Dead Hand

the long version

With occasional references to "the Kursk incident" and to Vladimir Putin's unpopularity with the Russian people, and with a plot centered around the antics of an ultra-nationalist Russian general, Dead Hand positions itself as an up-to-the-minute thriller with significant political resonance--and even throws in a natural disaster for good measure. Ever wary of being caught off-guard by a nuclear strike, Russia has carefully cultivated a retaliatory system capable of launching its own missiles: mordantly dubbed Dead Hand, the system will activate without a central command. When an asteroid hits Siberia with enough force to trigger the system, Moscow finds itself faced with both unspeakable environmental chaos and General Likatchev's bid to subvert the disaster to his own anti-Western purposes.