UK Cold War Era Nuclear War Plans Revealed

NicerGuy writes "The BBC reports that documents from 1975, recently released by the National Archives, detail in part the UK's plan in the event of nuclear strikes during the Cold War. An audio download of the prepared radio broadcast is available. Several other topics are covered." From the article: "Further documents released this week reveal that two pandas in London Zoo sparked fears a diplomatic rift could flare up between Britain and China in the 1970s."

Comments

A transcript

[Anonymous Coward]

"Oh bloody hell, the Yanks have really done us in this time."

A nuclear war for two pandas!

[Anonymous Coward]

A nuclear war over two pandas! That's it! The rules of war should change to politicians killing each other instead of the populations and military (which btw, wouldnt be needed)!

Re:A nuclear war for two pandas!

[doxology]

Talk about a Panda-mic!

Re:A nuclear war for two pandas!

[c_forq]

whoosh

That was the sound of a joke. You might have not been able to hear it, as it seems to have passed miles above your head.

Re:A nuclear war for two pandas!

[Furmy]

Pandamic isn't a real word.

Oh, yeah?



errrr, try this one instead.

Re:A nuclear war for two pandas!

[jeeperscats]

your sig seems to fit this topic perfectly. This makes me wonder how many people here have actually heard of GYBE...

Linux users need not apply

[user9918277462]

Too bad the so-called audio download is only available as WMP/Realplayer embedded content. Where's the direct download link? Isn't BBC one of the few media giants to have embraced open formats, etc?

Re:Linux users need not apply

[taskforce]

The BBC actually offers an add/BS free version of RealPlayer on their website for people comming from UK ISPs. It's not exactly open, but it's alright. The reason they use WMP and Real is becuase the majority of their content is streaming, and mp3 based streaming servers aren't as well developed at the enterprise level as they could be. I'd imagine the reason this is in the same format (even though for this type of data it would make more sense as a download) is becuase it's a standardised system which they already have implemented for all their audio content.

To be fair to them as well, they do give you a choice, if that counts for anything.

Re:Linux users need not apply

[taskforce]

Sorry; forgot to mention in previous post that there is a version of Realplayer for Linux, so Linux users http://www.real.com/linux?pcode=rn&src=freeplayer_ partner&opage=freeplayer_partner can apply.

Re:Linux users need not apply

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact Linux users can use Vsound http://www.zorg.org/vsound/index.shtml to save real player stream as a wav file, which I don't think Windows users can.

Re:Linux users need not apply

[NitsujTPU]

Where have you been? I've had Linux RealPlayer for... I don't know how long... a long time.

Re:Linux users need not apply

[flyingsquid]

OK, so they have plans for dealing with a nuclear strike. But what about the aftermath? What's their plan for dealing with a psychopathic terrorist wearing a Guy Fawkes mask?

Re:Linux users need not apply

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Dude, mplayer is your friend. It is capable of using native Win32 codecs (included on many sites as a tarball) and it will play just about any format known to man. There are also plugins for Firefox which allow you to start mplayer by clicking on them funky Windows Media Player "only" links.

Re:Linux users need not apply

[EnderWigginsXenocide]

OK, so they have plans for dealing with a nuclear strike. But what about the aftermath? What's their plan for dealing with a psychopathic terrorist wearing a Guy Fawkes mask?

Easy, they call The DOCTOR.

Re:Linux users need not apply

[Mmm coffee]

Could someone please do many of us a huge favor and mirror that announcement? As a Konqueror user I don't even have Firefox installed and try as I must I can't get to it. :(

Re:Linux users need not apply

[someone300]

Why must everyone keep saying that you can't use realplayer stuff (embedded or not) in Linux?

https://player.helixcommunity.org/

Not only does it work perfectly, standalone and as a plugin, it's better than the Windows Real* players.
And, if you don't want to use the plugin, you could just view the html of the page and get the link to it, then open it in a standalone player... mplayer, realplayer, vlc.. etc.

Re:Linux users need not apply

[sxpert]

dude, that doesn't work on my 64 bit machine...

Re:Linux users need not apply

[mormop]

You can also go here:

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/dload.htm l

and download the essential codecs package.

Un-bunzip it and copy the contents of the resulting folder into /usr/lib/win32 (you may have to create it depending on your distro) and all of a sudden you can play wmp files in mplayer and several other media palyers on Linux (not encoded ones but DVD Jon's got a fix for that i hear).

If you put mozilla and mozplugger on you can then play embedded media (make sure that konqueror is set for the plugins dirs).

Sadly, the BBC is still using closed formats but they do have a fully open audio/video codec in development that they will hopefully use in future.

BTW No, I don't work for the BBC but they are one of the few organisations in Britain worth caring about.

Re:Linux users need not apply

[Anonymous Coward]

Who?

Re:Linux users need not apply

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a resolution for you Linux Zealots for the New Year:

"If I can't view/listen/play something on a site posted to Slashdot, I will whine and complain to the offending site, not on slashdot".

It's tiresome having to wade through all the posts from you people that insist on crippling your machines for bizarre political reasons that nobody cares about.

mkay? HAND!

Re:Linux users need not apply

[IgnoramusMaximus]

dude, that doesn't work on my 64 bit machine...

As far as I know 32 bit mplayer runs on 64 bit systems and you need that (I think) for the Win32 codecs which are only available in 32 bits as many are legacy all the way back to win 3.1 era. There is a 64 bit version of mplayer but then you have to abandon the win32 codecs and use the OSS equivalents which are rather limited. I am not sure about Win64 codecs compatibility with mplayer 64 bit.

Re:Linux users need not apply

[theshowmecanuck]

For Windows users who are tired of the RealPlayer and Quicktime spyware crap, if you go here (Free-Codecs.com), you can get "Media Player Classic" and codecs that will view realplayer codecs without all the bullshit generally associated with the 'real' realplayer (or quicktime B.S. too). I was avoiding those spyware apps and media formats until I found this. I think the player comes with the codecs, but if not, also get the k-lite codec pack and it will install codecs for real and quicktime.

There is a free download for real player for Linux that works pretty good.

Re:Linux users need not apply

[Mr Z]

I've so far managed to get mplayer to build as a 32-bit app under Ubuntu 5.04 on my AMD64 box. I haven't managed to get sound to work though.

It'd be cool if Linux managed to build a 64-to-32 thunking layer that let 64-bit apps dynamically load 32-bit libraries. That'd open up 32-bit plugins and codecs to native 64-bit apps.

Black-and-white nukes...

[__aaclcg7560]

I know the pandas are China's national treasure... But I'm sure China would NOT nuke humanity for the sake of two pandas. We got enough endanger species as it is.

Re:Black-and-white nukes...

[UniverseIsADoughnut]

Like to see Las Vegas Odds on that one.

Re:Black-and-white nukes...

[epugachev]

The panda issue is separate from the nuke issue. That article is a summary of all the documents that were recently declassified by the Brits, and not all of them have to do with nuclear war plans.

Re:Black-and-white nukes...

[DigiShaman]

Spread the LOVE! ...we need more panda pr0n! The Chinese just aren't giving it up :(

Re:Black-and-white nukes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet they would nuke humanity over a bunch of tiny little islands off their coast.

Re:Black-and-white nukes...

[__aaclcg7560]

Are you forgetting about the Cuban missile crisis? Nuclear war over a tiny island was on the table until the Soviet Union removed their missiles from Cuba.

Re:Black-and-white nukes...

[Anonymous Coward]

a) What the fuck does that have to do with China

b) The crisis was over *sending nuclear weapons* to the tiny little island, not over the island itself. There is a bit of a difference there.

Re:Black-and-white nukes...

[__aaclcg7560]

What's going to prevent the U.S. from sending nuclear missiles (or, more likely, anti-nuclear defense missiles) to Taiwan if relations with China sours? The next global war could very well be between the U.S. and China. Humanity could still be wiped out from a fight that starts over a tiny island. When you have nations with big weapons, as some point they will use those big weapons. Stupidity breeds more stupidity.

They don't need to worry now

[Anonymous Coward]

That in discussions between Prime Minister Harold Wilson and the BBC's chairman they talked about whether there were too many "hippies" in the corporation

They all moved on to Slashdot.

For Another Take, Check Out The Movie "Threads"...

[ferrellcat]

Probably a more accurate version of how the British government's "plans" would be followed after a nuclear exchange.

It's an awesome move, too!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/

Poland did that too

[MSBob]

A few weeks ago Poland revealed (to the dismay of Russia) the nuclear war plans from the days of the warsaw pact. The map was a truly scary prospect. Much of Poland would be annihilated in that nuclear war. Here's one article covering that story. You can find lots more. One interesting disclosure was the war games map with all the nuclear strike sites marked on it.

Re:Poland did that too

[Bad D.N.A.]

"One interesting disclosure was the war games map with all the nuclear strike sites marked on it."

A link to that content would be nice?

Re:Poland did that too

[xs650]

So the Ruskies were going to hit NATO where it cause the most pain. What would anyone except a complete cypher expect of them?

It's not like NATO was going to shoot it's nukes harmlessly off into some empty desert.

It was going to be a real nasty fooking war if it happened and very likely the West would have started tossing nukes first because the Warsaw Pact had greatly superior quantities of ground forces.

During the cold war one of the catchy phrases in the military industrial complex was that NATO forces were going to have a "Target rich environment". That means their asses were going to get run over.

Re:Poland did that too

[MSBob]

The scan of the map was published in the Polish daily "Wyborcza" but I can't find it on their website anymore. I tried google but without luck. In essence all the cities along the vistula river were to receive the brunt of the nuclear attack. As far as Soviet retaliation was concerned, the usual suspects, including Bonn, London and Brussels were on that map. For Poland alone, 2,000,000+ casualties were forecast.

Re:Poland did that too

[jb.hl.com]

It's not like NATO was going to shoot it's nukes...into some empty desert.

Well, it was going to attack Russia. Close enough, IMHO.

Re:Poland did that too

[Anonymous Coward]

Daily Telegraph article link, contains the map.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2005/11/26/war26.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/11/26/ ixportal.html

Re:Poland did that too

[Alioth]

The west would have almost immediately used nuclear weapons - the Davy Crockett nuclear mortar was built just for that purpose, to use on the front lines against advancing Soviet forces. The Davy Crockett was the smallest Western nuclear weapon, with a selectable yield from 10 tons to 400 tons (no not kilotons, tons). The weapon weighed around 150 lbs, and was the smallest practical nuclear weapon. Most likely the soldiers using them would be committing suicide - the prompt radioactive effects went far beyond the blast and thermal range of these weapons (in essence because of the low yield they were just as much radiation weapons as anything else).

Re:Poland did that too

[Anonymous Coward]

It was going to be a real nasty fooking war if it happened and very likely the West would have started tossing nukes first because the Warsaw Pact had greatly superior quantities of ground forces.

*sigh* Did no one pay attention to the end of the Cold War, when archives flew open we found out that a lot of those quantities were exaggerated?

