alternative Military Command in Pennsylvania and 'Looking Glass' - a ruggedized 747. What I wonder is what mechanism is used to pass authentication tokens (or whatever control is used) from one person to another in the event that they are killed or incapacitated. I could imagine either an automated system based on some kind of network of dead-man switches or the use of a trusted third party (in which case, I would be interested in knowing their authentication and verification protocols). With regard to films involving nuclear weapons, the non-fiction documentary "Fog of War" is an excellent example. ... -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]