Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.

Fail-safe

Definitions: Fail-safe

Fail-safe

Adjective

1. Guaranteed not to fail; "a fail-safe recipe for cheese souffle".

2. Eliminating danger by compensating automatically for a failure or malfunction; "a fail-safe device in a nuclear weapon to deactivate it automatically in the event of accident".

Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
 



Specialty Definitions: Fail-safe

DomainDefinitions

Engineering & Technology

Normally structural design, rather than system, technique in which no crack can cause catastrophic failure of whole structure but is allowed to occur and be detected. Source: European Union. (references)

Public Administration

In a device or equipment, the design conception in which failure of a component does not increase the hazard of the whole system, and in which failure of the system is rendered non-hazardous or inoperative. Source: European Union. (references)

Transportation

This condition indicates that any malfunction affecting safety will cause the system to revert to a state that is known to be safe. Source: European Union. (references)

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Top     

Specialty Definition: Fail-Safe

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Fail-Safe is the title of:

  1. A 1962 novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, authors of The Ugly American
  2. A 1964 movie by Columbia Pictures, starring Henry Fonda, Dan O'Herlihy, Walter Matthau, Frank Overton, Larry Hagman, Fritz Weaver, and with a cameo by Dom DeLuise
  3. A 2000 made-for-television play broadcast live and in black and white on CBS, starring George Clooney; apart from a live episode of ER that had also starred Clooney, this was the only live drama on US television in four decades.

All three works have the same theme--accidental nuclear war--with the same plot. The TV version is shorter than the movie due to commercial airtime, and omits a number of subplots.

Plot

warning: contains spoilers

An unknown aircraft approaches North America from Europe. American bombers of the Strategic Air Command are scrambled to meet the potential threat. The threat turns out to be innocuous, and orders are sent recalling the bombers that have reached their "fail-safe" point. A mechanical device transmitting the code, combined with Soviet jamming, causes Group Six, consisting of six Vindicator supersonic bombers (actually B-58 Hustler in the movie), to attack Moscow.

At meetings in Omaha, the Pentagon, and in the fallout shelter of the White House, American politicians and scholars debate the implications of the attack. Professor Groteschele (played by Walter Matthau in the 1964 movie), who is loosely based on Henry Kissinger, suggests the United States follow this accidental attack with a full-scale attack to force the Soviets to surrender.

The American President contacts the Soviet premier (unnamed in the movie, but who the book names as Nikita Khrushchev) and offers assistance in attacking the group. The Soviets decline at first.

At SAC headquarters, General Bogan attempts to stop the attack. His executive officer, Colonel Cascio, wants the attack to continue. Cascio attempts to take over command of SAC, but is stopped by Air Police; however, in doing so, he wastes precious time.

The Soviets accept American help in attacking the two surviving bombers of Group Six. However, the Soviet commander, Marshal Nevsky, mistrusts General Bogan enough to attack the bomber carrying decoys, guaranteeing the plane piloted by Colonel Grady will be able to finish the attack.

Colonel Grady contacts SAC to inform them that they are about to make the strike. The Soviets fire a barrage of nuclear-tipped missiles to form a fireball to knock the low-flying Vindicator out of the sky. The President and Grady's wife (son in the made-for-television movie) both try to persuade him that there is no war. Grady ignores them. The Vindicator's defensive systems operator fires two missiles that decoy the Soviet interceptor missiles to detonate at high altitude. Grady tells his crew that "We're not just walking wounded, we're walking dead men" due to radiation from the burst. He intends to fly the aircraft over Moscow and detonate the bombs in the plane. His copilot notes "There's nothing to go home to."

When it becomes apparent that one bomber will get through Soviet defenses and destroy Moscow, the American President offers to have an American bomber destroy New York at the same time. The Soviets accept.

The 1964 film version was not as successful as it might have been had it not had the misfortune to be released shortly after Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, which shares many obvious plot similarities with Fail-Safe but adds black humour and satire to the mix.