Keep in mind that, in the event of war, the Soviets would have had to keep a lot of their force in reserve just in case their pals in China decided to have a rematch near the Ussuri river, that a lot of Soviet troops were on economic duties at home (road repair, consstruction, agriculture), that several Republics in the USSR were unhappy and troops would have to be kept behind there to ensure against revolt, and that satellite states would have to have big garisons kept there, too (especially in Poland), lest they revolt.

Then you run into the geographical problem: even with those constraints, there are more Soviet troops than NATO ones available (though the ratio is less than than 3:1 in favor of the Soviets, and there's that pesky "quality of troops and equipment" issue), but those Soviet troops have to go through certain geographical areas. If I'm the lone guy defending a room against ten guys, I'm not all that worried if they all have to come in through a few doors.

Then there is the logistical problem on the Soviet side: their logistics was not terribly good, and wartime conditions were not likely to improve them. (he fact of different train gauges between Poland and Russia was a major, major constraint on the Soviet ability to invade Western Europe.)

Yeah, I know NATO figures and US miltiary figures were painting an image of the mighty Soviet forces who would, with 175 Soviet divisions and 75 satellite ones, march West and crash through all NATO defenses without breaking a sweat. They were exagerrating quite a bit, and what's more, there was reason to think they were exagerrating at the time. Don't believe me? Go back and read some back issues of International Security from the late 1970s and early 1980s. Matthew Evangelista's Stalin's Postwar Army Reappraised, appearing in International Security, Winter 1982/1983, Vol 7, No 3, and also in Soviet Military Policy. In particular, comparisons that match raw numbers of Soviet divisions against NATO ones neglected that NATO divisions had many more people in them than Soviet ones, and figures known to be overstated were repeated again and again over the years. (The figure of 175 Soviet and 75 satellite divisions, for instance, arose in the late 1940s, was soon discredited, but was drug out and used pretty much until the Soviet Union collapsed.)

One could argue that the type of exagerration and threat inflation which we've seen in respect to Iraq began in the Cold War era.

I personally wonder every time I hear a nice round number mentioned with regard to al-Qaida. The oft-mentioned claim that "10,000 people went through al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan," for instance makes me really, really suspicious that it is an inflated number.

Anyway, I'm getting away from my original point, which is that there are many reasons to doubt the "Soviet tide" theory that NATO would have been swiftly overwhelmed by the mighty Soviet legions. Those legions look a lot less impressive when you are aware of their shoddy training, terrible leadership, bad equipment and the difficulties that the Soviet Union would have faced in wartime. (Smaller subsets of the Soviet military-like the Spetnaz units, would have probably performed better, but you don't win a conventional war by having good Special Forces units and a lousy regular army.) I'm not surprised to see the old "Soviet tide" chestnut repeated here, since Americans (and, to a lesser degree, Britons) were bombarded with it in the media (who seem incapable of doing a good job of reporting

Re:Poland did that too

[StarTux]

"That means their asses were going to get run over."

    It was expected to be about 3 to 1, but the equipment and training of the west was not so bad and in many areas superior and remember too that most of the Western forces were and still are volunteers.

There are quite a few wars or battles where a numerically superior foe has been decimated by one that is inferior in numbers...

However, a Third World War would have certainly been different from any other, indeed even if conventional I am certain that US cities for the first time would have been hit by missiles.

Luckily this has not yet happened, although if the West make enemies of Russia now or China who knows?

StarTux

Re:Poland did that too

[Martin Blank]

It was actually a recoilless rifle that was used, not a mortar. And the lethal radiation effects extended out to a radius of about a quarter mile, while the weapon had a range of something like one or two miles. They would have been wearing full NBC gear, so whatever did reach them would have been stopped, or at least reduced enough that they could have been treated. It was only deployed from 1961 to 1971, though, so through most of the Cold War, it would have been unavailable for use.

The final deployed version's yield seems to be in some dispute. Some sources claim the warhead's yield range for the Davy Crockett variant was selectable at 10 or 20 tons, while others maintain a range of 10 tons to 250 tons to even as high as 1.5kT. Given that the warhead was also used as a nuclear landmine and in the Genie air-to-air missile, I think a lot of cross-contamination of facts is getting in. However, given the above information that I've seen most consistently, I would think that anything more than the 250 tons would be pushing the chances for survival of the launch crew.

Re:Poland did that too

[xs650]

What is overlooked is that the 3 to 1 ratio was overall. An atttack would have been massed in a few areas with a far higher numerical advantage. Also, the Soviets had a far more than 3:1 advantage in artillery. Everything in their path would have been shreaded before they got there. That's why the West needed tactical nukes.

Somone else mentioned the Davy Crocket, which is a tube launched very short ranged rocket, not a mortar. One is on display in the Ft. Benning, GA museum mounted on a jeep.

Re:Poland did that too

[Mutatis Mutandis]

Actually, that was no big news, for the Soviet warplans have been known for years. It is just that journalists haven't noticed, or have already forgotten.

The plan was for a "pre-emptive strike" in case war was in the offing. It would executed as a "nuclear blitzkrieg". About 200 targets in Western Europe would be destroyed with tactical nuclear weapons, including communications centers and ports. The large WarPac mechanized forces would then advance; IIRC they expected to reach the Rhine in two weeks and the Pyrenees in six. (Tank crews are relatively well protected against radiation, if the air is properly filtered.)

I once talked to a researcher from Poland. He told me that during his army service, he had received training using a "nuclear simulator" which consisted out of a kind of cardboard doll-house and a flashlight. After the bomb fell, they were supposed to go out and spray the cows with water to remove the fall-out from their skin, and then move them to another field. He was a phycisist, and understood very well how ridiculous this was.

Re:Poland did that too

[TGK]

While the Crockett was clearly intended as a infantry level nuclear weapon (perhaps the most tactical of tactical nukes) it is incorrect to infer that the United States had a "first strike" posture based on this weapon's existance.

Consider this - the overwhelming majority of US strategic weapons were placed in hardened silos and in nuclear submarines. The Soviet arsonal, in contrast, was deployed on truck-beds and on free-standing launch scaffolds.

Soviet strategic weapons were thus designed for a first strike, being themselves completely unprotected from a US frist strike. The Soviets expected to launch first thus making the hardening of their weapons systems irrelevant.

In most senarios, there are two wars going on at the same time. A simultanious conventional thrust by the Soviets in Europe and a strategic nuclear strike on US assets would be met with US resistance in Europe (incorporating tatical weapons) and a strategic responce from submarines and hardened silos across the United States and other NATO allies.

Europe is the prize in this hypothetical senario - and as such it is unlikely that full yeild strategic weapons would be used in the Europen theater. The Crockett and others like it were designed to deal with massed troop movements without destroying Europe - which was seen as the key to strategic dominance by both the Soviets and the United States.

Nuke the Pandas!

[dangitman]

Well, you gotta nuke something. Nelson

Re:Nuke the Pandas!

[Kenshin]

"Touché..."

- Lisa Simpson

Amen!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been 20 years since I first saw that movie, and while it was utterly terrifying back during the Cold War, it still makes me shudder when I think about it now.

Wouldn't that be...

[Phariom]

"Other Cabinet papers showed Harold Wilson was warned in 1975 that Britain's economy faced 'possible wholesale domestic liquidation.'"

...possible wholesale domestic vaporization?

Furthermore, my friends and I play a lot of pen-and-paper role-playing games set in Europe (Call of Cthulhu mainly) and they always accuse me of a "lack of realism" in the manner in which my characters behave. My response to said friends? "They're British. They boil their meat. They drink warm beer. I don't have to explain their unusual behavior; just play the damn game."

I can now add: "They'd let their entire population be atomized in order to wipe out the 'hippie menace.'"

Re:Wouldn't that be...

[Anonymous Coward]

And then look at yourself. You play pen and paper role playing games

Re:Wouldn't that be...

[Anonymous Coward]

You've just magnificently demonstrated your ignorance.

Have a gold star!

Re:Wouldn't that be...

[DDiabolical]

Atleast British beer contains alcohol!

It would have been nice ...

[the real darkskye]

... if they provided an unedited and uncommented version of the broadcast.
As a UK resident it would be nice to know the kind of broadcast I'd be hearing the moment all other mediums went down. I have no idea if we even have an emergency broadcast channel or radio station.
Aside from always watching the big 4.7 (Channel five only counts as .7) analogue TV channels there is no way to get a major news flash. when 11/9 happened I only knew about it because I happened to be watching BBC1 at the time (well this would be true had I also not been on IRC at the time, but the average daytime TV viewer in the UK isn't always on-line), had I been watching any of the other digital channels I had at the time, I'd not have seen anything.

I won't get in to the whole "We have plans to make sure we can run the country, even if the rest of the country is dead, injured or suffering from radiation poisoning" thing, that's for another rant.

Re:It would have been nice ...

[MillionthMonkey]

And now for something completely different.

Re:It would have been nice ...

[Anonymous Coward]

They did broadcast the beginning of it on 5live a few mornings ago. I think it said that the radio would be the main communication channel and it was a bit disconcerting. One person rang up to say that people just waking up could have been fooled by it.
Also 0.7 is a bit generous. Of course there wouldn't have been 5 channels then...

Re:It would have been nice ...

[KingDaveRa]

I think they are counting on most people having a radio or TV on at the time of such an announcement. I don't think the TV would just instantly go off - there'd be an announcement for an hour or two, then it would be switched off.

I think if a similar plan existed today, they would keep TV channels running. More people have working/decent TVs now than radios. Many that do have radios they use often are either mains powered, or DAB anyway. The internet would have to play some role too in telling people what was going on.

I heard about 11/9 via text message from a friend who was listening to Radio 1 whilst on the bus. The London bombings I heard about via IRC, then went looking at the BBC and News 24's stream (which had just been put up as it was happening). It seemed most other people were doing much the same, as IRC was buzzing, and the BBC news site was performing horribly. In this day and age it would be naive for the government to assume they could just shut everything down to the radio channels only. In 1975 this would be such a hard thing as TV was relatively new, and as for the internet, it was hardly in the position it is now.

Re:It would have been nice ...

[Alioth]

The film 'Threads' features some of the public information films and broadcasts that would have been broadcast prior to nuclear war. They are made all the more chilling because of the odd music played at the start and end of the broadcasts (Threads used the actual films - not a speculative mock up).

In the early 1980s, the government also issued Protect and Survive: the leaflets and some of the public information broadcasts are here: http://www.cybertrn.demon.co.uk/atomic/

Re:It would have been nice ...

[dmdb]

I have no idea if we even have an emergency broadcast channel or radio station.

Speaking to someone who worked at the BBC for some years there is (or at least there was!) an underground bunker designed for transmitting emergency announcments. Much more than this I don't know!

Seattle Cold War Civil Defense Manual

[H0NGK0NGPH00EY]

Here's a little self-plug for something somewhat related that I scanned. A "Civil Defense Manual" for Seattle from 1951. Check it out, there's some unintentionally amusing stuff in there.

