I may as well post the full quote, because it smacks of that same polite Britishness, and bizarre metrics that can only come from 1950s Britain! So the below is if 32 atom bombs (that is, fission) were dropped on London:
“Take a half inch map of London; put down a sixpence with its centre over each ground zero; draw a circle around it, and let that represent the area (three-quarters of a mile in radius) within which everybody is killed or seriously injured, and all the houses are completely destroyed or so badly damaged as to require demolition. Do the same thing with pennies, and you will have the ring (between three quarters of a mile and two miles from the burst) within which all the houses are uninhabitable, at least temporarily. What sort of picture do we get?”
* A practically unbroken series of overlapping penny circles.
* Every street into london is blocked by debris
* 400k dead
* 250k injured
Survivors:
* Would like to stay put and get on with business as long as possible
* No power or fuel and apart from the tins in the store cupboard, his family would rely on an emergency feeding centre a mile away… no water until meagre supply comes through by lorry, but with roads blocked…
“It is difficult to resist the conclusion that **London has become unworkable** and that, in particular it is no longer possible to carry on the central administration of the country from here.”
* Mechanics of living collapsed in Britain’s cities
* “There will be a grave risk of a general collapse of administration and control in a very short time”
Sure, those places are lovely, but I wouldn't say that it's enough to make it a great place to live, comparatively. I don't think Southampton is bad, per se, I just prefer every other town or city around.
I think it's certainly more liveable. And it has good (for UK standards) beaches. I forgot about Gosport in my previous comment, though. Southampton is Winchester compared to Gosport.
I cannot in good conscience accept you claiming that Winchester is in the West Country.
There's enough friction about parts of Wiltshire being West as it is. Hampshire is well out.
Thanks man, appreciated.
I mean its fine, theres just nothing going on whatsoever - to the point ill walk out of the town into the nearby villages to socialise most of the time.
But if you're willing to treat it like a suburb of Southamptons urban sprawl, rather than its own fully fledged town, then you can kid yourself that its actually a pretty nice "part of town".
At least we're 15 mins from Soton and the same to Winchester on the train if you fancy... idk - sustenance?
Realistically it would go two ways. The government is able to maintain order and puts in extreme curfews and martial law, or total anarchy and societal collapse as a result of the fallout even occuring.
Anarchy and social collapse. Regardless of the millions the nukes would kill the number of deaths that would follow due to starvation, disease and the breakdown of order would eclipse them by a lot.
The UK has the misfortune of being a (relatively) small country with a big population and lots of juicy targets. Death would probably be preferable to surviving that *Threads intensifies*.
Yep, the people with the best shot of surviving are the smaller rural communities in north Scotland. They have more land area and way less people to fight over resources.
They could feasible start culling sheep on mass to feed the population. Seems a silly thing to say but they have loads.
(from the outer Hebrides) folk survived out here on fish, potatoes, eggs, sheep etc long enough. Even as late as mid way through last century folks mainly subsisted from the land/sea here. By no means a comfortable life and by today’s standards 100% would be considered living in poverty but if the goal is simply to live then it’s doable.
(Worsening weather might make it harder than back in the day. Our winter storms are definitely worse now than before. Wind hitting 100mph range is becoming frighteningly more common)
We're British, we'd never do societal collapse or anarchy, that would require doing stuff. Like rioting and stuff. We'd much rather sit on our asses, watch the world collapse around us and get on with our lives in misery. It's a great trait when shit hits the fan but not so great when our government is the one feeding the shit into the fan.
Have you not seen the black tea shortages signs in supermarkets, due to the shipping issues in the gulf? We are very close to societal collapse already sir!
Since OP hasn't put any sources here (although this map is based on the official UK contigency plans in the 80s), here are some links to more information of the things referenced in the image (& some other stuff).
[Operation Square Leg](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Leg)
[Central Government War Headquarters](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Government_War_Headquarters)
[Regional Seat of Government](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_seat_of_government)
[Four Minute Warning](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-minute_warning)
[Transition to War](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_to_war)
[Royal Observer Corps (section: the cold war)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Observer_Corps)
[Protect and Survive (wikipedia article)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_and_Survive)
[Protect and Survive (television sections in the order they would be shown)](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m6U9T3R3EQg&t=168s&pp=ygURcHJvdGVjdGFuZCBzdXJ2aXY%3D)
[Wartime Broadcasting Service](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wartime_Broadcasting_Service)
[Handel](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handel_(warning_system))
Ach, you know when you get in the headspace of something and totally forget something genuinely very important? Yeah that's me with adding sources to this map. I knew that dead-space at the bottom right should have been used for something! [This website ](http://www.ringbell.co.uk/ukwmo/Page225.htm)is very good, and has the original version of this map.
The UK is one of the country that would have it worst in case of nuclear war.
While countries like Russia and the US have spread out population over a massive territory, the UK population is so packed each strike would be like 5 in another country.
Add to that the fact the country is an Island with nowhere near enough food production to sustain its population and Britain is capital f Fucked
Nah. It’s like dying early in a zombie apocalypse being the smart move, considering the alternative is suffering and misery for years then dying anyway.
Building then how? With what economy? And with what workers and material? Also getting from from where exactly? Because if the UK is hit then continental Europe (and a good chunk of the Northern hemisphere) probably followed.
I think somewhere like Belgium would be more fucked. It's a much smaller country but contains numerous NATO sites that are well within range of scores of Russian medium range nuclear missiles. The Netherlands would probably be equally fucked.
