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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."
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.