fail-deadly

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.

1976 May 15, Lewis A. Dunn, Herman Kahn, “Parameters of Nth Country Nuclear-weapon Programs and Postures”, in Trends in Nuclear Proliferation, 1975–1995: Projections, Problems, and Policy Options: Final Report (HI-2336/3-RR), Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.; Paris: Hudson Institute, →OCLC, page 92

[F]ail-deadly is a concept from nuclear military strategy, suggesting deterrence by an immediate and forceful response to an attack. It is interesting to investigate what differentiates these two design approaches to security protocols, and what they have in common when we consider a family of protocols where both fail-safe and fail-deadly versions are considered.

2018, “Preface”, in Vashek Matyáš, Petr Švenda, Frank Stajano, Bruce Christianson, Jonathan Anderson, editors, Security Protocols XXVI: 26th International Workshop, Cambridge, UK, March 19–21, 2018: Revised Selected Papers (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; 11286), Cham, Zug, Switzerland: Springer Nature Switzerland, →DOI, →ISBN, →ISSN, page v