Nuclear button

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title: "Nuclear button" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["nuclear-command-and-control", "nuclear-war-and-weapons-in-popular-culture"] description: "Figurative term for access to nuclear weapons" topic_path: "history/military" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_button" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Figurative term for access to nuclear weapons ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Nuclear_case_02.jpg" caption="date=September 20, 1996}}"] ::

Various nuclear countries have nuclear briefcases that accompany the leader (such as the president of the United States), allowing them to launch nuclear missiles at any time.

Depictions of nuclear buttons sometimes appear in popular culture – for example, the music video for It's a Mistake in which an officer accidentally presses the nuclear button; and Land of Confusion, in which president Reagan launches a nuclear attack using the button.

North Korean announcement

On January 1, 2018, Kim Jong Un announced during his New Year speech "the nuclear button is always on the desk of my office" in order to make the United States aware that he is able to attack the country at will. US President Trump responded via Twitter on the following day:

Diet Coke button

Trump has been reported to have used a red "Diet Coke button" as a signal for a butler to serve a glass of Diet Coke in the Oval Office. In his 2019 book Team of Vipers, Cliff Sims writes that Trump jokingly referred to it as a nuclear button in front of visitors: “Not sure what to do, guests would look at one another with raised eyebrows. Moments later, a steward would enter the room carrying a glass filled with Diet Coke on a silver platter, and Trump would burst out laughing.”

References

References

1. "Pakistan's Zardari hands nuclear button to PM".
2. (March 30, 2001). "Nuclear button chaos behind Reagan". BBC.
3. (September 20, 1996). "Chernomyrdin to Control 'Nuclear Button' for Yeltsin's Surgery (Published 1996)". The New York Times.
4. (January 1, 2018). "Kim Jong Un says the nuclear button is always on his desk".
5. (January 2, 2018). "Trump boasts of bigger 'nuclear button' than North Korea's". Fox News.
6. Sims, Cliff. (January 29, 2019). "Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House". St. Martin's Publishing Group.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::