Implications of the Book and Movie

Automation and its effect on mankind are the theme of Fail-Safe. Colonel Grady's crewmen show no real emotions as they fly the airplane. They are automations, carrying out preplanned actions, trained not to alter their course. This is a stark contrast to the conventions of "bomber crew movies" such as Air Force (1943), where the fliers are portrayed as disparate individuals who, by working together, can change the course of history. The action in Fail-Safe is portrayed on giant maps overlooking the War Room in the Pentagon and SAC Headquarters; the Soviets are never seen. for example-- such As the fictional Khrushchev states in the book: "Man proposes, but the computer disposes."

The robot-like Colonel Grady, grimly marching toward armageddon despite all pleas to turn back, has had relatively few fictional successors. Major characters in Martin Caidin's novel Ju-52, Dale Brown's novel Chains of Command, and the 1995 film Crimson Tide actively resist direct orders to launch nuclear weapons and are presented as heroes for doing so.

The novel was published in October 1962, at the same time as the Cuban missile crisis, and influenced popular debate on the controls used by the United States on nuclear weapons.

The real command system used by SAC and its successor, Strategic Command, differs vastly from the system portrayed in the movie and is based on the KISS principle--keep it simple, stupid! Multiple single sideband transmitters around the world broadcast coded Emergency Action Messages by voice, not by machine. Submarines at sea are contacted by longwave Morse code signals.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Fail-Safe."

Top     

Modern Usage: Fail-safe

DomainUsage

Movie/TV Titles

Fail-Safe (1964)

Revisiting Fail-Safe (2000)

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Top     

Commercial Usage: Fail-safe

DomainTitle

Books

  • A Fail-safe Way for You to Receive the Holy Spirit (reference)

  • Defeating Procrastination: 52 Fail-Safe Tips for Keeping Time on Your Side (Skillpath Self-Study Sourcebook) (reference)

  • Fail-Safe (reference)

  • Fail-Safe Investing: Lifelong Financial Security in 30 Minutes (reference)

  • Fail-Safe Parenting: A Personalized Plan To Prevent Or Stop Your Child's Alcohol Or Drug Abuse (reference)

    (more book examples)

  

Theater & Movies

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Top     

Non-Fiction Usage: Fail-safe

SubjectTopicQuote

Health

Facilities using radioactive sources are regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). To be licensed, the facility must have been designed with multiple fail-safe measures, and must establish extensive and well documented safety procedures, and worker training. (references)

Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits.

Top     

Usage Frequency: Fail-safe

"Fail-safe" is generally used as an adjective (general or positive) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Fail-safe" is used about 32 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)
Parts of SpeechPercentUsage per
100 Million Words		Rank in English
Adjective (general or positive)100%3261,292

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

Top     

Modern Translations: Fail-safe

Language Translations for "fail-safe"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.

Danish

  

fejlsikker (fail safe, foolproof). (various references)

   

Dutch

  

faalveilig (fail safe), storingsveilig, elektrische veiligheid. (various references)

   

Finnish

  

vikaturvallinen, vian sattuessa turvallinen. (various references)

   

French

  

sécurité après défaillance (fail safe), sûr en cas de défaillance (fail safe), sûr après défaillance (fail safe), qualité de technique "fail-safe", qualité de sécurité positive, sécurité intégrée, "fail safe". (various references)

   

German

  

fail-safe (fail safe), Ausfallsicherheit (fail safe), ausfallsicher (fail safe, failsafe). (various references)

   

Greek 

  

σύστημα θετικής σφάλειας, ασφαλές από αστοχία (fail safe), ασφαλή κατάσταση. (various references)

   

Hebrew 

  

אל כשל. (various references)

   

Hungarian

  

hibamentes. (various references)

   

Italian

  

fail-safe (fail safe), fail safe (fail safe), sistema fail-safe, esente da guasti (fail safe). (various references)

   

Japanese Kanji 

  

