WOPR

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WOPR Computer

WOPR (pronounced "Whopper") is an acronym for War Operation Plan Response, Stephen Falken and John McKittrick's fictional military computer featured in the movie and novel WarGames.

It is programmed to play numerous strategy and war games, including one called Global Thermonuclear War, the purpose being to enable itself to optimally respond to any possible enemy nuclear attack. WOPR may be a pun on "whopper", meaning a big lie or gross untruth. According to the trivia section of the IMDb entry on WarGames it is a pun on the name of the real NORAD computer of that time, BURGR and the Burger King sandwich The Whopper. However, there is no information available on what the BURGR acronym would stand for or whether an actual computer with this name was ever used by NORAD[1].

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

A computer hacker unwittingly breaks into the military computer system by dialing random phone numbers (known as Wardialing), makes contact with WOPR, finds a list of games and gives the command to play the Global Thermonuclear War scenario, unaware of the computer's real use. In the process, WOPR begins running the simulation on the main screen at NORAD, making the staff there think the Soviet Union is powering up their missiles for a launch. When he realizes what he's done and while being pursued by Government agents, the young hacker, his girlfriend and the WOPR's designer barely manage to gain access to NORAD headquarters (Cheyenne Mountain) and persuade the military that the data WOPR is presenting is just a simulation. However, the efforts by the military to stand down from DEFCON 2 are misinterpreted by WOPR as an attempted subversion of the defense system and it attempts to proceed with a full-scale nuclear launch on its own. The situation is particularly dire considering that cutting power to the computer is not an option, as it is programmed to interpret a sudden power loss as the destruction of NORAD and is instructed to automatically launch its full arsenal in response.

The young hacker and the designer are only able to persuade WOPR to stop when they trick it into playing tic tac toe (which the programmer had added to the database but not included in the game list) against itself, which almost instantly creates a long string of stalemates. This concept of futility in an unwinnable game extends to WOPR running through all the possible scenarios of nuclear war, which all end in stalemates as well. In the face of this data, WOPR concludes that nuclear war is a pointless exercise and stands down.