Air Force Swears: Our Nuke Launch Code Was Never '00000000'

Foreign Policy ^ | JANUARY 20, 2014 | DAN LAMOTHE

[TaMoDee]

Way to complicated to remember. With “LAUNCH” as the code all they had to do was punch in the name on the launch button. Remember the Launch Officer was probably stoned.

[Rebelbase]

I only see one zero.

[Repeat Offender]

Anyone know anything about launch cooooodes?

[RJS1950]

Where and when? Atlas, Titan, Minuteman? The default enable panel codes were set to zeros. Enable codes were separate split knowledge cards. The default settings were nulls, did nothing.

[Doomonyou]

http://www.wimp.com/allzeroes/

[zot]

Thanks for the ping. In this case, I believe the Air Force. I was on an aircrew in SAC during the Cuban missile crisis. Launch messages were never a single string of digits. They were a series of four-letter groups that had to be authenticated and then decoded using a one-time pad. We were tested on this procedure every time we went on alert, and the minimum passing grade was 100 percent.

[tanknetter]

LEMAYROX, all caps ...