Re:Seattle Cold War Civil Defense Manual

[ozmanjusri]

Check it out, there's some unintentionally amusing stuff in there.

It's a fascinating era, wildly optomistic in some ways (paint your home with reflective white paint to ward off radiation...) and terrifying in others (stay in your city after the atomic explosion and fight the invaders). There's a great collection of public interest films here;

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=mediatype% 3Amovies%20AND%20collection%3Aprelinger%20AND%20%2 Fmetadata%2Fsubject%3A%22Atomic-nuclear%3A%20Civil %20Defense%22

It includes the original "Duck and Cover" movie, as well as the "Operation Cue" experiment. A fantastic resource.

Re:Seattle Cold War Civil Defense Manual

[Arivia]

My Paranoia game thanks you, although the Troubleshooters in it hate you. 8)

Re:Seattle Cold War Civil Defense Manual

[hobo sapiens]

That's pretty interesting...I especially liked the list of "Enemies from Within". Thanks for posting this. I tell you what: I will be on the lookout for those commies in the Consumer's Union and Civil Rights Congress!

--
Some things never change...

Re:Seattle Cold War Civil Defense Manual

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it looked interesting but unfortunately I had to give up after three pages. Some Photoshop ``guru'' has superimposed an ugly logo on every page, thereby ruining them: these are historical documents, not personal advertising billboards. Hint: JPEG defines header fields, use those if you want to show off.

Re:Seattle Cold War Civil Defense Manual

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they mean the white paint would help to reflect heat radiation? Which could have worked. It may have helped prevent overheating and fires.

Re:Seattle Cold War Civil Defense Manual

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the last page. At the time (and well into the 1950s) no Soviet aircraft had the range to reach the US and return to the USSR.

In his memoirs, Nikita Krushchev tells about the time he and other Politburo members raised this issue with the designer of the Tupolev Tu-4 (the only Soviet bomber with the range to reach the US at the time, and pretty much a copy of the US B-29) in 1949. The designer said the plane could land in Mexico, and Krushchev responded "What do you think Mexico is, our mother-in law? You think we can go calling anytime we want? The Mexicans would never let us have the plane back!"

Re:Seattle Cold War Civil Defense Manual

[H0NGK0NGPH00EY]

Yes, clearly I am a criminal of the lowest sort to wish to get some visible credit if people out there copy and use the images that I put my time and energy into scanning. What a tragedy that I would ruin these super-high quality 800x1024 jpegs by placing a small reference to my site in the corner underneath all the relevant text on each page.

If you have such a huge problem with the super-imposed logo, you could have bothered reading this bit in the intro:

High resolution, non-watermarked TIFF files are also available upon request.

As in, the priceless historical documents are preserved in a 2533x3244 non-compressed, non-logo-ified format, and freely available to anyone who takes the huge effort it requires to simply ask. But I suppose that would have ruined your opportunity for the little over-dramatic show you just put on there.

Re:Seattle Cold War Civil Defense Manual

[FussionMan]

White paint might have contained lead, but I'm not sure.

What about MI6?

[Kuxman]

What would Bond do? Would he sweep some lucky lady off her feet and escape in his submersable car for Australia?

Fucking Kangaroos

Whew...Glad that's over!

[TheIndifferentiate]

I'm glad there's no threat of nuclear annihilation anymore so all these plans can be thrown out. Seriously though, they must have better plans now 'cause the nuclear threat is still there. They probably have dug bunkers under Ben Nevis or something.

Re:Whew...Glad that's over!

[niktemadur]

...the nuclear threat is still there

Hmmm...yes and no. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and her 'satellite states', the threat for MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) has virtually disappeared. I mean, twenty years ago the image of thousands of ICBMs crossing each other in opposite directions was palpable, while now it almost sounds like the hysterical folly of Cold War doomsayers. The missiles are still there, but the Politburo has gone the way of the dodo, along with the itchy-trigger-finger military antagonism it fed back and forth with Washington, and I'm sure we all hope that the missiles in the plains beyond the Urals, along with those in South Dakota, rot in their freaking silos.

The image that sounds more feasible today is the suicide backpack nuker blowing a crater in the middle of an urban area, a couple of missiles lobbied from North Korea into Tokyo, or twin nukes blowing up in Delhi and Islamabad.

By the way, does anybody know if SAC (Strategic Air Command) is still flying its' B-52 bombers in circles around the perimeter of the Artic Circle, just in case?

Re:Whew...Glad that's over!

[Anonymous Coward]

One last threat remains... George W Bush

Re:Whew...Glad that's over!

[Waffle Iron]

The image that sounds more feasible today is the suicide backpack nuker blowing a crater in the middle of an urban area, a couple of missiles lobbied from North Korea into Tokyo, or twin nukes blowing up in Delhi and Islamabad.

The problem is that if any of those scenarios happen, it's not unlikely that events will spiral out of control afterwards, leading to the eventual launch of all those still-existing ICBMs.

Just look at all the crazy stuff that's happened in response to 9/11, then imagine multiplying that hysteria level by 1000X. That's the environment we'll be in after even a single nuke gets set off.

Re:Whew...Glad that's over!

[Shihar]

There really is no danger of MAD. That said, you are right that there is a slight danger of a nation being wiped out. The scenario that I see having some small possibility is that an Islamic fundamentalist group is given a nuclear weapon by a state, most likely Iran or North Korea, and that weapon is detonated in the US or (even worse) Israel.

If the US ever traced a detonated nuclear weapon back to another nation, and it was clear that that nation handed over the nuclear weapon intentionally, they would be fux00red. The US would invade at the bare minimum, and probably glass them over if they thought such an invasion would fail. North Korea in particular would be a candidate for glassing, while Iran would be a candidate for a limited nuking and a full scale invasion. Whatever the case, the nation in question probably would stand no chance to fire back. Playing nuclear war with Washington is a horrible idea. Unless you own a few thousand nukes, the US is not only going to win, but probably win without taking a scratch because they can drop a nuke on any spot even so much as suspected as housing nukes. If Washington has to guess where your remaining nukes are, they will leave no stone unglassed.

Now, to make the situation even uglier, consider if Israel was nuked. The US would likely try and show some restraint if they thought they could achieve their ends and avoid further attacks without glassing a nation over. Glassing a nation is a way to make the prospect of nuclear war too horrible to ever be considered again, but obviously involves mass whole sale genocide. The US might balk at genocide if other options existed. Israel on the other hand would show absolutely no such restraint. Israel would have no compulsions about making a lesson out of the offending nation. Israel would almost certainly glass the entire nation. While Israel doesn't have enough weapons to glass the world, they do have more then enough to glass over any Middle Eastern nation.

All that said, the real loss in life might not be in the actual nukes themselves. The real loss of life would come in the complete collapse of financial markets. People would flee the cities. Societies would spread out very quickly. This sudden change would have disastrous effects on economics. Developed nations would likely find themselves in a deep depression. The effects on the developed would be sever, but the resulting collapse of the world economy would be even worse on developing nations. Such a depression would ravage the economies of developing nations, resulting in mass starvation.

Moral of the story? Nukes = teh sux

Re:Whew...Glad that's over!

[YrWrstNtmr]

By the way, does anybody know if SAC (Strategic Air Command) is still flying its' B-52 bombers in circles around the perimeter of the Artic Circle, just in case?

No.
SAC is likewise gone, absorbed into Air Combat Command. They quit flying round the clock alert long, long ago. After Desert Storm (1991) there were no longer B-52's on 15 minute ground alert.

A little history on the BUFF.

Re:Whew...Glad that's over!

[displaced80]

Moral of the story? Nukes = teh sux

Amen.

I don't want to be alive to see any of the situations you describe. What particularly worries me is the "Glassing over a nation to act as a deterrent".

My boss at work is ex-Army. His solution to all the trouble in the world? Turn Mecca to glass. I guess I just don't buy the idea that you can seriously scare people into submission, once and for all. If we glassed Mecca, for example, we'd stand a very good chance that every single peaceful Islamic community in every western nation would radicalise.

Bye-bye, Civilisation.

Re:Whew...Glad that's over!

[Anonymous Coward]

You idiot. No, they don't fly the B-52s anymore.

But it doesn't even matter. March 13, 2015, 01:15AM ET. Russia launches first strike against the US and Northern Europe. The US and EU are taken by almost total surprise and fail to fully retaliate. Everybody else launches everything they have figuring this is the one chance to use it.

Around 5 billion people die immediately.

The US as we know it ceases to exist. Northern Europe, the middle east, Japan, India, Pakistan, and the Koreas die. China loses all its major cities. A fair amount of Russia survives. They start and win the war.

I live near a key US military base. I expect to be dead before I know there's a war going on.

Re:Whew...Glad that's over!

[phillymjs]

By the way, does anybody know if SAC (Strategic Air Command) is still flying its' B-52 bombers in circles around the perimeter of the Artic Circle, just in case?

B-52s haven't flown airborne alert missions since 1968, when a nuclear-armed B-52 on such a mission crashed near Thule AFB in Greenland. After that, the only constant in-air SAC presence was the "Looking Glass" airborne command post aircraft, and that presence ceased in July of 1990. SAC hasn't even existed as a separate Defense Department entity since a reorg in June of 1992, which created U.S. Strategic Command.

~Philly

Re:Whew...Glad that's over!

[Anonymous Coward]

There's less chance of it happening if we don't talk about it.

Re:Whew...Glad that's over!

[Anonymous Coward]

> By the way, does anybody know if *ahem* is still flying its' *something* in circles around *somewhere*, just in case?

No to your original post.

Yes, to my edited version of your post.

Re:Whew...Glad that's over!

[niktemadur]

Now c'mon, you seem to be a well-read Anonymous Coward, the least you can do is be polite towards a polite question. Basically, there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers, and a science fiction scenario is no excuse for even more doomsayer predictions.

Remember, Columbine is a town that manufactures missiles, and still everybody asked why some students in that particular town razed as many as they could before they imploded.

With your tone of writing, maybe you should consider moving into a more peacefull town, as far from your Anonymous Cowardly Town as you can, first time you get a chance? You know, there's a wide world out there who believe that the reality of war is scary, while for you, the reality of peace is scary.

Is it any coincidence that most functioning Cold War relics are in Small Town U.S.A.?

I feel for you, I can't even begin to imagine what type of education you've received. And your parents.

Believe me, there IS another way than the oppressive Christ and Nuclear Holocaust dogma that surrounds you. It's called History. Or Culture. Or Art. Or Science. Four different tickets that will take you to the same finish line: Common Sense, Enlightmentent, Adulthood (most adults are only adults in age, not in mind), call it what you will.

I hope to meet you here in five years.

Re:Whew...Glad that's over!