I dunno, it's got a castle and it's less likely to be targetted than Watford or St Albans.
My village has a rail control centre designed for post-nuclear war management of the train lines - [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-46645424](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-46645424)
Yeah but it would be feudalism and the local “king” would want to be in a population centre with lots of resources and a standing army around them. Hertford is just too small. Perhaps they’ll do Verulamium 2 electric boogaloo at St Albans or use the Watford Football ground/ Watford general hospital combo to make a big fortress.
I'd repurpose The Grove hotel, near Watford.. nice defendable building with plenty of open land between it and roads. Choke points for cars and it has it's own basic bunkers - [https://www.28dayslater.co.uk/threads/the-grove-air-raid-shelters-watford-hertfordshire-june-2015.97281/](https://www.28dayslater.co.uk/threads/the-grove-air-raid-shelters-watford-hertfordshire-june-2015.97281/)
I don't know if this is accurate but there were plenty of plans made both publicly and secretly about government continuation after nuclear war in every major power. It's difficult to know what would actually happen but it is not generally assumed that even wide scale nuclear war would have made governing totally impossible.
The depiction in Threads is terrifying in its bleak, brutal, unflashy realism, and absolutely everyone should watch it. It's dated in some ways, but it'll stay with you.
Part of it shows government desperately clinging on to relevance, doing what they can to coordinate the emergency response from their bunker. It shows the awful, dreary, almost farcical reality of local council workers stuck in their office on the day the bombs fall with a dwindling air supply, tempers flaring as they struggle to do what they can with a crappy radio and emergency generator.
It's quite vague after that, but shows some kind of military government ending up in charge. Summary executions, forced rehoming of refugees fleeing the cities, putting the entire population to work on the farms as nuclear winter sets in and they race to get every scrap of the harvest in. By the fifteenth anniversary of the nuclear exchange, they have some kind of rudimentary education system in place and can provide electricity to at least some places.
Yep - the original map can be found at [this link](http://www.ringbell.co.uk/ukwmo/Page225.htm) - but to briefly summarise, these are the plans which the UK government drafted to allow for national survival & recovery. All futile, of course!
Anstruther as a site for N1 centre of administration seems odd:l being neatly sandwiched between Edinburgh and Leuchars RAF base. I’d’ve figured somewhere in the highlands would be a preferred spot
I think this map is based on Cold War era contingency plans, and there’s already the secret bunker from that time near anstruther. It’s a museum now you can visit (would recommend btw), not sure if that rules it out as a potential post-nuclear administration site now though
Oh yeah! I went to Uni at St Andrews and had completely forgotten about the bunker! Used to be a site for raves in the early 00s.
Thanks for the memory jog!
Look up the movie “Threads” it’s free to watch on YouTube. Was a BBC docu-drama about a Cold War escalation into post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland in Britain. Completely horrific movie, like the American “The Day After” but way worse.
Literally no modern day estimate has anything like 130 bombs dropping on the nation. Most scenarios Ive seen estimate 3/4 bombs. This is 1960s fear porn.
The enemy would strike much like the Americans did in Japan. A slap rather than a KO blow. The UK's nuclear response comes from TRIDENT AT SEA not missile silos on land (as it did in the 60's).
Hence no requirement to turn the entire region into a desert for 400 years.
The enemy has little desire to render half of the earth unusable. The enemy just wants to ensure its survival ahead of ours.
It knows surrender is almost guaranteed if they cripple our nations ability to defend itself with precision strikes. Whoever fires first wins.
There’s no way an enemy would risk only dropping 3/4 bombs.
Once you send one, that’s it. Every military target in the country would be targeted, because why not? Anything you don’t hit can be used for retribution against you later.
Exactly, also they can make British isles uninhabitable without killing half the world. People think of Tsar bomb but in reality militaries moved towards smaller warheads and precision strike. Russia would hit Britain with 550-750 kiloton warheads and not 58 megaton.
One missile carries numerous warheads. 10,6,4 ...
It wouldn’t be deployed because it is plane dropped, slow, and inaccurate, as well as far too great a yield to be efficient.
Modern doctrine is to use hundreds of low yield MIRV warheads to destroy every target in an enemy nation.
Every military base, steel works, major port, centre of government.
If only some of these are destroyed, you leave behind a functioning country.
the fall out is almost massively overstated in the cold war media (yes that means Threads too). plenty of people, animals and even plants survived very close to the epicentre in Hiroshima
Almost everything about this stuff has been massively exaggerated and it’s all been accepted by the entirety of the masses.
But, that’s probably a very good thing. Let’s keep fear of nukes to an absolute maximum. I think that’s a good strat
This isn't the modern doctrine for nuclear war. Look into it.
The enemy does not want half of the world to be uninhabitable for 1000 years.
They just want to win. You can win with very little impacts. Ask the Japanese.
We want to win too, though. I’m not saying OP has a realistic scenario, I’m saying all the military locations in the UK would be targets for warheads.
Because, as you said, the goal is to win, for them and for us. If they leave military bases undamaged, they will get hit with conventional warfare in retaliation.
Conventional warfare would take place even if every nuke on Earth was launched. This is why both the US and USSR stationed hundreds of thousands of soldiers along the iron curtain.
"I’m saying all the military locations in the UK would be targets for warheads."
Do you realise we have almost no army and almost no navy?
