Article snippet: It's hard to overstate how thoroughly the U.S. military has prepared for doomsday — the day America gets into a nuclear shooting war. No detail seems to have been overlooked. There's even a designated "safe escape" door at the nuclear-warfighting headquarters near Omaha, Nebraska, through which the four-star commander would rush to a getaway plane moments before the first bomb hit. Procedures are in place for ensuring U.S. nuclear weapons are ready for a presidential launch order in response to — or in anticipation of — a nuclear attack by North Korea or anyone else. There are backup procedures and backups for the backups. And yet fundamental aspects of this nightmare sequence remain a mystery. For example, what would happen if an American president ordered a nuclear strike, for whatever reason, and the four-star general at Strategic Command balked or refused, believing it to be illegal? Robert Kehler, a retired general who once led that command, was asked this at a congressional hearing last week. His response: "You'd be in a very interesting constitutional situation." By interesting, he seemed to mean puzzling. Brian McKeon, a senior policy adviser in the Pentagon during the Obama administration, said a president's first recourse would be to tell the defense secretary to order the reluctant commander to execute the launch order. "And then, if the commander still resisted," McKeon said as rubbed his chin, "you either get a new secretary of defense or get... Link to the full article to read more