[Anonymous Coward]

two things....

palestinian hatred of israel died the day palestine was negotiated...yes a few groups that just simply want bloodshed stil exist.. however the powers in each still get the bigger picture...

that being said...

iran wont give a bomb to anyone neither will north korea...
both of those groups have power. and they will not risk that for anything...remember when pakistan's nuclear capability was claimed as the "islam bomb" riggghhhhtttt.....

pakistan had its own beefs and struggles...aka india.. understandable. cultural differences etc. okay so pakistan is not gonna risk that struggle with providing some fundamentalists withs a bomb or the knowhow... same with a legit govt of say north korea or Iran.

Iran wont because they have a hard enough time with a middle class that doesnt buy into fundamentalism. north korea wont because basically well they could get involved in a war. it would be incredibly bloody and result in the loss of power (counterproductive to those ,,,, well insane leaders).

and if you hadnt noticed in the past 7 years. the US no longer completely backs Israel...
granted even post 9/11 with the concept of terrorism the US is basically fed up with Israel acting insanely over Palestine. it doesnt agree with the palestinians tactics however it doesnt agree with Israels either (aka an attack helicopter that misses the target but takes out the orphanage, the nunnery and the store for cute puppy dogs all while mildly injuring a single body guard)

the fundamentalists failed to grasp that the palestinians wanted a free state. okay understandable due to history. once that was accomplished... all this islam fundementalism bullshit didnt matter... basically palestianians are different than those minority muslims that just want chaos... the remaining few just want damage. and they are failing at that.

nuclear weapons on that hand? not a chance...first of all where do they get one, they've tried and failed...no country wants to be responsible for that. hell even russia in it's chaos managed to keep it together.

and btw the US and Russia Independantly have more nuclear weaspons to not only glass over the entire planet. but destroy the glass. i wouldnt worry about a nuclear weapon. it wont happen for many years (hopefully never, i believe it would take total global chaos with multiple factions causing probs none of them being legit powers)

Did you...

[Anonymous Coward]

...email yourself asking permission to link to your site from Slashdot? :)

Re:Did you...

[H0NGK0NGPH00EY]

Har har... If it were a front-page story I'd be worried, but even a +5 comment (if it gets that high) I think I can handle. ;^)

Re:Did you...

[Anonymous Coward]

OMFG! The guy from the parent post is slashdotting himself! Look out look out look out... KABOOM!

Hit with a nuclear weapon?

[Stan Vassilev]

What's the big deal? Duck and cover & you're set.

Re:Hit with a nuclear weapon?

[Celsius 233]

Don't forget to cover your face with a newspaper to block the nuclear fallout!

Re:Hit with a nuclear weapon?

[kamapuaa]

I've been to the Nuclear Sadness Spots in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and in Japan (where they used paper doors) people literally would have half their body destroyed - the part protected by the paper would survive, the rest would be killed by the gamma radiation. Perhaps shielding your body with newspaper isn't totally useless advice - obviously it would be useless for a ground zero, but for the outskirts, sure.

Bend Over, Kiss Ass Goodbye!

[stox]

At least the PM was thinking:

The prime minister's plan to protect local breweries by nationalising them as part of an initiative to show he was sensitive to small problems that caused people concern, called "little things that mean a lot".

Re:Bend Over, Kiss Ass Goodbye!

[DigiShaman]

With all the major cities are decimated and most of the populated gone, all you have left are small towns scattered about with only the local communities to lean on for support. As such, past times such as music, festivities and beer is the ONLY thing to keep you sane.

Seriously, we are talking about having to rebuild modern civilization from virtually the ground up on a global scale. Or, what's left of it anyways...

Re:Bend Over, Kiss Ass Goodbye!

[Weedlekin]

Come on, be fair. The government was just acknowledging the fact that imbibing extremely large quantities of beer makes the idea of being nuked to death look far less bleak than would be the case if one had to face that same prospect while sober.

Re:Bend Over, Kiss Ass Goodbye!

[periol]

Dude, seriously. RTFA again. Privatizing beer companies was unrelated to the nuclear emergency plans. Two unrelated items in the middle of a bunch of unrelated items.

Besides, I'd want hard liquor at that point.

Probably economic liquidation

[AngusH]

Liquidation probably refers to the unfortunate state that the British economy had reached in the 1970s.

In addition to facing a nuclear threat (vaporization) there was a serious possibility that the country might collapse economically (liquidation).

Eventually the government got support from the IMF.

Of course the Soviet Union might have taken advantage of the situation if an economic collapse did happen in which case you might have had both sequentially.

Lots of different government papers got released at the same time, so it tends to get reported together.

Re:Probably economic liquidation

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, who needed nukes when we had ardent trade unionists! Things were really quite bad

BEER!

[hostingreviews]

The prime minister's plan to protect local breweries by nationalising them as part of an initiative to show he was sensitive to small problems that caused people concern, called "little things that mean a lot".
They really thought peoples concern would be beer, of all things? Wouldn't the concern be this?
Beer has a special place in my heart, don't get me wrong.

Re:BEER!

[stox]

Guiness, with a high concentration of both iron and iodine would be an ideal treatment for radiation poisioning.

Re:BEER!

[Anonymous Coward]

The prime minister's plan to protect local breweries by nationalising them

Yeah, gotta keep making beer. I mean, what else would you do with grains after a nuclear exchange? Feed surviving people and livestock? Pshaw!

Re:BEER!

[niktemadur]

Guiness, with a high concentration of both iron and iodine would be an ideal treatment for radiation poisioning.

They weren't kidding when they said 'Guiness is good for you', were they? That was the actual Guiness slogan in the UK not too long ago, maybe it still is. Pub lifeforms will thrive in a post-apocalyptic world, with Guiness and a nice hot kidney pie, yum.

I, for one, welcome our new Dublin-based stoutmeister overlords. Salud!

Re:BEER!

[DrFalkyn]

Actually not. The vast majority of casulties caused by a thermonuclear explosion are caused from the intense heat and pressure of the bomb, as they would be with a conventional warhead. Large doses of gamma radiation are of course, released during the explosion, but it only effects people very close to ground zero. And "radioacive fallout" is another big myth about nuclear weapons. The amount of radioactive material left is comparatively small, and on top of that, are alpha emitters anyway are only dangerous if ingested/inhaled and only then if in comparatively large doses.

Re:BEER!

[Anonymous Coward]

That stuff about Pandas, Beer or Europe are nothing to do with the nuclear stuff, it's just that everything from 1975 has been declassified after 30 years so everything comes out at once, that article is rather confused as it's a summery rather than soley about civil defence.

Re:BEER!

[Anonymous Coward]

"nice hot kidney pie"

You must mean one of these. It has a somewhat lower concentration of offal than your proposed dish.

Re:BEER!

[Zontar The Mindless]

And "radioacive [sic] fallout" is another big myth about nuclear weapons. The amount of radioactive material left is comparatively small and on top of that, are alpha emitters anyway are only dangerous if ingested/inhaled and only then if in comparatively large doses.

Are you trying to be funny, or what? The amount of fallout generated by a nuclear explosion is small only when compared to a continent, but perhaps not. As for the "ingested/inhaled" part - so you think people can just go round choosing not to inhale or ingest microscopic particles that happen to be floating by or to have settled in the local water supply based on whether or not they're radioactive?

Or just ask Europe about what happens when a nuclear reactor redlines, no actual detonation necessary.

Perhaps you should read up on the subject and do some thinking about it before you go spouting off nonsense like that.

Re:BEER!

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't the radiation change depending on how the weapon is salted, eg a cobalt device is much worse than a gold device.

Yep here is the wikipedia link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salted_bomb

Re:BEER!

[frogstar_robot]

The amount of fallout from a high altitude airburst is indeed low. You have little more than vaporized bomb components and maybe a little irridated water vapor. A low altitude detonation is another kettle of fish altogether. The explosion will suck up significant amounts of ground clutter and irridate it for falling back to earth. A ground level or just under the ground detonation is the worst of all. Structures and a large amount of ground itself are vaporized and will be carried on prevailing winds. As with the low altitude detonation, dirt, dust, and debris will be sucked from the surrounding environs and made radioactive.

How can you say that fallout is a minor concern?

Re:BEER!

[Alioth]

Who are you trying to kid about fallout being a myth?

The intensity can vary depending on the kind of strike and the altitude of the detonation. Ground bursts are extremely radioactively dirty - the neutron flux makes the ground that was evaporated highly radioactive. This is sucked up as the mushroom cloud goes up, and is deposited downwind. It is extremely lethal for the first couple of days, and the danger decreases. It generally isn't safe for a couple of weeks.

Air bursts tend to cause less fall out, especially if the fireball doesn't touch the ground and evaporate soil and debris that has been made radioactive by the intense neutron flux.

Fission bombs (per kiloton) will generally produce more dangerous fallout than fusion bombs. However, all fusion bombs include at least one fission stage. Some thermonuclear bombs may make half their yield from the fusion of the primary and the natural uranium tamper.

Britain is a densely populated country, with all the targets close together. In the event of a nuclear war in the 1970s, Britain would have essentially been carpet bombed - and far worse off radiologically than the United States or the USSR (who would undoubtedly been the parties who actually started the war). The UK government estimated that in a nuclear war, Britain would have been struck with at least 200 megatons, and feasibly up to 1000 megatons. This level of attack would leave almost no unbroken windows in Britain, and virtually the entire land mass would have enough fall out deposited on it to cause radiation sickness. Most livestock would be killed, and most crops would fail. There would only be a few areas that would have been safe - some of the west cost of Scotland (the prevailing winds are generally westerly) and some areas of Cumbria/Northumbria. It is quite likely that the British population would have fallen to under 5 million or fewer (from 55 million). By contrast, probably half the US population would survive due to the vastly lower population density. An even larger proprotion of Russians would probably survive. The rest of Western Europe would suffer a worse fate than Britain, being the probable battlefield prior to the final attack.

Britain had the best post-nuke TV specials

[ashitaka]

America gave us "The Day After" which came off as an Irwin Allen disaster flick.

Britain gave us "Threads" which scared you shitless.

Also "When the Wind Blows" should be mentioned.

Re:Britain had the best post-nuke TV specials

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, that jars some memories....

I remeber seeing "When the Wind Blows" when I was younger, and it had quite some impact. That movie did an excellent job conveying the lack of any hope for survival.

Recomended for its quality, and for anyone desiring a depressed mood for a day or two.

Re:Britain had the best post-nuke TV specials

[hachete]

if you compare the films to pictures of hiroshima, both were optimistic in terms of survivors. it's hard to believe even now that there would be nothing left of the developed world after a full scale nuclear exchange. a few years later, the entire planet would be a graveyard.

Re:Britain had the best post-nuke TV specials

[BlameFate]

Hiroshima is a special case. Most of the structures were easily flattened wooden framed traditional ancient Japanese buildings. IIRC the local government building at the centre of town was one of the only concrete structures in the city, and it survived. (I think the twisted metal of the domed roof structure is still preserved as a monument -- http://pegasus.phys.saga-u.ac.jp/imagesMac-PC/ForP EACE/hq/Dome.jpg ).

