Bruce G. Blair facts for kids

Bruce Gentry Blair (November 16, 1947 – July 19, 2020) was an American expert on nuclear security. He spent his life working to make the world safer from nuclear weapons. He was also a respected researcher, author, and even a television show producer.

Bruce Blair's Early Life and Training

Bruce Blair was born in Creston, Iowa. He loved learning and earned a special degree called a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1984. Before that, he studied at the University of Illinois.

Before working at Princeton, Bruce was the head of the World Security Institute. This was a non-profit group that worked for peace. He also worked for the Brookings Institution and the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. There, he studied how the U.S. military communicated with its powerful forces.

From 1970 to 1974, Bruce served in the U.S. Air Force. He had a very important job: he was a launch control officer for Minuteman ICBM missiles. This experience helped him understand how nuclear weapons worked and the dangers they posed.

Working for a Safer World

Bruce Blair was a leading expert at Princeton University. He worked on how to safely get rid of nuclear weapons around the world. He focused on reducing the number of nuclear weapons and making sure they couldn't be launched by accident.

He helped start a group called Global Zero. This is an international group of world leaders and millions of supporters. Their main goal is to get rid of all nuclear weapons.

Bruce was an expert on the nuclear policies of the United States and Russia. He often shared his knowledge with the U.S. Congress. In 2011, he joined a special board that advised the U.S. Secretary of State on international security. He also taught about security at Yale and Princeton.

In 1999, he won a special award called the MacArthur Fellowship Prize. This was for his important work on making nuclear forces less ready to launch. In 2008, he was a finalist for the Skoll Social Entrepreneur Award.

Bruce Blair was good at explaining complicated nuclear topics to everyone. He was an executive producer for Countdown to Zero, a movie about nuclear weapons. He also created and produced TV shows for PBS, like Superpower: Global Affairs Television. He also produced Foreign Exchange.

He wrote for many well-known newspapers and magazines. These included Scientific American, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He also wrote several books about security issues. One of his books, Strategic Command and Control, won an award for its contribution to national security studies.

Bruce Blair passed away on July 19, 2020, in Philadelphia.

Making Nuclear Launch Codes Safer

In 2002, Bruce Blair shared an amazing story. He told former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara that the secret codes needed to launch Minuteman missiles were all set to "OOOOOOOO." These codes are called "Permissive Action Links" (PALs).

Mr. McNamara was very surprised. He had been told that these secret codes were installed and working. The equipment was there, but the codes themselves were set to a very simple, easy-to-guess sequence.

Bruce knew this because, as a Minuteman ICBM launch control officer in the 1970s, he had seen it himself. After he left the military, he worked hard to get the Department of Defense and Congress to change these codes. They were finally "activated" with real, complex codes in 1977.

Bruce said that this story showed how even top leaders could be misinformed about important nuclear matters. He believed it was crucial to make sure such dangerous mistakes didn't happen again.

Books by Bruce Blair

• Progress in Arms Control? Selected Readings from Scientific American (1979)
• Strategic Command and Control: Redefining the Nuclear Threat (1985)
• Crisis Stability and Nuclear War (co-editor, 1987 and 1988)
• The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War (1993)
• Global Zero Alert for Nuclear Forces (1995)