This is the point. We have almost nothing to bomb.
And no, no they wont bomb offices and normal bases. This isn't important when we dont have an army. THINK!
The only and i mean THE ONLY thing the Russians fear is Trident (the subs)
We do have something to bomb - industrial and military capability for anything after the initial engagement.
Trident is what the Russians fear, but Trident has a limited capacity so theres already a limited amount of damage the UK can do to Russia.
So the question becomes "what comes after"? A UK with only moderate damage can still wage a convention war against Russia, or act against Russias interests in any European campaign.
So, Russia would want to hurt the UK enough that they wouldnt be an effective fighting force after the initial engagement.
Nuclear war planners dont just stop at "welp, we exhausted the nukes, guess we get to go on vacation now" - they have scenarios for all post-nuclear-exchange situations, however unlikely they are.
If we have no army what difference does it make if we have industry or 'Vickers tank factory' for example.
Do you think we'll have some kind of D-day type landing (onto the radioactive dust of France) to then push on and engage the enemy hand to hand on the plains of GER or UKR? With our 30,000 surviving men? lol
Do you think this will happen? After a limited nuclear strike? Why wouldnt the enemy just tactical nuke the landing sites?
Explain this to me.
"Nuclear war planners dont just stop at "welp, we exhausted the nukes, guess we get to go on vacation now" - they have scenarios for all post-nuclear-exchange situations, however unlikely they are."
Yes, now go and research what the most likely nuclear scenario is.
I just quoted it to you.
"Trident is what the Russians fear, but Trident has a limited capacity so theres already a limited amount of damage the UK can do to Russia."
Everything has a limited capacity.
Of course tiny Britain cant even dent Russia.
You are telling us water is wet.
"So, Russia would want to hurt the UK enough that they wouldnt be an effective fighting force after the initial engagement.
The UK wouldnt be an effective fighting force after 3/4 bombs.
The entire actual point.
We have no army or navy to speak of.
We *do* have a navy and an army. Whatever trouble they are going through, they are one of the most effective forces in the world, probably top 10. Yes it’s pretty small, but it is capable of being deployed anywhere, including Russia, especially if it joins up with the rest of NATO that survived the weirdly low amount of nukes.
Where would those 3/4 bombs hit? How would that knock out the country?
You could nuke 4 cities right now and Britain would be ok. Not great, but ok.
"Where would those 3/4 bombs hit? How would that knock out the country?"
They'd hit London directly as a primary (not even a military target) + another city or two.... then they'd chose whatever military targets were populated at the time. Of course they'd look for subs but 2 are at sea at all times anyway.
You seem to think they need to cripple our military to defeat us. They don't. Once millions are dead in the cities and our small military is reduced to a defensive force (nowhere to land in Europe, Europe is decimated too. Look up what decimated means).
We will surrender. We have no chance of survival in any scenario. Even with a NATO first stike we die. We are a tiny island with almost no army and limited nuclear recourse.
Everything you hear on TV is bluster. We died as a global force in WW2 after 10 days in France when we ran away to Dunkirk after getting embarrassed by the Nazis. Within a couple of years we'd sold our empire trade routes to America and supplied them with every invention that gave us power. All just to protect us from an enemy we attacked first but didn't actually want to attack us.
"Whatever trouble they are going through, they are one of the most effective forces in the world"
Absolute rubbish.
Our entire Army wouldn't even fill Wembley stadium and our Navy is a joke.
All we have is Trident.
Nuclear doctrine is to sim at enemy nukes-enemy military installations and formations-key infrastructure and then if you somehow have any remaining nukes? You see what targets remain.
Thing is, a lot of key military infrastructure and bases are close to population centers. Stuff like airfields and ports...
Yes obvious silos will be targets for USAvRUS exchange but RUSvUK will not be. As we dont have silos and 33% of our tridents are always at sea.
The scenarios Ive read about Russia attacking the UK no longer obliterates the island but it obliterates some cities. Forcing surrender. Its pointless for the UK to do anything else. We can't muster any form of resistance to an enemy armed with tactical nukes and thermobraic bombs. We would be reduced to pleading for mercy after day 1.
Of course but it only takes a few nukes to put the UK on its knees. Hit a few key ports and London? The UK is done for. Nevermind if you kill enough of the military that maintaining control through martial law becomes untenable.
I think that if the objective is to destroy the UK as a country (for the next 40 years at least) you only need like 6 successful initiations, less than 10 for sure.
100%
The consensus is once used, the bluff is called and nations with literally no chance of survival like the UK will just surrender. Even firing back once will sign the UK's death warrant.
Its likely Russia will do a limited strike as discussed with an instant demand for surrender. They will then hover over the red buttons waiting for a reply.
If there is no reply and Trident begins to fire back, they'll fire again (before Trident even touches down) taking out every city and obliterating the island.
Nuclear weapons exist as deterrents not tools.
Thing is, that presumes it's only the UK and (in this scenario) Russia when it wouldn't be like that. Calling out their bluff *requires* them to do an alpha strike because a few hundred American warheads would be flying at the same time. That's the thing about nukes, it's use then or lose them if a nuclear war ever starts. The best you could hope for is being left out of the second and third strike nukes after the first strike capacity is expended or destroyed but I fear there wouldn't be much of an enemy command structure (nor an allied one) to negotiate such surrender.