The War Game http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059894/ is another stunning mid sixties british documentary that was banned by the UK government for years. Scary as all hell and revealed the fallacies behind the civil defence plans of the time. Well worth hunting down.

Re:Britain had the best post-nuke TV specials

[alien9]

And don't forget Shoei Imamura's 'Black Rain'. No, ther is not Andy Garcia.
This was really scary as based in real life stories... I remember it deeply and I watched more than 20 years ago.

Re:Britain had the best post-nuke TV specials

[Alioth]

Actually - the entire planet would not be a graveyard. A Cold-War USSR vs NATO nuclear war would not end the human race, even though life in the combatant nations would be extremely unpleasant for decades afterwards.

Re:Britain had the best post-nuke TV specials

[cr0sh]

What is equally amazing about Hiroshima is that it proved it was possible (for very low values of possible) to survive a ground-zero detonation. IIRC, there was one survivor in the hospital whose courtyard was effectively ground-zero. Of course, this is with the rather puny (compared to later years and today's nuclear warheads) device used. It is one of several strange stories from Hiroshima that really make you scratch your head. Ultimately, though, with a real nuclear exchange, with the size of warheads we have today, such a war would likely not be very survivable, short or long term...

Re:Britain had the best post-nuke TV specials

[hachete]

you see? there's an assertion you just can't prove until you did it. still. looking at the evidence of the *only* *single* bomb so far, i figure it's pretty much lights out for the territory when the big one goes up.

Re:Britain had the best post-nuke TV specials

[Alioth]

Oh, I agree - for the combatant nations it is more than a bit unpleasant. Europe, for example, would be pretty much totally destroyed (both urban and rural areas) because it's such a "target rich" area - cities and military installations all close together. In the 1970s, Europe alone would probably receive half the megatonnage as it'd be the nuclear battleground before the final exchange. Europe would effectively be carpet bombed.

However, it's likely that as much as half of the US population would survive long term, and a larger proportion of the USSR population would have survived due to the relatively low population densities, leaving large areas of land where life is at least possible.

The Southern Hemisphere would be largely unaffected.

There is a good synopsis here: http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/nuclearwar 1.html

The point is - not that it wouldn't be an apocalypse of unseen proportions, but it would not be the end of life on Earth or the human race. The Western world ceasing to exist doesn't equal all of humanity ceasing to exist (no matter how important we in the west think we are).

Re:Britain had the best post-nuke TV specials

[hachete]

Interesting paper. It brought back all kinds of nightmares :-(

Still, on the strength of one paper, I'm not convinced that the effects would be less than expected. I still think the nuclear winter would play a large part, or indeed the poisoning of the atmosphere by the radiation and fallout.

I agree about life on earth. The bugs will inherit the earth.

Two (or more) separate topics here.

[6350']

Note that the pandas and the plans for possible nuclear war are two separate topics, both of which came to light from what amounts to declassified cabinet papers.

The article is about some of the interesting tidbits from this archival release which are by and large unrelated to eachother.

The part about Saddam is very interesting

[IntelliAdmin]

Strange that it was not in the original post..but look at one of the items in the secrect docs: "How British diplomats secretly floated the idea that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein - seen then as a figure to be courted - could be brought to the UK for a back operation."

Nostalgia

[quokkapox]

Ahh, Sweet Armageddon.

Raise your hand if you still have pinto beans and 2L coke bottles filled with tap water and 1 tsp bleach in your basement from 1999.

I thought so...

Re:Nostalgia

[daddyrief]

So I see my parents weren't alone in their actions ;).

Stay In Your Own Home...

[Anonymous Coward]

yup, don't block the motorways for the important people!

Interestingly the UK government are selling off the main government bunker, many have been sold off before but the former was the main one where the Prime Minister and government would go, the Turnstile site over 35 acres underground!

Vladimir Putin scares me. So does Dubya.

[MsGeek]

It seems like ever since he took power as Boris Yeltzin's hand-picked successor he has been feverishly working to basically reestablish Russia as "The Soviet Union with Capitalism." And his idea of Capitalism is sort of, kind of, alien: he is re-nationalizing a lot of industries, most notably the petroleum industry.

Of course, none of the "good things" wrt the old Soviet Union still exist: their education system is decimated, and there is no health safety net anymore. Life expectancies are galloping backwards thanks to drug-resistant TB strains bred in the "new Gulags" of Russia and an AIDS crisis that Putin is in complete denial about.

I would not put it past Comrade Putin to re-target the remaining Soviet-era nukes at the US again. Of course, they have less of them and so do we thanks to Yeltzin-era demilitarization efforts and the reductions built into the various treaties signed with the old Soviet Union. But I'm sure it's still enough for Mutually Assured Destruction. And with the G. W. Bush doctrine of "preemption," MAD would be a lot MAD-der than it was back in the '80s. Putin would have to deal with a certifiably insane foreign policy run by a guy who claims to have a direct hotline to Jay-zus. Sort of like dealing with Chechen rebels, only this time the religious fanatic in question has nukes.

ph34r.

Re:Vladimir Putin scares me. So does Dubya.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I would not put it past Comrade Putin to re-target the remaining Soviet-era nukes at the US again. Of course, they have less of them and so do we thanks to Yeltzin-era demilitarization efforts and the reductions built into the various treaties signed with the old Soviet Union"

Yup, we're now only able to blow the world up 20 times over instead of 30, what a shitter, god damn hippies!

Actual documents on National Archives Web Site?

[Sockpuppetofdoom]

I've been looking for the documents under the FOI part of the site, and can't find them.. has anyone else?

Re:Actual documents on National Archives Web Site?

[markyb74]

I don't think they will be available until January 1st as that is when they are officially released under the 30 year rule.
I believe that the national archives puts together a list of highlights of what is going to be available and this is what the BBC is reporting on.

Mark

from the End of the World flash

[Devil's BSD]

Meanwhile Australia's down there like, "WTF mate?"
Russia's like, "AAAAHHHH, MOTHERLAND!"
Then, England's like... "'bout that time, ey chaps?"
"... Righto."

Re:from the End of the World flash

[Gromius]

Missed the inevitable:
"Hmm, just about enough time for a cupa left, be a dear and stick the kettle on old chap"

Re:from the End of the World flash

[Anonymous Coward]

And the US then goes: "Yeee haaaw! Gonna nuke me some."

Pandas eat shoots and leaves

[chaffed]

A panda walks into a bar. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why? Why are you behaving in this strange, un-panda-like fashion?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda walks towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

From Eats Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss

Re:Pandas eat shoots and leaves

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the "clean" version of the joke...:-)

decimated ?

[ndg123]

if the education system has only been decimated, that's not so bad
i would settle for a technical education system which is 90% as good as the old soviet system.
ok with a bit more money for equipment.

perhaps you meant 'almost completely destroyed' rather than decimated.

Re:decimated ?

[Zontar The Mindless]

if the education system has only been decimated, that's not so bad... perhaps you meant 'almost completely destroyed' rather than decimated.

As a native speaker of English (who makes his living by writing in it), I have to tell you that I grimaced when I read this.

Is English actually your first language, or did you just pick one possible usage of this word out of the dictionary because you didn't know what it meant?

While there is another accepted definition of decimate - "to kill off one in ten", or "to reduce by a tenth" - it is almost always taken in ordinary conversation to mean "to reduce drastically in quantity or number; to destroy a large part of".

In fact, I'd venture to say that perhaps one native English speaker in a hundred is even aware of the other definition, and that your post just sounds really weird to the other 99.

Re:decimated ?

[ndg123]

My reply originated from my educational background, which included both latin and history. I understood the context and usage of the word, and (as indicated) the current derived meaning of being largely destroyed.
Language evolves and mutates; this vitality is a result of common usage. This doesn't mean that I enjoy every adaptation, particularly the downward trend toward journalistic hyperbole rather than carefully measured usage. Though even in this style, better words than decimated could have been used. For example, one could have used 'strip-mined' rather than 'decimated' to convey a better sense of the destruction of the education system. (This is the cue for someone equally pedantic and foolish as myself to this strip mining analogy).

I'll finish this by acknowledging this is only Slashdot and I really shouldn't have bothered jumping out of my box over linguistic bugbear.

Re:decimated ?

[Zontar The Mindless]

What can I say? It's a holiday weekend, and I was bored.

Re:decimated ?

[ndg123]

ditto ! oops there i go again with the latin. any way, happy new year.

Re:decimated ?

[stonecypher]

Bzzt. The person to whom you're replying is in fact quite correct. Using the word decimate in any sense other than to destroy a tenth of is a signator of a low quality of education.

In fact, I'd venture to say that perhaps one native English speaker in a hundred is even aware of the other definition, and that your post just sounds really weird to the other 99.

Are you really attempting to argue that the word decimate's meaning is anything other than painfully obvious? If so, your grasp of the language isn't really strong enough to be criticizing other people, much less to the degree of challenging whether or not someone else speaks it as a first language.

You strike me as the sort of person who attempts to defend bad definitions of irony just because it's what they grew up with. Here's a hint: ignorance is not linguistic drift, and just because you hang out with ignorami who don't know how to speak using words in a proper fashion doesn't mean that the language has changed to suit you.

Before you get off onto some predictable rant about how language changes and how anything you and your buddies do wrongly is a reflection of progress in English, please take some classes on linguistics. It turns out that generations tend to have mistakes which neither their parents nor their children reflect. Your dad almost certainly doesn't make the mistake with the word decimate that you do; it's a foul error that the media started making in the early 1980s, around the same time they bollocksed up the words indicted, alleged and translucent.

Please stop feigning a deep familiarity with English; it ain't there. That you (claim to) make a living writing suggests to me that either your editor is desperately overworked or appallingly underskilled.

Re:decimated ?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Heh. I too enjoy the cruel and heartless vivisection of words from time to time. ;)

The fact that both of my posts got modded up should lead those of you still in 2005 to suspect that, in 2006, the mods are still on crack.

Cheers.

Finally - MOD PARENT UP!

[SonicSpike]

MOD PARENT UP!

Finally, someone on /. who understands the gravity of the situation!

If a nuke was set off in any part of the US, no current politician would be able to resist the public outcry...no make that demands, to glass an entire country or region. The rise of public opinion would be stronger than WWI, WWII, KW, and Vietnam combined! If the person in power here in the US didn't retaliate with nukes I would be willing to bet they would be ousted and replaced with someone who would. An event like that as you mention would change US foreign policy, and even world opinion instantly.

With that being said, I hope it never happens.

However, some insight on things. Everyone believed that Saddam had WMDs prior to our invasion of Iraq. CIA, MI6, Mossad, etc all were in agreement. Well, Saddam couldn't get a nuke to the US, but he might could get one to Israel. As you said Israel has stated many times in the past few years that they are prepared to defend themselves and retaliate mercilessly at any aggressor regardless of world opinion or US intervention.

If you remember just prior to our invasion of Iraq N Korea unplugged the cameras inside their nuclear reactor and began to fire it back up. N Korea is under heavy heavy sanctions and needs crude oil. Iraq needed nuclear fuel for a hydrogen bomb. I suspect they were either about to make a trade, or they had already made the trade.

