Britain's secret plan for surviving a nuclear war
The country would have been divided into 12 regions, each governed by cabinet ministers with wide powers, aided by senior military officers, chief constables and judges and based in bunkers. Other senior figures would have retreated to a central government shelter under the Cotswolds.War Book reveals how Britain planned to cope with nuclear attack (via Futurismic)The plans all assumed that the confrontation would be with the Soviet Union. Among the possible scenarios spelled out in the autumn of 1968 was escalating tension following a Soviet moon landing and troop movements in eastern Europe...
The book apparently formed the basis for regular exercises every two years by senior civil servants, with daily internal briefings, the organisation of national preparedness schemes including the stockpiling of food and building materials for shelters and, as the threat grew more imminent, the removal of art treasures from London to Scotland and the emptying of hospitals of all but the most acutely ill.
David Young, a former Ministry of Defence civil servant who took part in the mock exercises, told the programme: "R-hour would be the final release of nuclear weapons. There may have been an earlier tactical use ... but R-hour was [when] everything that's left goes. That's not an easy decision to participate in. Even though you know it is just an exercise, it makes you think."
Young said ministers were not encouraged to take part in the exercises: "They would be disinclined to play by the rules. Some of them quite liked talking, so you'd get behind time and there would be a fear that if they showed a reluctance to do what the military believed was necessary, that this would weaken deterrence..."
"My favourite measure, the one which always aroused a lot of debate ... was the introduction of censorship for private correspondence. You can imagine that was something that ministers would only agree to right at the very end when it was clear that war was inevitable."
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In a case of nuclear confrontation or even all out war, the least competent group would be the military: they're not very good for appeasement.
The problem I see here is that every pound you're spending on moving art treasures from London to Scotland is a pound you're not spending on de-escalating the conflict and getting the Russians back to the negotiating table.
Also, all the cabinet members would have been killed, as there's no warning for a ballistic missile strike. Your tax pounds at work.
Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!
Nice to know that in the event of a thermonuclear war the people that caused it will be able to comfortably ride it out in bunkers. Good for them. I can sleep better tonight knowing that the bureaucrats are safe.
This looks like the relevant document record through the UK National Archives, but I'm not seeing a digitized copy anywhere. Please tell me someone doesn't have to go there and scan it...
This forum thread also has some info on obtaining the documents. They may not be available for 8-10 weeks, although it may be possible to obtain a copy from Prof. Peter Hennessy who got the book released.
The project that I'm currently involved with (a UK Govt one) has as one of it's stakeholders one of the chaps involved in this. I've met with him and talked about the issues he had surrounding the mobilisation of green forces on the ground. Basically getting working parties of Fire and Rescue crews together to start building small "communities". His biggest fear was that he was on "the list" but that his family weren't so he had to get used to the idea that when called upon he would have to leave them behind.
An interesting conversation that had some impact on the current project.
Detonate every nuclear weapon in the old USSR and USA arsenal, and you probably won't have to worry for very long about life after a nuclear war.
I'm confused. whats the news here? Any UK activist from the 1970s will remember the phrase 'regional seat of government' -we all knew this.
so is this just that under FOI we have the documents that Duncan Campbell said existed or what?
I strongly advise "Mission improbable : using fantasy documents to tame disaster" by Lee Clarke. Clever book, but I don't know if the writers of the plan used it. My guess is they didn't.
But what's the male/female ratio?
-hum- They didn't read Clarke's book because it wasn't written yet... Didn't see it was plans from 60's till 90's.
Wasn't this the document Peter Watkins used as the basis for his 1965 film "The War Game" that was subsequently banned in the UK and not shown there until 1985?
i suggest they all migrate to australia
I sent out a short podcast a few years ago about how the USA planned to survive a nuke war. It's easy.
kraftymiles - I find it funny that they would not include the families of priority people for emergency evacuations. This basically means that if there is a nuclear war, and these people were the only ones saved, the survivors would be entirely composed of old fat guys.
You of course make the assumption that all those on the list were male, which was not the case. WRT the chap I've spoken to it's jsut that his family were not on the list so he would have effectively had to start over again.
#7 posted by Daemon
I thought that too.
In a nuclear war the only way to increase the chances of at least some of your citizens or allies to surviving would be to NOT launch any of your own weapons. You might loose all your major cities and be invaded, but that's still way better than making Earth inhabitable.
When Gordon Brown took over running the labour party, the papers reported that one of his tasks was rewriting the note about Britain's nuclear arsenal.
All of our nukes are on submarines, and at least three of the four are out at sea in classified locations at any given time. Every sub carries a sealed hand-written note from the current Prime Minister, detailing the launch/not launch instructions to be carried out if the UK is destroyed by nuclear attack.
The notes are destroyed, unread, when each Prime Minister moves out of office. The article I read/heard said that only one prime minister had ever revealed what he wrote. For the life of me I can't remember who it was (I'm certain that it wasn't Blair or Thatcher), but his orders were not to fire, because if it's come to nuclear war the best we can hope for is that someone survives, no matter who.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs
"I'm damned if I can find a copy on the web, or on the National Archives' site. "
Don't be silly. Of course it's available. They even made a movie about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whoops_Apocalypse
This is really interesting, since it's related to my field of academic research (the design/politics/psychology of government public information schemes in the face of the threat of catastrophic attack). I was going down to the National Archives later this year anyway to look at other documents - if I can get my hands on the War Book I will be sure to update all y'allz!
So when does the dude in the Guy Fawkes mask show up?
Pres Reagan (out of Nixon via Cheney Rumsfeld, et al on towards Bush II and VP-Palin) pressured many communities to plan for nuclear war and to adopt evacuation plans (Star Wars and the Peace Shield would protect us. Now we have the new star wars shield based in Alaska). Fortunately, there were smart citizens who could ask basic questions (how big is 10 square feet per person? Where in Santa Fe would the much larger population of Albuquerque stay? ) what-me-worry-we-have-plan
When examined, as if they were "real", these plans are ludicrous and communities usually switch to more practical steps, such as working to avoid war. The bad thing is that most preparedness plans also rely upon ludicrous scenarios, but without any careful analytical anthropology studies to calculate the ludicrusty index. (For example, the state of Alaska issues pandemic influenza passes to non-existent mass disease shelters in rural, mostly Alaska Native, areas. Evidently, such passes are unnecessary for Wasilla or Anchorage.)
I remember flipping through a book in my local library in Leeds when I was a kid. It seemed to be a declassified UK government plan on post-nuclear attack contingencies, although I could never find it later when I went back. It said something about using police stations to grow cannabis because it would be the quickest way to get pain relief to the local population in the absence of working hospitals etc. Anyone have any idea what that book was?
Just down the road from where I used to live, there was a place called Hack Green. It was to be one of the 12 areas that would take up the mantle of power after we got nuked.
Now they have tours around it.
http://www.hackgreen.co.uk/