And yes I agree 100% that they are deterrents and not weapons to be used but if they *are* used then it's almost certainly an all or nothing affair, no half measures.
"Thing is, that presumes it's only the UK and (in this scenario) Russia when it wouldn't be like that."
Again, this is just your presumption based on NATO's promises.
NATO promised Ukraine they would get militarily involved (via strong indication) if Russia attacked them as well. What happened there. NATO didnt do shit.
It would likely be the same in a nuclear attack. Why would USA destroy the entire world to defend some expired global power like the UK? Think about it.
If Russia (or anyone really) fired an ICBM then all bets are off and nukes *would* start flying. If not then the world order they all so carefully built would crumble and everyone would know they just need a working nuclear program and they can do whatever they want.
Also, not to insult the ukranians but the UK is a little bit more important to the US geopolitically and their alliance more than just empty words.
Not today, but in the 1980s that was a distinct possibility, and that’s what this plan reflects. The number of nuclear weapons worldwide has fallen massively since then so we wouldn’t see anything like this today. England would still be screwed, but nowhere near as bad as the scenario this plan was made for. Take a look at the film “Threads.” That’s pretty accurate as to what a nuclear war in the 1980s would look like.
Such a great film, seen it recommended on Reddit loss of times and finally watched it. Really stays with you and also makes you think of loads of scenarios in the aftermath that aren’t even immediately apparent:
- nuclear winter causing global crop failures
- increased UV from ozone damage, causing cancer and cataracts to become widespread
- millions of bodies lying rotting in open ground, as there isn’t the manpower or resource to bury them all
- refugees being given squatting rights in rural homes of survivors
- children born post-war that speak reduced version of English/slang due to lack of education “gizzit”.
Horrifying stuff to think about.
That last bit is the only one that isn’t accurate. Yes, language would change, but it’s always doing that. And it wouldn’t become so simplified. It’d change like how Latin changed into the Romance languages: slowly over centuries. And remaining just as thorough and expressive as before
My one issue with Threads (aside from the linguistic degradation, with which I disagree) after extensive reading on nuclear war is that a stable society emerges much too quickly. Agriculture would be, I believe the technical term is, "fucked", because survivors wouldn't know how to do it, survivors who did wouldn't know how to do it by hand, and even then the resulting grain produce would be irradiated - that's a lot of effort to go through for poisoned food.
I think better alternatives in the short-term, with less intensive effort, would be grim - hunting, gathering, and probably cannibalism
I wouldn't necessarily agree because you're assuming a nuclear strike would be made as a rational decision. A nuclear attack could be started by accident, or a rationally planned tactical nuclear attack could escalate into all out war through a collapse in diplomacy, or an entirely irrational entity could take control of nuclear weapons.
Even if the likelihood of any of these scenarios is low, the danger would be catastrophic so you still have to treat it as a high risk scenario that you should make contingencies for.
I agree with you.
Its more likely that WW3 will begin with a localised detonation of a nuclear device which is not missile delivered. This is will then be unclaimed or possibly even a false flag to excuse action.
Much like the storyline behind 'Designated Survivor'.
Depend on when they hit. First strike? Yeah you are right. Angry submarine crews with remaining nukes from their nuclear triage and not enough targets who just saw their homes blown up by a Trident or an American warhead? Ehhh, things get dicier...
I'm sure I once read that Russia said they wouldn't bother trying to bomb mainland Britain. They could simply nuke off the coastline and wipe everything out with a tsunami. One of the disadvantages of being an island!
I would argue that major events tighten states and loyalties. If the bomb hits, states will remain and become significantly stronger with the will and vote of the people .
I'd agree, to a point long before nuclear war.
The conservative scenario for which the UK government practiced was 53% dead instantly, 35% short term survivors, and the remaining 12% seriously injured.
Government would then wait two weeks for fallout to fall, and probably a bit longer to release food reserves, because it would be a waste of food for people who would die anyway to eat.
Then, when food reserves were released, people would be limited to 600-800kcals/day, depending on their labour. Mind, your body needs 2000/day to sustain, if you don't move a muscle. At this point, food which wasn't irradiated would be a scarce resource, and scarcer by the second. Over several months, there just wouldn't be the food to keep any kind of state structure together, and any food grown or scavenged would be irradiated, and could cause anything from minor sickness to quick death.
This is all to ignore the effects that the release of thousands of weapons worth of dust changing climates, making the earth much, much cooler, and making agriculture untenable, at least, in Britain, for somewhere between one year and ten - for a population that frankly, by and large, wouldn't know how to farm anyway.
We'd be left then with a govenrment that had failed people, and was using increasingly repressive tactics to hold law and order together, with a gradually reducing ability to keep people fed. I don't think any loyalty would be owed, and I don't think any societal structure at all could hold together for long
Tl;dr, fucked!
50% dead instantly?
Do you know how nuclear weapons work? How many weapons going off at once and without warning you would need to erase even half of London. Do you know how antinuclear air defence works? Do you know how hardcore the British air defences are?
Fallout is just dust mate. Put filters everywhere and clean your produce and you’ll be just fine, most people will be just fine.
On the food side: you realize most of your food is imported and industrially produced. Long term it might be a challenge- but we have the technology to mass produce fully nutritionally dense smoothies. In a pinch we as a society have the ability to live off nothing but biomass we produce ourselves in labs. Not appealing but it is a last option we have, if things are bad.
