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

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.

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

[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: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.

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."