[singron]

It's sort of like the opposite of this idea:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Fisher_(academic)#Preven...

> Fisher [...] suggested implanting the nuclear launch codes in a volunteer. If the President of the United States wanted to activate nuclear weapons, he would be required to kill the volunteer to retrieve the codes.

>> [...] The volunteer would carry with him a big, heavy butcher knife as he accompanied the President. If ever the President wanted to fire nuclear weapons, the only way he could do so would be for him first, with his own hands, to kill one human being. [...]

>> When I suggested this to friends in the Pentagon they said, "My God, that's terrible. Having to kill someone would distort the President's judgment. He might never push the button."

> — Roger Fisher, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March 1981[10]

[jmward01]

There should be two knives so the volunteer can defend themselves if they don't think starting a war is worth it.

[cousin_it]

That's so idealistic. We should know by now the reality of power and what kind of people end up in power. Anyone who could climb all the way to the top would kill the volunteer without a second thought, and then go smile on TV.

[brazzy]

You're confusing lazy cynicism with realism. Patrick Bateman is a fictional character. The vast, vast majority of people, including even most soldiers, and definitely pretty much all businesspeople, no matter how unscrupulous, do not have the capacity to violently murder a person they know and harbor no ill will towards with their own hands on short notice.

[TremendousJudge]

maybe they should make the person with the codes black. I think several cold-war presidents probably wouldn't have a problem with that

[brazzy]

The whole damn point behind the idea is to achieve the exact opposite. Make it someone, through whatever criteria, whom the president will have a problem killing, so he'll only do it under the most extreme circumstances.