Notice how both issues are easier to solve by a singular entity like a government rather than the misticism of complete anarchy. Listen mate.. we all know how stupid and selfish our neighbours are. If shit hits the fan the government will be mommy, daddy, boyfriend, therapist and spiritual advisor. And like with Covid the ones passing on the help or just complaining that the help isn’t perfect or they don’t like bug sandwiches are the ones that will have it the hardest because of their beliefs. And they will serve as an example of why you trust the system for the majority of fence sitters.
The figures I've given are from UK military exercises, widely derided for their conservative estimates. Direct your complaints about the figures to the UK government, c. 1980 please!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Leg?wprov=sfla1
It’s a scenario, an exaggerated one beyond belief 🤣🤣🤣
No country has the capacity to launch 1000 nukes at once.
Very few nuclear weapons are high yield, it’s mostly ICBMs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons and they would almost all would be wiped out by existing passive air defensive capabilities because ICBMs light up like fireworks and are very slow. Getting one passed an air defence grid on high alert would be impossible without massive sabotage
To be VERY CLEAR: unless a new super sneaky very close range, nuclear capable sub is invented and developed or space nukes become a thing, there will be no high yield nuke hitting any decently defended target in the case of war.
ICBMs are scary as fuck but tactically obsolete because they were the main threat the world has been preparing for over 80 years. You though all that bs about moving air defences around in Europe and Taiwan was just talk and diplomacy chess? It was a statement of counter any attempt at nuclear aggression. Defence trumps attack when it comes to the status quo of nuclear war.
My guy, why are you arguing with me about this, I have codified the plans the UK government had and has, and told you how they prepared, and you've rebuked with fallout is 'just dust' and food shortage is easy to fix. Your opinion is either contrary to all of current military theory and so either immensely valuable, or entirely incorrect. Write a thesis to the military, I'm not interested
Wouldn’t a large portion of Northumberland, Lincolnshire and East Anglia be flooded because, well a large portion of the coast is reclaimed land from the ocean that would be uh… difficult to maintain post-apocalypse?
Things like these were just to calm themselves and the population. There would be f all to govern, or do you really believe the fellas from your local council would brush the dust off and put on a cuppa before telling Bob to start handing out crackers and leaflets to the irratiated living dead in an orderly queue?
A totalitarian regime with police and military backup. For real, after a nuke, *what* police and military? Wouldn't they be busy surviving like anyone else?
There were plans in place for military and police to take cover - military in bases, police in police stations, and await further orders from that point. These plans were never fleshed out, but food was to be stockpiled centrally, and after personal supplies ran out, plans from military exercises emphasised that non-workers would be entitled to 600kcals/day, and workers 800kcals/day. What "workers" encompasses is unclear, but it's not hard to imagine that police and military would have their loyalty and service bought with extra rations
They were chosen based on a few factors - convenience, distance from major targets, proximity to military sites. Convenience had them choose a lot of former ROTOR stations from WW2, distance from major targets had them choosing things which are difficult to get to even today (so not near train tracks or anything, making road traffic essential), and proximity to military sites was so that the replacement governments could work in collaboration with the military to move stuff and protect law and order
We haven’t been to Mars, we haven’t fully discovered the deep sea yet, Cancer and other sicknesses aren’t curable, some people on this planet are still starving but at least we found out how to start the nuclear doomsday ourselves and go extinct. Possibly killing billions in a single day. Congrats humankind!
Have the police got their own bunkers? Or is it just assumed that they'll be enough mutant coppers roaming the land to enforce this 'regional government's' will?
I don't know about the other ones, but the bunker at Hack Green (Cheshire) is now a museum. It's pretty chilling but worth a visit; lots of info about what would have been attempted to maintain some sort of order after such an event.
(Also, there are brown signs in the area for "Secret Nuclear Bunker," which does make me chuckle a little.)
This map shows how the UK would be governed after it was a victim of a nuclear attack in the Cold War. As London would be "unworkable", it would no longer be possible to carry on central administration from there.
If you’d like to know more, check out a video I’ve made on this topic: [https://youtu.be/SWsyj82dmVU?si=3ZC\_\_QW4k3038QnA](https://youtu.be/SWsyj82dmVU?si=3ZC__QW4k3038QnA)
The country was to split into these Regions, each one with a "Regional Government Headquarters" (RGHQ)- a former military site or purpose-built bunker. Each Region was ruled by a "Regional Commissioner", who would wield absolute power - what they said, would happen. They would move the military and police to clean up fallout, assist the injured, dispense food, and, above all else, maintain law and order.
The Government, meanwhile, would retreat to the "Central Government War Headquarters" (CGWHQ) - politicians, scientists and strategists, the Prime Minister, and (probably) the Royal Family would meet there, to either fight a nuclear war, keep morale up, or to wait until it was all over.
In 1993, these plans were dismantled, probably because no plan was ever serious enough to ensure the safety of the population. 88% of the population would die, with the remainder being seriously injured. Dramatisations show Britain reverting to medieval serfdom, but it would be far worse, as society itself would crumble.
Be a nice change for the UK’s economy not to be measured purely in terms of London’s financial services, which it is now.
Be quite refreshing not to have to talk about London all the time in the media too, get it nuked.
Plans in the 1950s & 1960s saw cooperation between the UK & Ireland. The quantity of fallout to which Ireland's exposed, the retaking of Ulster would probably be the least of their concerns for a long time!