フェーリング反応 (a feint, face, facial, fader, fail, failure, fair, fair catch, fair copy, fair play, fair sex, fairway, fairy, fairy tale, fairyland, fake, fare, fear, feather, feather plane, feathercut, Fehling's reaction, phase, phaser, phasing, phasor). (various references)

   

Japanese Katakana 

  

フェイルセーフ . (various references)

   

Pig Latin

  

ail-safefay.(various references)

   

Portuguese

  

segurança intrínseca (fail-safe behavior, fail-safe behaviour), segurança contra falhas críticas (fail safe), princípio de funcionamento prova de falhas, prova de falhas. (various references)

   

Russian 

  

ошибкоустойчивый (failsafe), надежный (anchored, calculable, copper-bottomed, dependable, durable, foolproof, infallible, never-failing, reliable, responsible, right-on, safe, secure, sound, sure-fire, tried, trouble-free, trustworthy, trusty, unmisgiving), прочный (durable, endurable, enduring, fast, firm, indissoluble, reliable, resistant, rugged, serviceable, sound, stable, stout, strong, tenable, tough). (various references)

   

Spanish

  

fail safe (fail safe), seguridad de funcionamiento (dependability, fail safe, reliability), cualidad de seguridad intrínseca, a prueba de fallos (foolproof), a prueba de averías (fail safe). (various references)

   

Swedish

  

felsäker, säker vid fel (fail-safe behavior, fail-safe behaviour), idiotsäker (foolproof), helsäker, haverisäker (fail-safe behavior, fail-safe behaviour). (various references)

   

Thai

  

เกี่ยวกับระบบป้องกัน ัย, ที่ติ"ตั้ง"้วยอุปกร"์ป้องกัน ัย, อุปกร"์ป้องกัน ัย. (various references)

   

Turkish

  

tedbirli (advised, cagey, canny, careful, cautious, circumspect, deliberate, deliberative, discreet, fabian, fail-proof, forethoughtful, guarded, politic, precautionary, prudent, prudential, tactical, wary, well advised), hazırlıklı (fail-proof, prepared, provident, ready), güvenceli (fail-proof). (various references)

Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

Top     

Misspellings: Fail-safe

Misspellings

"Fail-safe" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: failsafes. (additional references)

Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

Top     

Anagrams: Fail-safe

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams

Words within the letters "a-a-e-f-f-i-l-s"

-2 letters: falsie.

-3 letters: aisle, alefs, alfas, alias, alifs, fails, false, fiefs, fifes, files, fleas, flies, leafs.

-4 letters: aals, ails, alae, alas, alef, ales, alfa, alif, asea, effs, fail, feal, fief, fife, fila, file, fils, flea, ilea, isle, lase, leaf, leas, leis, lief, lies, life, safe, sail, sale, seal, seif, self, sial.

-5 letters: aal, aas, aff, ail, ais, ala, ale, als, eff, efs, elf, els, fas, fie, fil, iff, ifs, las, lea, lei, lie, lis, sae, sal, sea, sei, sel.

 Words containing the letters "a-a-e-f-f-i-l-s"
 

+1 letter: rafflesia.

 

+2 letters: affiliates, rafflesias.

 

+3 letters: falsifiable.

 

+4 letters: affabilities, disaffiliate.

 

+5 letters: disaffiliated, disaffiliates, unfalsifiable.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.

Top     

Alternative Orthography: Fail-safe


Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)

46 61 69 6C 2D 73 61 66 65

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)

Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)

01000110 01100001 01101001 01101100 00101101 01110011 01100001 01100110 01100101

HTML Code (1990) (references)

&#70 &#97 &#105 &#108 &#45 &#115 &#97 &#102 &#101

ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)

0046 0061 0069 006C 002D 0073 0061 0066 0065

Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)

406775781585677271

Top     

 

INDEX

1. Definition
2. Usage: Modern
3. Usage: Commercial
4. Quotations: Non-fiction 		5. Usage Frequency
6. Translations: Modern
7. Derivations
8. Anagrams 		9. Orthography
10. Bibliography


  

Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.