Fail-deadly
adj ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Of a nuclear weapons strategy: encouraging deterrence by guaranteeing an automatic, immediate, and overwhelming response to an attack, even if the command-and-control infrastructure has been damaged by the enemy's first strike. not-comparable
"One, admittedly extreme, means of reducing the impact of a command, control, and communication failure would be the adoption of a "fail deadly" mode of operation. For example, as opposed to requiring a positive signal to proceed on to target after launch-on-warning, airplanes might be permitted to continue until a negative recall signal were received. The risk of unauthorized action would be increased, as would the danger of accidental or inadvertent war due to equipment malfunction."
Example
More examples"One, admittedly extreme, means of reducing the impact of a command, control, and communication failure would be the adoption of a "fail deadly" mode of operation. For example, as opposed to requiring a positive signal to proceed on to target after launch-on-warning, airplanes might be permitted to continue until a negative recall signal were received. The risk of unauthorized action would be increased, as would the danger of accidental or inadvertent war due to equipment malfunction."
Etymology
From fail (verb) + deadly, modelled on fail-safe.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.