<@KeithInc.> #124943
The grass-roots effort to run for president that somehow made it was Trump, and he chimped out and tried to do this when he lost the election four years later. It didn’t even work then.
For all five major nuclear powers - US, UK, Russia, France, and China - at least a direct order from an elected executive is required to use nuclear weapons in anger. This is to prevent unauthorized or accidental hostile use of nuclear weapons, known in the US as “Nucflash” incidents.
Additional precautions that exist in the United States’ nuclear weapons forces:
- The president and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff must make a decision about which weapons will be used and order the use of nuclear weapons, at which time the nuclear launch codes will be transmitted.
- Two or more authorized people must be present with the nuclear weapons to make the final decision to obey the orders they have received to use the nuclear weapons.
Let’s say, hypothetically, they get an undercover /pol/ level racist into the Navy and he somehow rises through the ranks to command a ballistic missile submarine. Even in that nightmare scenario - which is unlikely because racists aren’t very smart - the threat of a Nucflash event would be low anyway.