This is why we invaded Iraq in my opinion; Saddam was trading oil for processed uranium with North Korea, and he would then be a direct threat to Israel if he had a working nuke. The US knows that if Israel is attacked there is no holding them back so we decided to take out Saddam and make the whole situation go away before the entire MidEast was turned into glass. Invading N Korea wasn't really an option as we didn't want to deal with the Chinese aspect of that equation. Also logistically and practically Iraq was a much eaiser target at the time. Iraq had no major allies or at least none that would stand up to a US invasion. Their business partners (France/Germany) were not willing to go to war with the US over the invasion of Iraq, but they did voice loudly their opposition because they were selling a great deal of arms and technology to Saddam.

Re:Finally - MOD PARENT UP!

[aramael]

N Korea is under heavy heavy sanctions and needs crude oil. Iraq needed nuclear fuel for a hydrogen bomb. I suspect they were either about to make a trade, or they had already made the trade.

Oh, so it wasn't the Nigerians at all -- it was the evil Koreans! You know, if you could somehow fit Iran into the mix, you'd have a trifecta.

I'm fascinated by the revelation that Iraq decided to skip those boring old fission devices and go straight to a hydrogen bomb.

Re:Finally - MOD PARENT UP!

[Shihar]

The parent is off base by saying that the Iraq war was an attempt to keep Israel from nuking the Middle East. That said, he is dead on about that danger. North Korea is notorious for selling anything to anyone for money. North Korean diplomats are known use their diplomatic immunity to smuggle as narcotics simply to get some extra funding for the state. They sell weapons to everyone and anyone who will buy them.

The fear that they would sell to a terrorist organization is very well founded. Further, the fear that Israel would respond to a nuke being used in its territory by glassing over a piece of the Middle East is very well founded. The scenario is not hard to imagine.

Pick your favorite Palestinian resistance group that has state or pseudo state backing. Both Iran and Syria either actively support some of these groups, or blatantly turn a blind eye to them. Imagine if such a group bought a nuke from North Korea. They throw it in a boat, park it off Tel-Aviv, then detonate. They then make their usual claim of responsibility. Now Iran or Syria is sitting there with their pants down. I don't doubt for a single instance that Israel would nuke the capital of any nation that looked even a little guilty of harboring that group. Further, you need to realize that it wouldn't matter if the nation harboring the terrorist rounded up all of them and shot them the next day. Israel [i]would[/i] make an example of them regardless of what they did. There isn't a doubt in my mind that at least one Middle Eastern city would be nuked, if not more.

Now you are sitting there with a very pissed off Iran or Syria. Hell, it isn't like these nations ever liked Israel to begin with, but could you imagine how they would feel after getting nuked? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where this mess would lead.

Nukes are bad, m'kay? Any nation that gets nuked will nuke someone else back if they can find a target. Nukes are horrible weapons of mass destruction, and most nations would make a lesson out of any nation that would dare to use them. If Britain, the US, or (and especially) Israel had a nuke used on them, these nations would respond in overwhelmingly violent manner for the singular purpose of leaving in the history of the world a genocidal incident showing just how horrible these weapons can be.

I sure as hell hope no nukes go off in my life time, because you can rest assure that if one nuke goes off, another one is going to follow somewhere else.

Re:Finally - MOD PARENT UP!

[cortana]

s/Everyone/Viewers of Fox News/

Re:Finally - MOD PARENT UP!

[Martin Blank]

Everyone but the Americans and Blair and the Egyptians and the Syrians and the Russians and the Saudis and the French and the Jordanians and possibly the Germans. Gen. Tommy Franks, who headed the coalition effort, was warned by his Arab intelligence contacts that he was going to be sending home a lot of Americans in body bags for closed-casket funerals. Israel and Iran probably knew, too, but I suspect they'd be shot down as biased.

As for the risk of depleted uranium being fired in combat zones, the WHO has conducted follow-up studies that has resulted in findings that there is minimal or no risk in being in the area. While it's not advised to extensively handle it, the overall risk of cancer increase is slight. They advise monitoring an affected environment, but concluded that for the populace at large, even military use of DU does not represent a significant risk over background uranium exposure.

Unless, of course, you can present evidence of the deaths of "civilians in the many thousands"?

Re:Finally - MOD PARENT UP!

[Anonymous Coward]

> N Korea is under heavy heavy sanctions and needs crude oil. Iraq needed nuclear fuel for a hydrogen bomb. I suspect they were either about to make a trade, or they had already made the trade.

Finally. Three years on, and someone other than me had the same idea. I speculated on this before the war - and to this day, it's the only explanation that fits all the public disclosures - particularly considering the OPSEC and diplomatic requirements that place certain things off-limits from public disclosure.

47 years from now, we get to find out.

For what it's worth, I hope we don't get to see one go off. I don't enjoy living in post-9/11 America, but as one who's traded freedom for security (by virute of acknowledging the fact that an overwhelming majority of his fellow citizens have voiced their willingness to make the same trade), I'd rather live in post-9/11 America with its quasi-Soviet "managed freedom" philosophy than a free-but-nuked postwar America.

Yes, if it happens, it'll be the first of many, at least the fucking meta-war will be over within a year. Console yourself with the possibility that if it happens sooner rather than later (suppose by 2010 as opposed to 25 years from now when only the graybeards remember what it was like to be free), Americans might even get their pre-9/11 freedoms back upon war's end.

Either way, the future's gonna suck. But even if we don't live to find out the answer 47 years from now, we'll at least live to find out how it's gonna suck.

Re:Finally - MOD PARENT UP!

[Lawrence_Bird]

"Well, Saddam couldn't get a nuke to the US, but he might could get one to Israel."

Had he not been an idiot and invaded Kuwait there is in fact a good chance he
could have been able to get a nuke here.  Don't assume they have to be sent on
an ICBM or SCUD, and don't assume that China won't pass on the design for the W-88
they stole from the US (1.7m long, 0.5m diameter, ~350kg).  Of concern now with
DPRK is that they could use short range missile launchers on cargo boats to
attack the US or Japan.

Personally I also think it too early to say the era of MAD with Russia is over.
They are down, but not out and one can envision future tensions over increasingly
scarce economic resources.

antique war plans

[technoCon]

I had a huge laugh tonight after I read about the US Army's plans to invade CANADA! Seems that back in the 1930s we made plans just in case we went to war with Britain. And back then the Canucks had a plan to invade the US. Let's see, where's the link...

Raiding The Icebox

I figure the Canadians will never forgive US for neglecting to conquer them.

Years back, I went to Tijuana and looked around and thought, "this place needs adult supervision." And a few years after that, I went to Sault Ste. Marie and saw the perfectly manicured lawns, clean streets, and perfect order. And I thought, "this place has a bit too much adult supervision."

Re:antique war plans

[Anonymous Coward]

All sorts of contingency plans exist. It's just planning for possibilities, and it doesn't mean that it is necessarily likely. For example in the 1930s the UK was planning for war with Germany but also had contingency plans to beat off an attack by France, just in case that happened instead. The French government in the 1930s was friendly in the end, but then so were other governments in Europe that came under fascist influence, so better safe than sorry.

Re:antique war plans

[big_scary_robot]

Makes me want to play Risk.

Re:antique war plans

[houghi]

Well, very funny. There are plans on how the US will invade The Netherlands (more precicely The Hague, where the International tribunal is) if there would arise a reason, like US milatary who had to anwer to international law.

Nice to have such a friend and protector.

Re:antique war plans

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as international law is concerned its enforceability is currently pretty much defined by US action or inaction.

Saddam, criminals from Balkan conflict - all face charges because US decided to take action.
Without Clinton sending US army , Milosevic would still be running the place over there etc ..etc

As far as protector, Europeans are responsible for their own dependency on US. They basically build entire societies investing huge sums into social programs while US was spending billions financing various means of protection of entire continent.

EU is a weakling and their only strength at this point is "moral" posturing - something that carries no weight with troublemakers ( and is not needed when dealing with decent regimes.)

Re:antique war plans

[bill_mcgonigle]

You should be shocked and disappointed if we don't have plans for invading absolutely everywhere. That's what military planners do, unless they're golfing.

Re:A transcript - WTF MATE

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been laughing at this for too long....

Bout that time chaps.... right oh (or whatever that looks like in UK lingo)

http://www.media.ebaumsworld.com/endofworld.swf

Seriously - mod it funny guys

Can't agree

[SmallFurryCreature]

The MAD threath was always that one of the sides would be MAD enough to actually pull the trigger. The nuclear war would be like no other war before. Normal wars are either to defend OR to conquer but a nuclear exchange would be a murder/suicide. Like those cases were a father decides to kill his family and then himself.

The first reason for a nuclear war would be desperation. The reason the US and the USSR never had a ground war and kept their proxy wars limited was that neither wanted to push the other to the edge.

The other reason to start a nuclear war is that you might think you could actually win. This was one if the reasons anyone with a brain was so against star wars (No not the prequels the space defence program of the reagan era) as it could make the US think it could win a nuclear war or even worse make the USSR think it had no choice but to strike before the US became invulnerable.

Now lets look at the world today. US still working on Star Wars. A reaganite in the white house. USSR collapsed and in huge uncertainty of what is going to happen next with the US doing everything it can to upset the russian goverment and people.

China is still there with the old goverment possibly feeling attacked by the capatalist west.

The rogue nations don't matter. none of them are capable of triggering the lethal mutual exchange of weapons. Even as you suggest a dirty bomb in NY would cause the US to whipe muslims from the face of the earth, so what? No rogue nation has the capability to retaliate in force.

Only the former USSR and china and of course the US got the arsenal to create this end of the world scenario. Right at this moment it seems unlikely to happen BUT then again the same could have been said at the hight of the cold war.

The greatest threat I can see if russia/USSR continues on its slide to a 3rd world nation. Their is already a lot of sentement in russia to go back to a communist goverment. The whole collapse of the USSR rested on the believe that it would bring better times. So far this has not happened in fact the majority of the citizens have never had it so bad. A reforming of the USSR itself would be no threath (why should they reform just to commit suicide) but the reaction of the US might bring us right back to the days of the cold war with one tiny difference. This time the russians would have a lot of resentment. Think germany pre-ww2.

No, I don't think world war 3 The nuclear edition is going to happen but it is not impossible either. If anything the collapse of the cold war has made a World War 3 more likely. The world has lost a lot of stability while the US has gained a lot of perceived invulnerability. During the cold war the US more or less behaved because it did not want to push the russians to far. Will the US be so restrained? The war on terror would suggest not (perhaps this is World War 3? Remember WW2 had a longer pre-history then the invasion of poland.). The US can't even be bothered to be nice to its NATO allies anymore.

Strangely enough I do not think the risk comes from N. Korea or similar directly. To strike would be suicide. You do not commit suicide unless you think there is no other choice. The real threath is the rest of the world mostly the US pushing these nations into a corner.