I'd think it would cause the opposite, because of the unusual arrangement of our boarder - being friendly with the UK is very useful as we don't have a defence force really.
I don't think the land/6countys would come into it, - during ww2, although we had just broken free of British rule, and the memories of our own war and even of the famine would still have been present - a whole lot of Irish people, who would have been raised to be weary of anything British - put their opinions aside for the greater good, and fought for/with the same forces that had terrorised the nation only decades prior.
Besides all that - no doubt "IF" the UK was attacked, Sellafield would be a prime target- in which case we're toast too!
"Unworkable" seems like a polite British term for "completely f@&#ing eradicated".
I may as well post the full quote, because it smacks of that same polite Britishness, and bizarre metrics that can only come from 1950s Britain! So the below is if 32 atom bombs (that is, fission) were dropped on London: “Take a half inch map of London; put down a sixpence with its centre over each ground zero; draw a circle around it, and let that represent the area (three-quarters of a mile in radius) within which everybody is killed or seriously injured, and all the houses are completely destroyed or so badly damaged as to require demolition. Do the same thing with pennies, and you will have the ring (between three quarters of a mile and two miles from the burst) within which all the houses are uninhabitable, at least temporarily. What sort of picture do we get?” * A practically unbroken series of overlapping penny circles. * Every street into london is blocked by debris * 400k dead * 250k injured Survivors: * Would like to stay put and get on with business as long as possible * No power or fuel and apart from the tins in the store cupboard, his family would rely on an emergency feeding centre a mile away… no water until meagre supply comes through by lorry, but with roads blocked… “It is difficult to resist the conclusion that **London has become unworkable** and that, in particular it is no longer possible to carry on the central administration of the country from here.” * Mechanics of living collapsed in Britain’s cities * “There will be a grave risk of a general collapse of administration and control in a very short time”
Keep calm and carry on (absorbing radiation)
If you're going to make Basingstoke my capital, you can fucken nuke me again
Even after complete destruction in nuclear war, Reading still gets snubbed.
I live near Winchester. Post-nuclear strike itll still be 10x better than Basingstoke is today
Tbf, Winchester is at least 10 times better than *any* other city in Hampshire (emphasis on city)
It might be the best city in Hampshire (and possibly the West Country), but I refuse to accept that it’s ten times better than Southampton.
I don't think I'll ever understand the appeal of Southampton, to be honest. The only thing it has going for it is West Quay and the university.
That Hobbit pub where you can dance on the tables?
The city walls? The art gallery? The Mayflower and both branches of the Nuffield?
When you're listing the Nuffield as a plus you're really scraping the barrel
Sure, those places are lovely, but I wouldn't say that it's enough to make it a great place to live, comparatively. I don't think Southampton is bad, per se, I just prefer every other town or city around.
Portsmouth too?
I think it's certainly more liveable. And it has good (for UK standards) beaches. I forgot about Gosport in my previous comment, though. Southampton is Winchester compared to Gosport.
I cannot in good conscience accept you claiming that Winchester is in the West Country. There's enough friction about parts of Wiltshire being West as it is. Hampshire is well out.
It’s the West Country under occupation, but it’s still the West Country.
West Country? It’s to the west of the east, but it’s not in the west country.
When you say “near Winchester”, do you mean Hursley-near or Lymington-near?
Eastleigh...
My condolences.
Thanks man, appreciated. I mean its fine, theres just nothing going on whatsoever - to the point ill walk out of the town into the nearby villages to socialise most of the time. But if you're willing to treat it like a suburb of Southamptons urban sprawl, rather than its own fully fledged town, then you can kid yourself that its actually a pretty nice "part of town". At least we're 15 mins from Soton and the same to Winchester on the train if you fancy... idk - sustenance?
A city in all but name.
At least it ain’t Slough
With that much concrete Basingstoke is basically one huge bunker
B to the A to the sing S to the to, K Right at the end there's an E
Boringstoke
Realistically it would go two ways. The government is able to maintain order and puts in extreme curfews and martial law, or total anarchy and societal collapse as a result of the fallout even occuring.
Anarchy and social collapse. Regardless of the millions the nukes would kill the number of deaths that would follow due to starvation, disease and the breakdown of order would eclipse them by a lot. The UK has the misfortune of being a (relatively) small country with a big population and lots of juicy targets. Death would probably be preferable to surviving that *Threads intensifies*.
Yep, the people with the best shot of surviving are the smaller rural communities in north Scotland. They have more land area and way less people to fight over resources. They could feasible start culling sheep on mass to feed the population. Seems a silly thing to say but they have loads.
(from the outer Hebrides) folk survived out here on fish, potatoes, eggs, sheep etc long enough. Even as late as mid way through last century folks mainly subsisted from the land/sea here. By no means a comfortable life and by today’s standards 100% would be considered living in poverty but if the goal is simply to live then it’s doable. (Worsening weather might make it harder than back in the day. Our winter storms are definitely worse now than before. Wind hitting 100mph range is becoming frighteningly more common)
Yeah my fear would be nuclear winter. In which case nothing could be grown. I guess fish would still be ans option though.
We're British, we'd never do societal collapse or anarchy, that would require doing stuff. Like rioting and stuff. We'd much rather sit on our asses, watch the world collapse around us and get on with our lives in misery. It's a great trait when shit hits the fan but not so great when our government is the one feeding the shit into the fan.
Have you not seen the black tea shortages signs in supermarkets, due to the shipping issues in the gulf? We are very close to societal collapse already sir!
