What Happens If A US President Orders A Nuclear Strike?

What happens if a US president orders a nuclear strike?

You know, hypothetically.

The short and not particularly reassuring answer is that,

as commander-in-chief,

the US president has sole authority

to order the use of US nuclear weapons.

Since the end of the Cold War,

the threat of a nuclear attack against the US has receded.

In recent years, members of Congress,

including Ted Lieu, Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren,

have introduced legislation that would limit

the president's ability to order

a preemptive nuclear strike.

But currently, the president doesn't need the backing

of military leaders or Congress,

and neither could overrule any order.

The president may choose to order a strike before

an adversary has launched a nuclear attack.

The United States has not adopted a no first use commitment.

In a scenario where a president ordered a nuclear launch,

the National Military Command Center would verify the order

and transmit it to STRATCOM.

However, the US military is bound, officially anyway,

to act only under the laws of armed conflict,

so the only way for a nuclear order to be delayed

or stopped outright would be for those

in this chain of command to question its legality,

or, as is said to have happened

when a drunk Richard Nixon reportedly ordered

a tactical strike on North Korea, to simply ignore it.