 The “nuclear football” carried by an aide near the US President at all times is primarily a piece of political theater, a hoax, to keep the public ignorant of the real problems of nuclear command and control, he said.In Russia, this included a semi-automatic “Dead Hand” system, whereby a nuclear explosion in Moscow, whether accidental or by a foreign state or terrorists, would induce low-level officers to launch ICBMs toward targets in the US, presumed to be the origin of such attacks.The first ICBMs launched in this way “would beep a Go signal to any ICBM sites they passed over”, which would launch those other ICBMs without further human intervention.