Back in the day, Russia had a premier named Nikita Khrushchev.

Khrushchev, in sp ite of being a bloodthirsty soviet despot, was also a funny guy who really liked to tell jokes. You know that joke about the three construction foremen who throw a brick and it disappears? There's no punchline, but then the next joke is about a duck on an airplane who catches the brick. Khrushchev loved stuff like that. He loved to de lay the punchline to a joke as long as possible. Back in the early days of the atomic age, there was a lot of discussion about ho w to maximize the destructive power of a nuclear weapon. Most scientists focused on maximizing the concussive force -- the explosive yield of the bomb. Then cam e this Austrian, Le Szilrd, he realized that the physicists had it all wrong. They were completely missing the point of a nuclear weapon. To maximize a nuke's des tructive power, you don't aim it at a city and blow up a few buildings. No. You seed the bomb with radioactive cobalt, aim it at the stratosphere, and let the f allout destroy all life on the planet larger than a microbe. Le Szilrd was the kind of guy who liked to get shit done. Well of course the feasibility of such a weapon was much derided by respectable scientists, but the soviets -- at this time lagging badly behind America in term s of their nuclear arsenal -- were desperately searching for an ace to put up th eir sleeve. They established a massive project codenamed Matryoshka to build a d oomsday cobalt bomb. Matryoshka didn't build one, though. It built twenty. The bombs were put in silos all across the far northern reaches of Siberia and w ired to a dead man's switch. If The US ever launched a nuclear strike on the Sov iet Union, Matryoshka's payload would be unleashed, extinguishing all life on th e planet forever. It was the ultimate object lesson in mutually assured destruct ion. That dead man's switch was UVB-76. The operators at UVB-76 were tasked with tran smitting a continuous all-clear signal to the automated systems maintaining the Matryoshka bombs. If the time ever came to launch the bombs, the operaters at UV B-76 would stop broadcasting. If the computers in Siberia failed to receive the proper signal for one week, the bombs would be launched. There are two problems with this setup. First: even though the cold war is over now, back then there was no end in sight, and the people who set UVB-76 made it so that if the systems are ever taken offline for any reason, the bombs will aut omatically launch. This means that for as long as human beings exist, UVB-76 MUS T be kept operational. And so it has. But then there's the second problem. Khrushchev wasn't happy with this ace in hi s sleeve. He wanted to make sure Russia won. He wanted to make sure America was crushed. No matter the price. So at his orders, UVB-76 was created with an autom atic failure mode as well. 60 years after first going online, UVB-76 was to slow ly shut itself down, triggering the Matryoshka bombs. Well, our 60 years is up. The best computer scientists in Russia are trying to stop it from happening, but it's no use. They've been working on it for two decades and never came up with a solution. The activity we're hearing at the station now is their last-ditch at tempt to prevent worldwide catastrophe -- but this activity can be likened to tu rning in a half-written essay a month after it's due. It's just not gonna cut it

, is what I'm getting at. These are truly the last days. Khrushchev loved a delayed punchline.