Re:Can't agree

[Guppy06]

"The other reason to start a nuclear war is that you might think you could actually win. This was one if the reasons anyone with a brain was so against star wars (No not the prequels the space defence program of the reagan era) as it could make the US think it could win a nuclear war or even worse make the USSR think it had no choice but to strike before the US became invulnerable."

That's because a Star Wars program could let the US win a nuclear war. You win a nuclear war by hitting their nukes while still on the ground or otherwise preventing their nukes from hitting you. If Soviet missiles could be removed mid-flight, that gives the US the opportunity to win.

The other way to "win" is to nuke the other guy's silos before their launch. The problem with that is that is exactly what the other guy is planning on doing as well, and you end up with the vast majority of nukes pointed at The Other Guy's nukes, with only a slim minority left over targeted at something other than a missile silo. This is why the USA and the USSR each had thousand of nukes, to hit the other side's thousands of nukes.

"China is still there with the old goverment possibly feeling attacked by the capatalist west."

China doesn't have the missiles or the warheads. They never did. The US has around 2000 if I remember correctly, while PRC has maybe over 100, and not all of them are capable of crossing the Pacific (Hawaii and Alaska may be SOL, but...). If PRC tried to play catch-up with the US arsenal, the US could likely build 2 nuclear-tipped ICBMs for every 1 the Chinese could, and that's on top of the current disparity.

China has zero prosects for a successful nuclear war with the United States. The US could hit each and every one of China's launch sites and still have 3/4 of their missiles left over to do whatever. China's missiles are more intended for India or Japan than the US.

Re:Can't agree

[Martin Blank]

China has about 24 or so ICBMs, which are capable of hitting parts of the United States, each containing a 2MT warhead. There are perhaps a further 2000 warheads in the Chinese aresenal, used in short-range missiles, bombs, and artillery. China does not present a serious nuclear threat threat to the US, though Taiwan, South Korea, and perhaps Japan are another story.

Re:Can't agree

[Martin Blank]

Now lets look at the world today. US still working on Star Wars. A reaganite in the white house. USSR collapsed and in huge uncertainty of what is going to happen next with the US doing everything it can to upset the russian goverment and people.

The whole idea of SDI, I've begun to think, was a smokescreen. Reagan knew it wasn't feasible technically, but it forced the Russians into excessive military spending, hastening their downfall. Only one possibility, but a fair amount of evidence points that way.

Even the current version are quite limited, though. Even by combining the Standard Mk 3, the ABL, and the Alaska interceptors (and only the Standard seems to be consistently working), you still get a capability of stopping only a fraction of the warheads from a serious opponent such as Russia (or hypothetically Britain or France, but those are pretty unlikely). Even China would probably get several missiles through.

I take issue, BTW, with calling Bush a Reaganite. He's not. Reagan was highly intelligent, calculating his moves, and did a much better job of backing up his ideas. He was also economically conservative, and while he did increase some spending and cut taxes, it was done more responsibly and more clearly benefited the middle class. While I don't think Bush is unintelligent, I also don't find him all that similar to Reagan. Hell, I think Clinton was closer to Reagan than was Bush.

Finally, I wouldn't be so worried about desperation in Russia. They paid off all of their IMF debts in early 2005, and were planning to make a $10B payment later in 2005 (not sure if they did it) to the Paris Club, well in excess of the scheduled $5.7B payment. (The oil market has been good for Russia.) Oil exports are expected to climb significantly next year, too, so there are fewer worries about it.

Re:Can't agree

[Anonymous Coward]

Reagan ran up the national debt like never before, Thatcher didn't quite have the same option because Reagan had the luxury of the US dollar being the main reserve currency, but the two were quite different economically, look at the debt and the number of times Reagan had to appeal to congress to raise the upper limits on the debt.

Re:Can't agree

[Martin Blank]

This was done because it was the only way that he could strengthen the military, which those like Tip O'Neill wouldn't let him do without boosting social spending significantly. By the time he left office, federal government income had increased an annualized 7% rate even while taxes were reduced. The prime rate had fallen from its peak rate of 20.5% in July 1981 to 10.5% by the time he left office. Unemployment had halved from its Nov-Dec 1983 peak of 10.8% to 5.4% in January 1989. The GDP, in 2000 dollars, had grown 29% (compare to Clinton's 32.5% growth in his eight years). Defense spending grew from $157.5B to $290.4B, an 84% increase, but welfare grew by 67%, Medicare by 101%, and agriculture by 177% (and that by 1986 alone, though it later dropped to a 52% increase between 1988 and 1981 numbers).

Had Reagan had his way and limited social spending while targeting defense spending increases -- which we later saw were an attempt to force the Soviets into an economic battle they could not win -- the deficits, while they still would have existed, would not have been nearly so large.

Re:Can't agree

[tcoady]

The rogue nations don't matter. none of them are capable of triggering the lethal mutual exchange of weapons. Even as you suggest a dirty bomb in NY would cause the US to whipe (sic) muslims from the face of the earth, so what? No rogue nation has the capability to retaliate in force.

If that's the case why does the US & Europe persist with developing their nuclear strike capabilities?
  And why not strike a deal with Iran to decommission the nuclear capability in Israel as a tit for tat decommissioning their nuclear program?

Details revealed

[Anne Thwacks]

As I recall, the oficcial plans for Nuclear ware were, "Have a nice cup of tea, and then put a brown paper bag over your head!"

It won't help, but nor will anything else.

Re:Details revealed

[2sheds]

Thanks, Douglas.

Re:Details revealed

[SuiteSisterMary]

I remember watching, oh, 15, 20 years ago, an animated movie on TV Ontario about a little old British couple, in some British village, trying to follow the instructions in a 'how to prepare for a nuclear war' phamplet; I remember the husband biking to the nearest town to buy a protractor to get the angle right for a lean-to fallout shelter. The war happens, the the two try to survive as best they can; I also remember their hair falling out and them drinking contaminated water.

Your comment brought that movie to mind. Wish I knew what it was called.

Re:Details revealed

[SuiteSisterMary]

A later comment reveals it to be When the Wind Blows, (IMDB)

__

[Anonymous Coward]

Poop!

BBC's The War Game movie

[Morinaka]

The War Game made in 1966 by the BBC shows what would have happened and have been done in the event of a soviet nuclear attack, although it was banned from TV for being too graphic. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059894/ You can probably get it on bit torrent somewhere if you want to watch it.

More War Plans

[Ed Almos]

To give you some idea of the mindset of these people the following instructions were actually included in the plans.

"In the event of a nuclear strike on the City of London transport links will almost certainly be disrupted and many commuters will be unable to get home. Tea and biscuits will therefore be served on tressle tables in Hyde Park to those requiring refreshment"

Now I know why my Grandfather dug a bunker in the back yard.

Ed Almos

Re:For Another Take, Check Out The Movie "Threads"

[Anonymous Coward]

edk link: Threads - The Closest You`Ll Ever Want Toe To Nuclear War.avi

Re:For Another Take, Check Out The Movie "Threads"

[veeoh]

Yeh, saw this film again a year or so ago - Its not lost any of its power - shocking film.

.ram url

[The Tyrant]

Actually its a real pain in the backside getting the url out of the BBC's player window as its all built with javascript.

To save everone the trouble, here is the url for the ram file
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news_web/audio/90 12da6800315e8/bb/09012da68003170d_16x9_bb.ram

and here's the rtsp address to the actual content
rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/news/media/avdb/news_web/au dio/9012da6800315e8/bb/09012da68003170d_16x9_bb.ra ?title="BBC"&author=""&copyright="(C) British Broadcasting Corporation"

Re:For Another Take, Check Out The Movie "Threads"

[Anonymous Coward]

Torrent
http://www.torrentreactor.net/view.php?id=5080210

Works with mplayer without any binary-only dlls

[lindi]

Fortunately in this case the stream can be played with

mplayer rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/news/media/avdb/news_web/au dio/9012da6800315e8/nb/09012da68003170d_16x9_nb.ra

without the need for any evil binary-only dlls.

Re:For Another Take, Check Out The Movie "Threads"

[rich_r]

I'll second that. Just don't expect to sleep well for a couple of days afterwards.

It terrified me.

Obligatory

[vorok]

I for one welcome our new panda-loving, nuclear-weapon swinging overlords.

I think you'll find

[Anonymous Coward]

that the threat is worse today then back then. The reason is natural resources, population pressures and world trade and currency differences,combined with some amazing tech advances. This is too much of an involved and complicated subject to go into in a single post, or even a longer thread, but we still have a "cold war" going on. For example, there is a very credible threat of a war between the US and China arising at some point, current trade not withstanding. China is very close to not needing western trade or US dollars, having arrived at a blossoming internal market which is larger than the US and europe combined. Now really think about that for a moment..

    They are only requiring energy sources and raw materials now, they have already sucked the west out of all the R&D they need to manufacture anything. Any-thing. Russia is supplying china with all the weapons systems they could need, then china is copying them. And boy, can they make copies once they set their minds to it. Remember, they are still completely top down autocratic, they issue an order and stuff happens. Anyone gives them crap, they get shot, then they tell the next manager down the line to "do this". They have that as an incentive. Eventually, they are going to call our bluff over Taiwan (best guess is before the olympics), and russia will support them, because China is a more important market to Russia then the US is. And neither one will wait or sit around if it looks like the US actually has a credible ABM system or starts to deploy it, they will be forced into a massive first strike then before this occurs. There's a reason they have sunk so much effort into developing carrier battle group killers.

This is all credible stuff, one needs to dig deep into the smart guys writings on this, and actually read some of the translated docs that have been revealed from china and russia. They have never stopped considering the US and europe as "the enemy", and with increasing world wide demand for a shrinking pool of resources, the odds of a global resource and influence war are expanding, not shrinking.

Re:For Another Take, Check Out The Movie "Threads"

[Alioth]

I have both Threads and The Day After. The Day After is pretty good until the actual attack - especially the sequences in the missile LCF etc. However, the attack is unrealistic (if the doctor had been close enough that he heard the explosion when he did, he'd have been vaporized, but he was pretty much uninjured) especially compared to Threads where the nuclear explosions are silent until the blast hits. Threads is so much better made. It is also probably the most depressing film I've ever seen.

Do you have or know of where to get a copy of "A Guide to Armageddon"? It was shown on the BBC programme QED in about 1982-1983 and it was about the effects of a one megaton strike on London. I've not seen or heard of it since. Google hasn't turned up anything useful either, nor have the P2P networks.

Re:definition of hippie

[Hal_Porter]

Wow, that really debunks the stereotype in the previous post.

Re:For Another Take, Check Out The Movie "Threads"

[chrisjwray]

Try http://www.bbclearningasiapacific.com/asp/catalogu e/productdetail.asp?productcode=19868

Re:For Another Take, Check Out The Movie "Threads"

[Martin Blank]

How did you find the two apart from the technicalities? I'm curious how Threads dealt with the human impact of a war, and what scale was used (for those that don't know, The Day After focused on one small Kansas town).

