"Donald Trump doesn’t understand what (Russian Defense Official) Medvedev tweeted. Medvedev was telling Trump to knock it off with the dangerous threats, saying that if you do this, America can end up looking like the walking dead because of the Dead Hand.

"The Dead Hand is a reference to the perimeter system, which is a defensive system put in place by the Soviet Union back in the 1980s. So that if they are ever struck preemptively by the United States—a first strike, by the way, the tactic to be used in a first strike is to bring the Ohio-class submarines close to Russia’s shores, fire off their Trident missiles on a flattened trajectory to avoid detection so you can strike the targets quicker, which is what Trump just actually appeared to order the U.S. Navy to do. So, the Dead Hand now becomes a factor, because if Trump is dumb enough to launch an attack against Russia, the Dead Hand (the defensive perimeter system) will ensure that all of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces will be fired against the United States, even if Trump takes out Putin, the National Command Authority, etc."

-- Scott Ritter, American former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer, former United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspector