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Both sides have ways around this, they just aren’t well publicized because they are scary and unconstitutional. If President Reagan and his government had been eliminated in a first strike, retaliatory launch orders would be given out by an unelected triumvirate headed by Dick Cheney, hidden in a bunker in the Appalachian mountains. If the Soviet presidium had been wiped out launch codes would have been dispensed by a Soviet AI called Dead Hand, hidden in a bunker in the Urals. After the Cold War both sides of course scrambled to claim that neither of these systems were actually used, but I’m sure modern classified equivalents exist. Neither the American or Russian deep states are going to gamble the fate of the country on the President getting hustled out of bed in time.
Even if the US President and most of his successors were to be taken out at once, there are a set of planes ("Nightwatch", also known as the "doomsday planes"), at least one of which is kept ready to launch at a moment's notice (and would likely be launched once a specific DEFCON level is reached) that is presumed to have the capability to relay launch codes to remaining nuclear assets.
Presumably the plane can't relay the codes on its own though.
Officially, indeed.
But since they have to be ready to launch at a moment's notice, probably aren't close enough at all time for the president or vice-president to be taken up in one within a couple of minutes, there's some guesses that can be made as for what purpose they are kept on a hair trigger to launch for.
The system as it's officially defined and depicted in public media, that only the President can authorize nuclear weapons using specifically the "football" that follows him, is nonsensical and does little to deter an adversary that believes it can do a decapitating strike on DC. It seems highly likely (although we probably won't have confirmation of such) that it is symbolic and that authority to launch is delegated. It has already been revealed that it has been delegated in the past. There's only three people in the line of succession being likely prepared and ready to act decisively within minutes (VP, SoS, SoD). Should the authority fall on another, getting a football to their location, codes, onboarding them, explaining their options, etc... is impractical, if a response is required within minutes.
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For now.
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I would not presume that.
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Asuming we know where all of their nuclear weapon infrastructure is, ~5 minutes isn't enough time to confirm and launch before they're obliterated though, no?
Part of nuclear weapon infrastructure is engineered to move, specifically to not be easily located (boomers, road-mobile launchers)
Part of nuclear weapon infrastructure is engineered to be obnoxiously hard to destroy (nuclear silos), see term "nuclear sponge".
Second strike capability exists specifically to avoid need for launch on warning.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident and other why it is a good thing.
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