No more SAC

[UNOStudent]

"By the way, does anybody know if SAC (Strategic Air Command) is still flying its' B-52 bombers in circles around the perimeter of the Artic Circle, just in case?" SAC itself doesn't exist anymore. After the fall of the Wall it was reorganized as U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM). It's still located in Omaha, NE and still maintains its role in the control of U.S. nuclear assets. Although it has now gained roles in military weather forcasting (not as innocent as it seems - afterall, you need updates in the changes of barometric pressures around the world to ensure accurate aerial blasts) and in 2002 it became the home to U.S. Space Command. Offutt AFB (home of STRATCOMM in Omaha) still maintains some deep bunkers and complex communication equipment - it's where they sent Dubya after the first hours 9/11. (I did my undergrad in Omaha and it was eerie to hear fighter-jets circling and to see news reports of men w/automatic weapons sealing off the base - all before definitive news reports were out). As to still having B 52s at a fail-safe - I don't think so - although I do see the Airborne Command Post coming and going quite a bit (it's hard to miss a huge white plane flying on a low approach) - that does stay in the air 24/7 after 9/11 - it's also kinda creepy b/c I've heard that they always keep at least one general on board at all times w/ launch codes incase Washington is attacked...(http://www.stratcom.mil/fact_sheets/fa ct_acp.html)

Re:For Another Take, Check Out The Movie "Threads"

[Alioth]

Threads was set in Sheffield, an industrial town of half a million in Yorkshire (at the time Threads was made, Sheffield was a major steel producing city). In the vicinity of Sheffield is the former air force base at Finningley (approximately 15 miles away), and the whole Vale of York area (there's several RAF bases in that part of the country).

Threads follows two families who live in Sheffield. One family is a well-to-do middle class family, as far as you can gather, the man of the house is a manager or engineer at a steel works, the mother a housewife, and they have one daughter. The other family is a working class family with three children - the youngest is pre-teen, a teenage girl, and a man in his early 20s who works as a carpenter (the families are linked as he is engaged to marry his pregnant girlfriend, the daughter of the other family). The first family has a substantial stone house on the outskirts of Sheffield which includes a cellar. The other family lives in the high-density housing areas in suburban Sheffield. Their only cover is an improvised shelter built inside the house by the father.

The first strike, like The Day After, is an EMP attack which causes no injury on the ground. The first strike against a ground target is a 150kt strike on Finningley, which causes car accidents in Sheffield (from those who were driving in towards the flash). The shockwave of that strike breaks windows in Sheffield. At this stage there is panic - the working class family are madly scrambling to take shelter - the father and mother is seen desperately piling up matresses and other items onto the improvised shelter (the man is actually taking a crap at the time the Finningley strike occurs). The other familly is seen going down to their cellar, trying to help the elderly grandmother down the stairs to the cellar. The young woman runs out to find her boyfriend, but is caught by her father and taken down to the shelter. Meanwhile, the young man was at work when the Finningley strike occurs, and tries to drive to his girlfriend's, but his car won't start - presumably due to the EMP (although being an 1969 Cortina, it probably wasn't that reliable anyway!) So he takes off on foot. That's the last we see of him.

Not long after, Sheffield is hit by a strategic nuclear weapon of unknown strength. I first saw "Threads" aged about 12, and the image of milk bottles melting in the heat stopped me from sleeping properly for at least three weeks. Only the husband and wife of the working class family make it into their shelter, and the wife is badly burned by the flash. All of the other family survives the initial strike.

The film also covers the civil defence team from the City Council who take shelter in the basement of the town hall.

After the attack, the film covers the next 13 years. We see most of the rest of the story through the eyes of Ruth, the pregnant woman. Everyone else we met and got to know at the start of the film (including the city council) dies - some immediately during the attack on Sheffield, and some later (the children of the working class family all die in the attack, the parents survive a little longer and presumably die of radiation sickness since their shelter was very poor). The middle class family apart from Ruth are killed by looters. The civil defence team suffocates in the city council bunker as the town hall has collapsed and closed off the ventilation. The rest of the film shows the devastation, the effects of nuclear winter, and the effects on Ruth's child who was born a few months after the war. There is very little dialogue in the second half of the film. You see shell shocked survivors trying to rebuild at least a subsistence level - scavenging food, trying to make new clothes out of scavenged material. Later on in the film, you see some limited electricity generation and the use of steam, and attempts to teach the post-war children. The film ends with Ruth's 13 year old daughter miscarrying her baby.

It also contains the real public information broadcasts t

Link Re:from the End of the World flash

[n54]

Here it is if somebody haven't seen it or need to laugh a bit: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/end.php

"Alaska can come too" :)

Oh and happy new year!

As long as we're posting conspiracy theories...

[Arnos]

What about the theory that there were WMD's and the Democratic party - in cooperation with Germany/France- removed all evidence of them in order to make GWB and parties look bad?

What about the theory that GWB and parties are "allowing" troops to be removed so that terrorists in Iraq can escalate/grow so that after the 2008 election and a certain female Democrat is in office- the terrorists will be strong enough to detonate a nuke in NYC and She and her parties will get the FULL blame?

Please. Spinners can spew lots of stuff.

My Bad

[SonicSpike]

When I posted to mod parent up, it was supposed to go underneath your post. Your original post there was the one I wanted modded up. I guess I was confuesd at 3am ;-)

I am glad to see someone else on here finally gets it.

Re:For Another Take, Check Out The Movie "Threads"

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried the url and got the following (honestly) :-

Guide to Armageddon
-------------------
An error occurred on the server when processing the URL. Please contact the system administrator.

Secrets

[patriciacurtis]

What worries me is, we now have the information from 1975, so what will we discover about Blair in 2035. Will anyone care?

No. We invaded for the oil.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why we invaded Iraq in my opinion; Saddam was trading oil for processed uranium with North Korea, and he would then be a direct threat to Israel if he had a working nuke. The US knows that if Israel is attacked there is no holding them back so we decided to take out Saddam and make the whole situation go away before the entire MidEast was turned into glass.

Bullshit. Bush Incorporated would love us all to believe the John Le Carre version of events, but the fact is it was nothing more than an oil robbery.

Critical thinking...

[SonicSpike]

Of course someone would say something this moronic as an AC.

First off I would say that you should be ashamed of yourself for your dislogic, listening to FUD, and inability to think critically.

Secondly, if we were after oil then we simply would've occupied/plundered from Kuwait and called it a "protection royalty". Why invade Iraq when we have a country that only exists because at our pleasure - Kuwait?

Third, no oil has really been removed from Iraq; at least not to the US. If there was a greater supply on the market prices probably would've dropped by now, but they have actually been on the increase since the invasion. Even though we would be justified in taking some of Iraq's oil as a reparation for Saddam's atrocities, the Bush admin has repeatedly stated over and over again that the US will not take Iraq's oil because he doesn't want people to think that the invasion was about oil.

Hate to break it to ya, this conflict wasn't about oil. People who think it was need to learn how to remove their cranium from their rectum.

Misunderstandings....

[SonicSpike]

He had WMDs, at least of the chemical kind. How do we know this? Because we gave them to him, and then the Russians gave them to him! He also used them in the Gulf War.

As for bio and nuke... well we don't have any of those types of Iraqi WMDs in our hands at this point. However as we were invading from the south and east a LOT of vehicles were exiting the country out of the west to Jordan and Syria. No one knows what those vehicles contained. There was preliminary intell that suggested he had a nuke but no fuel for it; thus a trade with N Korea.

Also, Saddam was the master of hiding things in the desert. During the Gulf War we found entire MIGs buried in the sand. It would be ludicrous to think they never existed. To put those thoughts into a few facts:

According to the CIA World Factbook
Iraq land = 437,072 sq km
http://odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/iz. html#Geo

California land = 410,000 sq km
http://enc.slider.com/Enc/California

Back in October a gentleman was hiking in California (close to the same size of Iraq) and discovered a crashed WWII Airmen frozen in the mountains (on the surface). The plane had been there for 63 years in a public area, open to anyone, on our own soil, and in fact it was one of our National Parks! They were only about 35 miles from Fresno!
http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=local&id =3549625

The mountains in Iraq's are around 9,800ft This park looks to be roughly 10,000ft http://nps.gov/seki/pphtml/maps.html>. Using that same logic, it could equally be 60-100 years before any buried WMDs are found in Iraq's desert or mountains; assuming they are even found at all.

As to the oil, if we were after oil then we simply would've occupied/plundered from Kuwait and called it a "protection royalty". Why invade Iraq when we have a country that only exists because at our pleasure - Kuwait?

No oil has really been removed from Iraq; at least not to the US. If there was a greater supply on the market prices probably would've dropped by now, but they have actually been on the increase since the invasion. Even though we would be justified in taking some of Iraq's oil as a reparation for Saddam's atrocities, the Bush admin has repeatedly stated over and over again that the US will not take Iraq's oil because he doesn't want people to think that the invasion was about oil.

Hate to break it to ya, this conflict wasn't about oil. People who think it was need to learn how to remove their cranium from their rectum.

Inspectors Fooled...

[SonicSpike]

Yes - as Saddam was showing the inspectors in the front door, he was moving weapons out the back door.

The protesters don't matter because they are common idiots.

I don't want to post the same thing twice in one topic, so I will refer my response to something I just posted that will answer your rantings about as good as they answered the rantings of another pseudo-intellect here:
  http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=17257 1&cid=14372795

Re:Inspectors Fooled...

[Scrameustache]

He had WMDs, at least of the chemical kind. How do we know this? Because we gave them to him, and then the Russians gave them to him! He also used them in the Gulf War.

Iraq used chemical weapons in the 1991 Gulf War? Prove it, because aside from claims of soldiers that were denied by the Pentagon, I've never heard of that.

Link please.

I can't believe you're sticking to the WMD story even after the damn president confessed it was bullshit. How far will your denial go?

the Bush admin has repeatedly stated over and over again that the US will not take Iraq's oil because he doesn't want people to think that the invasion was about oil.

It worked GREAT on you. But it was, and still is, a lie.

And the No-bid Halliburton contracts, how do you rationalise those?

Re:Inspectors Fooled...

[will_die]

Wasn't that whole no-bid contract stuff investiaged by the FBI and GAO and then cleared.
I work for a competator of Halliburton, while do some of the same things do they we do more different things and we earn more money from federal contracts then they do. When it came up this was dicussed around the office and know one could name an competitor that had the capabilities to do what the contract was for in the time period required, and for a significantly cheaper price.

Sault Ste. Marie vs. Tijuana

[Dark Coder]

Having been to both places, I'll vouch for the fact US should have had an invasion (or Annexation) plan for Tijuana's Revolucion Ave district way back when it was needed most.

Sault Ste. Marie... Gosh.. Neat, crisp town. Ever been to the Antler's Club? Burger any good nowaday?

Tijuana, the dump.