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In this video:

We guess the first thing we need to address is how this even came to be in the first place. Well, in 1962 JFK signed the National Security Action Memorandum 160, which was supposed to ensure that every nuclear weapon the US had be fitted with a Permissive Action Link (PAL), basically a small device that ensured that the missile could only be launched with the right code and with the right authority.

Want the text version?: http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.p...

Sources:

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004...
http://web.archive.org/web/2012051119...
http://web.archive.org/web/2012041903...
https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/nsam...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissi...
http://www.brookings.edu/about/projec...