Deadman (pronounced ded-man or ded-muhn)
(1) In architecture and civil engineering a heavy plate, log,
wall, or block buried in the ground that acts as an anchor for a retaining
wall, sheet pile etc, usually by a tie connecting the two.
(2) A crutch-like prop, used temporarily to support a
pole or mast during the erection process.
(3) In nautical use, an object fixed on shore temporarily
to hold a mooring line.
(4) In nautical use, a rope for hauling the boom of a
derrick inboard after discharge of a load of cargo.
(5) In mountaineering a metal plate with a wire loop
attached for thrusting into firm snow to serve as a belay point, a smaller
version being known as a deadboy.
(6) In slang, a bottle of alcoholic drink that has been consumed (ie is empty).
(7) In the operation of potentially dangerous machinery, a
control or switch on a powered machine or vehicle that disengages a blade or
clutch, applies the brake, shuts off the engine etc, when the driver or
operator ceases to press a pedal, squeeze a throttle, etc; known also as the deadman
throttle or the deadman control. The
hyphenated form dead-man is often used, both as noun and adjective. Deadman is a noun and
Circa 1895: A compound word, the construct being dead +
man. Dead was from the Middle English ded & deed, from Old English dēad,
from the Proto-West Germanic daud,
from daudaz. The Old English dēad (a dead person; the dead collectively, those who have died)
was the noun use of the adjective dead, the adverb (in a dead or dull manner,
as if dead," also "entirely") attested from the late fourteenth
century, again derived from the adjective.
The Proto-Germanic daudaz was
the source also of the Old Saxon dod,
the Danish død, the Swedish död, the Old Frisian dad, the Middle Dutch doot, the Dutch dood, the Old High
German tot, the German tot, the Old Norse dauðr & the Gothic dauþs. It's speculated the ultimate root was the
primitive Indo-European dheu (to
die).
Man was from the Middle English man, from the Old English mann
(human being, person, man), from the Proto-West Germanic mann, from the Proto-Germanic mann
(human being, man). Doublet of
Manu. The specific sense of "adult
male of the human race" (distinguished from a woman or boy) was known in
the Old English by circa 1000. Old
English used wer and wif to distinguish the sexes, but wer began to disappear late in the thirteenth
century, replaced by mann and
increasingly man. Man also was in Old
English as an indefinite pronoun (one, people, they) and used generically for
"the human race, mankind" by circa 1200. Although often thought a modern adoption, use
as a word of familiar address, originally often implying impatience is attested
as early as circa 1400, hence probably its use as an interjection of surprise
or emphasis since Middle English. It
became especially popular from the early twentieth century.
The source of the name is the idea that if something is likely to in some way be dangerous if uncontrolled, operation is possible only if some device is maintained in a state which is possible only by a person not dead or in some debilitated condition. The classic example is the train driver; if the driver does not maintain the switch in the closed position, the train slows to a halt. Some manufactures describe the whole assembly as a "deadman's brake" and the part which is subject to human pressure as "deadman's switch" (or deadman's handle". The phrase "dead man's fingers" is unrelated and is used variously in zoology, botany and in cooking and "dead man's rope" is a kind of seaweed (a synonym of sea-laces). The legend of the "dead man's hand" (various combinations of aces and eights in poker) is based on the cards in the hand held by the unfortunate "Wild Bill" Hickok (1837–1876) when shot dead at the poker table. A "dead man's arm" was a traditional English pudding, steamed and served in the cut-off sleeve of a man's shirt. The phrase "dead man walking" began as US prison slang to refer to those on death row awaiting execution and it's since been adopted to describe figures like politicians, coaches, CEOs and the like who are thought about to be sacked. Reflecting progress in other areas, dictionaries now list both "dead woman walking" and "dead person walking" but there scant evidence of use.
May have come across the odd dead man: Lindsay Lohan in hoodie arriving at the Los Angeles County Morgue to perform court-ordered community service, October 2011.
