'Doomsday Plane' Would Save President and Joint Chiefs in Apocalypse Scenario

[Marenco]

In the event of nuclear war, a powerful meteor strike or even a zombie apocalypse, the thoroughly protected doomsday plane is ready to keep the president, secretary of defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff and other key personnel in the air and out of danger. It may not deflect a Twitter photo scandal, but it can outrun a nuclear explosion and stay in the air for days without refueling.

The flight team for the E-4B, its military codename, sleeps nearby and is ready to scramble in five minutes. It was mobilized in the tumultuous hours after planes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and southern Pennsylvania on 9/11.

"If the command centers that are on the ground in the United States have a failure of some sort, or attack, we immediately get airborne. We're on alert 24/7, 365," Captain W. Scott "Easy" Ryder, Commander, NAOC, told ABC News' Diane Sawyer as she traveled to Afghanistan with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the apocalypse-proof plane. "Constantly there's at least one alert airplane waiting to get airborne."

http://abcnews.go.com/US/doomsday-pl...ef=abc-fb-recs

[AceNZ]

Hmm. Seems like an odd thing to spend taxpayer dollars on (at least from a taxpayer perspective). If leaders were the first to be in danger in a man-made apocalypse rather than the last, seems like that would reduces the odds of said apocalypse, wouldn't it?