Nuclear football
The nuclear football is a device that always stays near the President of the United States in case he should feel like blowing up Earth.
Concept[edit]
It is an annoying aspect of warfare that nothing is a weapon unless a Commander-in-Chief can be assured of two things:
- His guys can set it off when he wants them to, and
- His guys cannot set it off when he doesn't want them to.
Moreover, an effective weapon:
- Works on the other guys, and
- Doesn't work on your own guys.
For example, those tanks of nerve gas that Saddam Hussein was accumulating were not WMD, a weapon of mass destruction, because Saddam had not got the chem suits distributed to all his troops, or trained them well enough to ensure one of them wouldn't use the WMD to install himself as Supreme Leader. Moreover, American politicians got more mileage out of insisting it was not there at all because George W. Bush is a liar.
Likewise, the Coronavirus was probably not a weapon because China's Wuhan Institute of Virulence never quite perfected a vaccine for their own people, despite administering one billion doses of the same throughout the Third World. It did indeed get set off, and probably when Chairman Xi Jinping didn't want it to, although all the sources to verify this have turned up missing.
All parties would like the huge U.S. nuclear arsenal to be a weapon, because the nation has invested so much money in it. To ensure the military cannot set it off when the President doesn't want it to, the nation relies on oaths and a culture of discipline. Neither of these, of course, works on the President himself, but the nuclear football is designed to ensure the weapon can be set off when the President wants it to. As to working on the enemy and not the American forces themselves, this is why nuclear war remains "an art and not a science," as it is unknowable what happens when you make Earth's atmosphere radioactive.
How it works[edit]
The nuclear football is effectively a radio transmitter by which the President, by pressing a photogenic red button, gives the command to release the nuclear arsenal. Future versions may give the President the ability to signal precisely which nations should have their deserts converted to solid glass, if that isn't too much of a hint.
The football uses the totally secure https: message protocol, so that precocious Junior cannot read the message with a packet-sniffer — or worse yet, simulate a message from the President and toast his grade school to extend his summer vacation.
Military aides assigned to the President have the nuclear football close to the President at all times of day and night. To avoid seeming intrusive during intimate moments, the football has a small LCD screen that can display pornography. It also dispenses toilet paper and bath soap.
Recent history[edit]
The nuclear football has been problematic since its invention:
- During the Bill Clinton years, the problem changed from having a weapon that would go off when the President wanted it to, to getting the President to want to set it off. Clinton was often on the golf links with a major contributor of cash to the Democratic Party, sometimes with that lovely daughter with the pouty mouth batting her eyes at Clinton. Phone calls advising Clinton that a global enemy like Osama bin Laden had arrived at a perfect site for a low-grade nuclear explosion with minimal collateral damage often went unanswered.
- George W. Bush was fascinated by the nuclear football and wanted to hold it himself and discover the entire control panel, often asking, "What does this one do?" He had to be told that military regulations included a strict protocol for handling the football, which was secret and could not be disclosed to the Commander-in-Chief because he was not on the list of people with a Need To Know.
- Barack Obama shunned the nuclear football as though it were a U.S.-flag lapel pin. If a nation threatened world peace, he believed that landing a C-130 at midnight and disgorging millions of dollars in unmarked cash was "who we are."
- Donald Trump loved the nuclear football, great football, better than the NFL, no one watches them since they got so woke. Trump asked for several more to be made, just like it, marvelous football. He wanted one in the master bedroom at MAGA-Lago, just in case; you never know, though sometimes you do. When giving the notorious pep-talk to his supporters at the White House in 2021 as Congress was ready to confirm the election of his successor, his right hand never appears in any of the videos and he appears to be fidgeting with something, as though he were Frodo Baggins.
- Joe Biden is showing Clinton's reluctance to deal with the nuclear football. He has told his handlers that traveling with a military attaché would stain his image as Lunch-Pail Joe. Thus, the motorcade with military officers, advisers, and anyone who knows what is happening in the world, must follow him at a distance of one mile. When he is spending a weekend at his bucolic millionare cottage in Delaware, the entourage must remain at the guard house. If a world crisis erupts, detailed information can be sent to him on horseback or something, unless he has called a lid.