Thirty minutes.
That is roughly how long an intercontinental ballistic missile takes to cross the planet.
The night side of the Earth, turning slowly. Points of city light.
For eighty years, defense has mostly meant the promise to fire back.
A bright plume rises from an unmarked point and a pale red arc begins to draw across the globe.
From the ground, you see it late.
- Radar contact
- None
- Blocked by the curve of the Earth
- Missile distance
- - km
- First radar contact
- about T+--:--
A radar at ground level cannot see past the horizon.
A ground radar on the far side of the planet. Its line of sight runs off into space above the curve of the Earth; the missile is below its horizon.
We have watched for launches from orbit for fifty years.
A warning is not a track.
- Track continuity
- -%
- Gaps in track
- -
Satellites at about 1,800 km, each seeing out to about 2,600 km. Continuity is the share of the flight at least one satellite can see.
Enough eyes, and it never leaves your sight.
A shell of gold satellites in low orbit, each with a sensor cone. Where they can see the missile, its arc turns gold.
The first five minutes are the best chance anyone gets.
Only something already overhead can use them.
Boost phase roughly 3 to 5 minutes
- Slow
- Bright
- Warheads not yet released
The first minutes of the arc are bracketed: the boost phase, when the missile is slow and bright.
One missile is a physics problem.
A sky full of them is an intelligence problem.
- Missiles
- 0
- Objects
- 0
Find the warheads.
There are 40 real warheads among 2,440 objects. You have 10 seconds.
Picks 0
Click or tap the objects you think are warheads. Arrow keys move the reticle. Enter or Space selects. Escape ends early.
The single arc becomes ten. Each releases warheads and decoys until thousands of identical points fill the sky.
This is what we’re building.
No room of people can do this in time. A mind built for it can.
People set the rules. It keeps pace with the physics.
- Classified
- 0
- Warheads
- 0
- Decoys
- 0
- Interceptors assigned
- 0
- Time
- 0.0 s
The whole field turns gold at once: every object classified, a track drawn for each warhead and an interceptor assigned to it.
The next frontier in nuclear defense is space.
Superintelligence is how it is won.
- Intercepts
- 0 of 40
Clock stopped at T+14:50
The arcs end early, one after another. The clock stops.
The threat. The answer.
Black.