You would expect the US nuclear launch code to be an impenetrable series of digits, numbers and symbols. It is, after all, the code that unleashes one of the most devastating weapons known to humankind.

A science professor at Columbia Univeristy, Steven M. Bellovin (great name) recently uncovered the code behind the nukes. The code, that remained unchanged for 20 years, was 00000000.

Eight miserable zeroes.

Bellovin discovered this after finding a 2004 paper by Dr. Bruce G. Blair, a former Air Force officer who manned Minuteman silos. The codes — known as Permissive Action Links (PALs) — were created after the 1963-1964 Cyprus crisis, when NATO countries Turkey and Greece wanted to nuke each other. The PALs were meant to give only the president of the United States the power to use such weapons.

The code itself wasn’t that big of a secret, either. According to Karl Smallwood on ‘Today I Found Out’, Dr. Blair explained:

Our launch checklist in fact instructed us, the firing crew, to double-check the locking panel in our underground launch bunker to ensure that no digits other than zero had been inadvertently dialed into the panel.

Wow.

[Source : Mashable]