Having spent altogether more than 1 year on missile alert as well as many other assorted related assignments, I think the article was good except for Ron Rosenbaum's naive willingness to take crew members' musings as unmitigated fact. A lot of crewmembers do indeed espouse dark-humor but often pass on rumor and half-truths as gospel. They are sincere and do possess arcane military knowledge, but a grain of salt must often be applied.

Certainly all crews are taught to mechanically follow the checklists and rules for initiating a ICBM counterstrike, but they also have it pounded into them to use their brains, to make sure they are doing the right thing, and most importantly to make sure they never, ever screw up -- the concept is affectionally termed (and derided) as "read a step, do a step, eat a banana."

No missile crew member survives without developing a good sense of humor (often the afrementioned dark one), however the talk about the crew's ability to override safeguards and initiate an unauthorized launch is overly ambitious and the author should have cross checked that factoid and provided exulpapory facts such as the systems are designd so that no single crew can command a launch, even if they did turn the launch keys. The new systems in use prevent the "spoon and string" approach -- and all other crews on duty have full transparency of all launch command actions and can stop the launch from their own missile launch facility.

The author should have also noted the huge changes in the US nuclear posture in the last decade (downsizing and stand down from "hair trigger" status) and that the US has publicized its stance. The chance of the US lauching a nuclear strike is so low (either intentionally, accidently, or at the whim of a rogue officer), it won't be the US that triggers a Russian "Doomsday" device. Remember Russia has other nuclear armed countries whom it has "worries." They need to be engaged as well.