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

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

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.