doomsday device

English

Alternative forms

• Doomsday Device

Etymology

Coined as Doomsday Machine by military strategist Herman Kahn.

Noun

doomsday device (plural doomsday devices)

1. A hypothetical weapon (often a bomb) programmed to automatically be used in response to certain attacks, usually with very dire consequences (such as the annihilation of the world).
   • 1964, Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, Peter George, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, spoken by Narrator:

     For more than a year, ominous rumors had been privately circulating among high-level Western leaders that the Soviet Union had been at work on what was darkly hinted to be the ultimate weapon: a doomsday device.

   • 2008 April 27, Ben Stein, “Wall Street, Run Amok”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     Of course, Henry M. Paulson Jr., the Treasury secretary, is calling for merging the S.E.C. with the easygoing Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in the financial equivalent of setting off a Doomsday Device.

2. An extremely powerful weapon.

Synonyms

• doomsday weapon

See also

• nuclear deterrent
• Dr. Strangelove

References

Further reading

• doomsday device on Wikipedia.Wikipedia