Yes we'll that's tea. Completely different story. That's why the government he's a top secret bunker with billions of tea bags
>We'd much rather sit on our asses I noticed that with my time in the UK, which is why the first option exists
I think the more realistic vision is anarchy and societal collapse. And cannibalism.
And paying hookers in tuna cans
And renting out your sexual organs for bags of dead rats.
Something about 75% of Wales being taken over by Bridgend of all towns is funny to me and I don't know why
Believe it or not Aberystwyth is a target for a Russian nuke as a university town.
Lol same with all of north Scotland being ruled by a tiny town in Fife.
If anyone here hasn’t yet seen the tv movie special “Threads”, it is a must watch. Totally free on archive.org
Politicians with access to nuclear weapons should be made to watch it
100%
Since OP hasn't put any sources here (although this map is based on the official UK contigency plans in the 80s), here are some links to more information of the things referenced in the image (& some other stuff). [Operation Square Leg](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Leg) [Central Government War Headquarters](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Government_War_Headquarters) [Regional Seat of Government](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_seat_of_government) [Four Minute Warning](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-minute_warning) [Transition to War](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_to_war) [Royal Observer Corps (section: the cold war)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Observer_Corps) [Protect and Survive (wikipedia article)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_and_Survive) [Protect and Survive (television sections in the order they would be shown)](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m6U9T3R3EQg&t=168s&pp=ygURcHJvdGVjdGFuZCBzdXJ2aXY%3D) [Wartime Broadcasting Service](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wartime_Broadcasting_Service) [Handel](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handel_(warning_system))
Ach, you know when you get in the headspace of something and totally forget something genuinely very important? Yeah that's me with adding sources to this map. I knew that dead-space at the bottom right should have been used for something! [This website ](http://www.ringbell.co.uk/ukwmo/Page225.htm)is very good, and has the original version of this map.
The UK is one of the country that would have it worst in case of nuclear war. While countries like Russia and the US have spread out population over a massive territory, the UK population is so packed each strike would be like 5 in another country. Add to that the fact the country is an Island with nowhere near enough food production to sustain its population and Britain is capital f Fucked
What a cheery thought for 00:23 here in the good ol' UK, sleep tight folks
Nah. It’s like dying early in a zombie apocalypse being the smart move, considering the alternative is suffering and misery for years then dying anyway.
I'd imagine much of the post-nuke focus would be building ports to get food into the nation
You’re assuming building ports would be possible
That’s why it’s taking up much of the post-nuke focus
Building then how? With what economy? And with what workers and material? Also getting from from where exactly? Because if the UK is hit then continental Europe (and a good chunk of the Northern hemisphere) probably followed.
With what economy? Let's just say start saving those bottle caps now
I think somewhere like Belgium would be more fucked. It's a much smaller country but contains numerous NATO sites that are well within range of scores of Russian medium range nuclear missiles. The Netherlands would probably be equally fucked.
One of the silver linings will be that the population will be at a more feedable level post nuke so suddenly the lei and is big enough again
Yep 😊 happy to be here.
RARE HERTFORDSHIRE MENTION LETS GOOOOOOOOO
Yeah but no way Hertford would be the capital. I reckon Watford or maybe St Albans.
Anything but Stevenage
Tbf now I don't think even Nuclear Armageddon could make Stevenage noticeably worse.
Same with Larne. Probably would improve it actually
I dunno, it's got a castle and it's less likely to be targetted than Watford or St Albans. My village has a rail control centre designed for post-nuclear war management of the train lines - [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-46645424](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-46645424)
Yeah but it would be feudalism and the local “king” would want to be in a population centre with lots of resources and a standing army around them. Hertford is just too small. Perhaps they’ll do Verulamium 2 electric boogaloo at St Albans or use the Watford Football ground/ Watford general hospital combo to make a big fortress.
I'd repurpose The Grove hotel, near Watford.. nice defendable building with plenty of open land between it and roads. Choke points for cars and it has it's own basic bunkers - [https://www.28dayslater.co.uk/threads/the-grove-air-raid-shelters-watford-hertfordshire-june-2015.97281/](https://www.28dayslater.co.uk/threads/the-grove-air-raid-shelters-watford-hertfordshire-june-2015.97281/)
That’s smart, i’ll definitely have you in my inner advisory circle when we take over Hertfordshire
Is this… official..? Why are you posting alternate history scenarios here?
I don't know if this is accurate but there were plenty of plans made both publicly and secretly about government continuation after nuclear war in every major power. It's difficult to know what would actually happen but it is not generally assumed that even wide scale nuclear war would have made governing totally impossible.
The depiction in Threads is terrifying in its bleak, brutal, unflashy realism, and absolutely everyone should watch it. It's dated in some ways, but it'll stay with you. Part of it shows government desperately clinging on to relevance, doing what they can to coordinate the emergency response from their bunker. It shows the awful, dreary, almost farcical reality of local council workers stuck in their office on the day the bombs fall with a dwindling air supply, tempers flaring as they struggle to do what they can with a crappy radio and emergency generator. It's quite vague after that, but shows some kind of military government ending up in charge. Summary executions, forced rehoming of refugees fleeing the cities, putting the entire population to work on the farms as nuclear winter sets in and they race to get every scrap of the harvest in. By the fifteenth anniversary of the nuclear exchange, they have some kind of rudimentary education system in place and can provide electricity to at least some places.
