Dead man's hand in popular culture Dead man's hand in popular culture The dead man's hand, a legendary "cursed" poker hand usually depicted as consisting of the ace of spades, ace of clubs, eight of spades and eight of clubs with an undefined fifth card, has appeared or been referenced in numerous works of popular culture. In the novel "Along Came a Spider" by James Patterson, Jezzie Flannigan tells the story of how her father won his gun with a hand of aces and eights – she also uses "Aces&Eights" as her computer password. "Dead Man's Hand" is the name of the seventh book of the
Dead Hand Building (TsNIIMash) in 1976–92, confirmed in 1993 that the Soviets had designed the automatic launch system with seismic, light and radiation sensors, but said that the design had been ultimately rejected by Marshal Sergey Akhromeyev on advice of Korobushin and never materialized. Accounts differ as to the degree of automation of Dead Hand. In a 1993 issue of "The New York Times": The communication missile would work similarly to the US Emergency Rocket Communications System (ERCS). However, more recent sources indicate the system was semi-automatic. In a 2007 article, Ron Rosenbaum quotes Blair as saying that Dead Hand is "designed