Cold War Gothic: the Soviet Union actually built a doomsday machine, according to Wired. If it looked like the US had launched a nuclear surprise attack, and Moscow's leadership had been wiped out, "Perimeter" would launch the USSR's nuclear arsenal.
Perimeter was also called Miertvaya Ruka: "Dead Hand."
The article has some brooding, Gothic passages, like so:
Hidden in hardened silos designed to withstand the massive blast and electromagnetic pulses of a nuclear explosion, these missiles would launch first and then radio down coded orders to whatever Soviet weapons had survived the first strike. At that point, the machines will have taken over the war. Soaring over the smoldering, radioactive ruins of the motherland, and with all ground communications destroyed, the command missiles would lead the destruction of the US.
And now Dead Hand - sorry, Perimeter - has become a historical secret. According to author Thompson, it can't be spoken of. And maybe worse: "One Soviet official who spoke with Americans about the system died in a mysterious fall down a staircase."
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