When mankind first created nuclear weapons, we took every possible precaution to ensure those doomsday devices could never be used by the wrong hands. Well, we took most of the precautions, and we ensured our weapons of mass destruction could almost never be used improperly. OK, OK, we took like one precaution, and we ensured our nuclear weapons could only be used by somebody who really wanted them . Or at least kind of wanted them. All right, we basically did nothing. You happy?

5 Hundreds Of U.S. Nuclear Launch Codes Were Set To 00000000

At the height of the Cold War, the United States had over a thousand nuclear-tipped Minuteman intercontinental missiles to serve as our primary strategic deterrent. That's a lot of death to keep track of, so Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara saw to it that each missile had special locks installed (called Permissive Action Links). Anyone who wanted to fire one of those babies off couldn't do so without entering a secret eight-digit code. Unhinged military personnel, would-be terrorists, allies we asked to hold our missiles for a bit while our parents were in town -- none of them could launch our ICBMs without approval from the government.

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And the PALs we employed were indeed almost impossible to bypass, and could have greatly reduced the risk of an unauthorized nuclear launch. That is, if the generals in charge hadn't set the authorization codes to 00000000.

United States Department of Energy

So even dumber than what an idiot would have on his luggage.

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They were afraid that they wouldn't be able to track down the codes quickly enough, should the actual need arise. (A reasonable fear if you've ever tried to remember your password for lunareclipsewatcher.biz.) So instead, they set the code to literally the first thing anyone would guess without even trying. Oh, but don't worry -- according to Bruce Blair, who worked as a launch officer in Montana, the all-zeroes code only remained in place for about a decade.