00:00The Soviet Union built a machine to end the world, and then they left it running.
00:04In the early 1980s, the Soviets quietly activated a system called Perimeter.
00:09Its one purpose was simple.
00:11If nuclear missiles hit Moscow and killed everyone in command,
00:15Perimeter would detect the strike, confirm the attack,
00:17and launch a full retaliatory response entirely on its own.
00:21No human required.
00:23No one to give the order.
00:24No one left to stop it.
00:26American officials had no idea it existed.
00:28Not during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
00:31Not during any standoff, any close call, any moment the world nearly ended.
00:36The Soviets only disclosed it in 1993, after the Cold War was already over.
00:41By then, it had been running for over a decade.
00:44Here is the part that stays with you.
00:45Perimeter is believed to still be active right now.
00:48A machine built specifically to guarantee mutual annihilation, even if no one survives to choose it.
00:54Every international crisis since, every raised alert, every close call, it was there, listening, waiting, ready.
