The big red nuclear button

Beginning in 1945 and well into the 1980s, The Button was a very bad thing. Science and technology had progressed to where we had mounted highly destructive bombs on highly accurate missiles. Nuclear bombs that could rip apart entire cities, killing millions in a heartbeat. All you had to do is Push The Button.

We developed political strategies like they were chess games. If you push the button, we will push a bigger button. If you destroy us, you destroy yourself. Mutually-assured destruction. And the ease with which this was possible, the simplicity of launching a fleet of missiles that could trigger a war that can not be recovered from, was personified by a single big red button.

This was one button you did NOT want to push. Usability was, maybe for the first time, definitely undesirable. The designers of this button did all they could to make this button nearly impossible to push. Put it inside a glass box. Lock the box. Give the key to someone important. No, put two locks in there and make two separate people turn their keys on 3, 2, 1. Add a secret code that must be entered into the CRM114 before the two men turn their keys. Usability was highly discouraged.

We will never know if there actually was a big red button, but because movies and television communicate this simplicity of destruction with a big red button, that’s how we visualize it. It’s a perfect shorthand, extending the the contemporary notions of “buttons mean automation” to “the button means automated war.”

To this day, the phrase having a “finger on the button” implies “Do you trust this person to wisely use their potential power for destruction? Do you trust their access to the button?” And sadly, the answer is usually No.