The
concept of nuclear deterrence depends on the idea of mutually assured
destruction (MAD): that there would be certain retaliation, even if a nuclear
first-strike destroyed the usual command and control structures of an adversary,
that would not guarantee there wouldn’t be a nuclear counter-strike. All front-line nuclear-weapon states employ systems
to ensure a residual capacity to retaliate, even after suffering a catastrophic
first strike, the best known of which are the Russian Мертвая рука (Dead Hand) and the
US AN/DRC-8 (Emergency Rocket Communications System), both of which are often
referred to as doomsday devices. Both
exist to close the strategic nuclear strike control loop and were inventions of
the high Cold War, the USSR’s system later taken over by the successor Russian
state. The metaphor of a deadman is
accurate to the extent of the need to keep closed a loop, the difference being
the consequences.
The most extreme scenario is one in which
there is left not a living soul with access to the loop. In this case, the system switches from one
designed to instigate a launch of ballistic missiles to one where some act is
required to prevent the attack and is thus dubbed fail-deadly, the reverse of
the fail-safe systems designed to prevent inadvertent launches. The doomsday systems use a variety of
mechanical and electronic monitoring protocols designed to (1) detect that a
strike has occurred, (2) determine the extent of damage and (3) attempts to
maintain or restore the usual communication channels of the military chain of
command. If the systems determine worst-case
circumstances exist, a retaliatory launch of intercontinental ballistic
missiles (ICBMs) will be triggered. Neither
the Kremlin nor the Pentagon tend to comment on such things but, over the
years, there have been (what are assumed to be managed) leaks that the systems
are usually inactive and activated only during times of crisis but the veracity
of this is unknown.
One obvious
theoretical vulnerability in the USSR’s and US systems is that at points it is electronic
and therefore reliant on hardware, software and an energy source. The UK government has an entirely analogue
system which uses only pen and paper. Known
as letters of last resort, each incoming
prime minister writes, in their own hand, four identical letters which are placed
in a sealed envelope, given to the captain of each of the navy’s ballistic
missile submarines who keeps it in his on-board safe. The letters are only to be opened if an enemy
(presumably nuclear) strike has damaged the chain of command to the extent it is
no longer possible for the civilian government to instruct the military on what
retaliatory action to take. As soon as a
prime-minister leaves office, the letters are, unopened, destroyed and replaced with ones from the new premier. Those circumstances
requiring a letter to be opened have never transpired and no prime-minister has
ever commented publicly on what they wrote so the contents remain a genuine secret,
known only to the writer and whomever they told. So, although the only people who know the
contents have never spoken, the consensus has long been the captains are likely
to be given one of four options:
(1) Retaliate. Each of the four submarines is armed with up
to sixteen 16 Trident II SLMBs (submarine-launched ballistic missiles), each
missile equipped with up to twelve independently targeted warheads with a range
of 7,000 miles (11,000 km). There is
always at least one at sea and the Admiralty never comments on its location
although, in times of heightened political tension, additional boats may be activated.
(2) Not
retaliate.
(3) The
captains should use their judgment. This,
known as “the man on the ground” doctrine has a long tradition in the military
although it was in some circumstances rendered redundant by advances in
real-time communications. In this case,
it’s “the man under the water”. An interesting
question which touches on constitutional, international and military law, is
the question of the point at which a state ceases to exist and the orders of a
regime can be no longer said legally to be valid.
(4) Proceed to a place under an allied country's command or control.
There is
also a probably unexplored fifth option: a prime-minister could leave in the envelope a blank
page. This presumably would be
substantively the same as option (3) but would denote a different political
message to be mulled over in whatever remained of civilization. No prime-minister has ever commented publicly
on the thoughts which crossed their minds when writing these notes but perhaps some
might have recalled Nietzche’s words in Beyond
Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (1886): "He
who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the
abyss gazes also into you." Although troubled when he wrote that, he wasn't yet quite mad.
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