doomsday device

plural doomsday devices · alternative Doomsday Device

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).

   Near-synonyms: doomsday bomb, Dead Hand

   2 more examples

   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.

   1964, Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, Peter George, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, spoken by Narrator

   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.

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

   Synonyms: doomsday weapon, doomsday bomb, Dead Hand

2. An extremely powerful weapon.

plural Doomsday Devices

1. alternativeAlternative spelling of doomsday device.