Failsafe

Failsafe (pronounced feyl-seyf)

(1) In electronics, pertaining to or noting a mechanism built into a system, as in an early warning system or a nuclear reactor, for insuring safety should the system fail to operate properly.

(2) Anything equipped with a secondary system that insures continued operation even if the primary system fails; something designed to work or function automatically to prevent breakdown of a mechanism, system, or the like.(3) In manned nuclear weapon delivery systems (airplanes), of, relating to, or designating a system of coded military controls in which bombers dispatched to a prearranged point as part of a standard operating procedure cannot advance farther without direct orders from a designated authority and cannot have the nuclear warheads they carry armed until they have passed their prearranged point (known as the failsafe point (sometimes initial capital letter)).

1945: A compound word, fail + safe, apparently a back-formation from the verb phrase to fail safely.  Fail is from the Middle English failen, borrowed from the Anglo-Norman faillir, from the Vulgar Latin fallire (an alteration of the Latin fallere (to deceive, disappoint)), from either the primitive Indo-European bhāl- (to lie, deceive) or the primitive Indo-European sgwhhzel- (to stumble).  It was related to the Dutch feilen & fallen (to fail, miss), the German fehlen (to fail, miss, lack), the Danish fejle (to fail, err), the Swedish fela (to fail, be wanting, do wrong), the Icelandic feila (to fail) and the Spanish fallar (to fail, miss).  Safe is from the Middle English sauf, safe, saf & saaf, from the Old French sauf, saulf & salf (safe), from the Latin salvus (whole, safe”), from the primitive Indo-European solhz- (whole, every).  The meaning "unscathed, unhurt, uninjured; free from danger or molestation, in safety, secure; saved spiritually, redeemed, not damned" emerged circa 1300 from the Old French sauf (protected, watched-over; assured of salvation), from the Latin salvus (uninjured, in good health, safe) and related to salus (good health) & saluber (healthful), all from the primitive Indo-European solwos from the root sol- (whole, well-kept).  The quasi-preposition from circa 1300 was on the model of the French and Latin cognates.  From the late fourteenth century, the sense "rescued, delivered; protected; left alive, unkilled" had formed, along with the meaning "not exposed to danger" (of places) whereas the same thing as applied to actions was attested from the 1580s and “"sure, reliable, not a danger" from about two decades later.  The sense of "conservative, cautious" is from 1823.  The noun term safe-conduct is from the late thirteenth century language of diplomacy, from the Old French sauf-conduit.

In fiction: Failsafe and nuclear weapons

Although most associated with nuclear-weapons delivery systems (The novel Fail-Safe (1962) by Eugene Burdick (1918-1965) and Harvey Wheeler (1918-2004) is about a nuclear attack caused by mechanical error), the term failsafe was used originally by engineers in reference to aircraft construction.  The spellings failsafe and fail-safe are used interchangeably; failsafe is an adjective and a noun; the verbs (used with object) are fail-safed and fail-safeing and the verbs appear always to be hyphenated; the form failsafeish is engineer's humor.

Two films from 1964, Sidney Lumet's (1924-2011) Fail-Safe and Stanley Kubrick's (1928-1999) Doctor Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb were both about the fear of a nuclear holocaust.  Kubrick had his project in pre-production in early 1963 when he learned another production house had purchased the rights to the Fail-Safe, planning a cinema release before Dr Strangelove.  Not happy, Kubrick alleged plagiarism and threatened a lawsuit, asserting the novel Fail-Safe was "copied largely” from the book on which Dr Strangelove was based, Peter George's (1924-1966) Red Alert.  Rather than pursuing the matter through the courts, Columbia Pictures, committed to Dr Strangelove, chose the M&A route and took over distribution of Fail-Safe which it scheduled for a release after Dr Strangelove.  Kubrick probably needn’t have worried, Dr Strangelove, a masterpiece of dark humour, was a critical and commercial success while Fail-Safe, although praised by many scholars and military analysts wasn't well received by reviewers who though it melodramatic and found the plot implausible, dooming it at the box-office.

US war-room film set for Dr Strangelove.  Upon becoming president in 1981, Ronald Reagan (1911-2004, US president 1981-1989) was reportedly disappointed no Situation Room quite so dramatic actually existed, the room in the White House something like what would be used by an insurance company to conduct sales training seminars.  The story is thought likely apocryphal but there is documentary evidence Reagan did sometimes confuse historic fact with depictions he's seen in movies.