Russian gamers race to prevent nuclear ‘war’

“Attention! Attention!” blares the Russian voice from a loudspeaker. “The nuclear bombs will be launched in one hour. Inside a room styled as a Soviet-era atomic bunker, a couple of Russians race to prevent a catastrophic strike on the United States. Their quest – the latest craze in Moscow – is to find the nuclear launch codes and deactivate a hidden red button, which a mad Russian general has already pressed.

It’s complete fantasy, just an interactive game hosted in a building in a former industrial area of the city, harking back to the fears of the Cold War. But amid the current tensions with Russia, in which potential nuclear confrontation with the West has again been raised, it feels slightly unsettling.

“I’m worried because there is foolish information from both sides,” said Maxim Motin, a Russian who has just completed the Red Button Quest game.

I know that ordinary people worldwide don’t want any war,” he added.

But Russian officials have been preparing the nation for the possibility of conflict, stoking deep-seated concerns about a standoff with the West, Russia’s old Cold War rival.

Russian television has been broadcasting a mass training exercise involving up to 40 million people nationwide. The government says it is designed to prepare responses for a chemical or nuclear attack.

The video shows emergency workers with protective suits and gas masks leading the civil defense rehearsal, the biggest of its kind since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It suggests the Kremlin wants Russians to take the threat of war very seriously.

Of course, the all-out conflict between Russia and the West remains highly unlikely.

Analysts say the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction – or MAD – still holds as a deterrent, just as it did during the Cold War. But with tensions growing over Syria, Ukraine, and the Baltic states, analysts say a small risk of contact, misunderstanding, and escalation between the nuclear superpowers has become very real.

I don’t think nuclear war is likely,” says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a prominent foreign policy journal. “But when two nuclear superpowers are operating with their military machines in the same area, very close to each other, and they don’t have proper coordination, any unintended thing can happen,” he told CNN. It is a risk the Kremlin seems keen to play up.

With state television upping its hardline rhetoric in recent weeks. In its flagship current affairs show, Russia’s top state news anchor, Dmitry Kiselyev – dubbed the Kremlin’s propagandist-in-chief by critics – recently warned about global war if Russian and US forces clash in Syria.