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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."
"Oh bloody hell, the Yanks have really done us in this time."
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?
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.
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.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Talk about a Panda-mic!
sigfault. core dumped.
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.'"
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.
Do not read this sig.
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.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
What's the big deal? Duck and cover & you're set.
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.
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.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
And now for something completely different.
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
What could possibly go wrong?
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
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."
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.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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.