Dead man's hand in popular culture Bob Seger. The lyric "Aces and eights are the fate that you drew" appears in the song "I Am the Storm" by Blue Öyster Cult on their album "Mirrors". In the song "Rambling, Gambling Willie" by Bob Dylan, the main character, Will O'Conley, is a successful poker player who loses his life to an angry opponent while holding the dead man's hand. The song contains the lyric, "When Willie’s cards fell on the floor, they were aces backed with eights." Townes van Zandt covers the song on the album "Roadsongs." The Lonely Heartstring Band covers the song on their album
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