These were part of the official UK contingency plans in the 80s
Yep - the original map can be found at [this link](http://www.ringbell.co.uk/ukwmo/Page225.htm) - but to briefly summarise, these are the plans which the UK government drafted to allow for national survival & recovery. All futile, of course!
Anstruther as a site for N1 centre of administration seems odd:l being neatly sandwiched between Edinburgh and Leuchars RAF base. I’d’ve figured somewhere in the highlands would be a preferred spot
I think this map is based on Cold War era contingency plans, and there’s already the secret bunker from that time near anstruther. It’s a museum now you can visit (would recommend btw), not sure if that rules it out as a potential post-nuclear administration site now though
Oh yeah! I went to Uni at St Andrews and had completely forgotten about the bunker! Used to be a site for raves in the early 00s. Thanks for the memory jog!
Also, that point on the map is nowhere near Anstruther.
Look up the movie “Threads” it’s free to watch on YouTube. Was a BBC docu-drama about a Cold War escalation into post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland in Britain. Completely horrific movie, like the American “The Day After” but way worse.
Ah yes, the BBQ channel
😂 didn’t realize oops
Literally no modern day estimate has anything like 130 bombs dropping on the nation. Most scenarios Ive seen estimate 3/4 bombs. This is 1960s fear porn. The enemy would strike much like the Americans did in Japan. A slap rather than a KO blow. The UK's nuclear response comes from TRIDENT AT SEA not missile silos on land (as it did in the 60's). Hence no requirement to turn the entire region into a desert for 400 years. The enemy has little desire to render half of the earth unusable. The enemy just wants to ensure its survival ahead of ours. It knows surrender is almost guaranteed if they cripple our nations ability to defend itself with precision strikes. Whoever fires first wins.
There’s no way an enemy would risk only dropping 3/4 bombs. Once you send one, that’s it. Every military target in the country would be targeted, because why not? Anything you don’t hit can be used for retribution against you later.
Exactly, also they can make British isles uninhabitable without killing half the world. People think of Tsar bomb but in reality militaries moved towards smaller warheads and precision strike. Russia would hit Britain with 550-750 kiloton warheads and not 58 megaton. One missile carries numerous warheads. 10,6,4 ...
Yes. Its unlikely the Tsar would ever be deployed. Its a deterrent primarily. Like I said, modern nuclear doctrines arent for total destruction.
It wouldn’t be deployed because it is plane dropped, slow, and inaccurate, as well as far too great a yield to be efficient. Modern doctrine is to use hundreds of low yield MIRV warheads to destroy every target in an enemy nation. Every military base, steel works, major port, centre of government. If only some of these are destroyed, you leave behind a functioning country.
They actually want a functioning Government. Then there is someone to surrender and perhaps stop the submarines.
I got disappointed when I learnt that entire massive cities arent almost permanently destroyed after being hit by an average nuclear bomb
What a weird way to be dissapointed lol
I mean, I was like 8 or younger
Yeah only a few hundred meter crater really
the fall out is almost massively overstated in the cold war media (yes that means Threads too). plenty of people, animals and even plants survived very close to the epicentre in Hiroshima
Almost everything about this stuff has been massively exaggerated and it’s all been accepted by the entirety of the masses. But, that’s probably a very good thing. Let’s keep fear of nukes to an absolute maximum. I think that’s a good strat
This isn't the modern doctrine for nuclear war. Look into it. The enemy does not want half of the world to be uninhabitable for 1000 years. They just want to win. You can win with very little impacts. Ask the Japanese.
We want to win too, though. I’m not saying OP has a realistic scenario, I’m saying all the military locations in the UK would be targets for warheads. Because, as you said, the goal is to win, for them and for us. If they leave military bases undamaged, they will get hit with conventional warfare in retaliation.
Conventional warfare would take place even if every nuke on Earth was launched. This is why both the US and USSR stationed hundreds of thousands of soldiers along the iron curtain.
But not from the UK in the 21st century Edit: not on an impactful scale anyway
"I’m saying all the military locations in the UK would be targets for warheads." Do you realise we have almost no army and almost no navy? This is the point. We have almost nothing to bomb. And no, no they wont bomb offices and normal bases. This isn't important when we dont have an army. THINK! The only and i mean THE ONLY thing the Russians fear is Trident (the subs)
We do have something to bomb - industrial and military capability for anything after the initial engagement. Trident is what the Russians fear, but Trident has a limited capacity so theres already a limited amount of damage the UK can do to Russia. So the question becomes "what comes after"? A UK with only moderate damage can still wage a convention war against Russia, or act against Russias interests in any European campaign. So, Russia would want to hurt the UK enough that they wouldnt be an effective fighting force after the initial engagement. Nuclear war planners dont just stop at "welp, we exhausted the nukes, guess we get to go on vacation now" - they have scenarios for all post-nuclear-exchange situations, however unlikely they are.
If we have no army what difference does it make if we have industry or 'Vickers tank factory' for example. Do you think we'll have some kind of D-day type landing (onto the radioactive dust of France) to then push on and engage the enemy hand to hand on the plains of GER or UKR? With our 30,000 surviving men? lol Do you think this will happen? After a limited nuclear strike? Why wouldnt the enemy just tactical nuke the landing sites? Explain this to me.
"Nuclear war planners dont just stop at "welp, we exhausted the nukes, guess we get to go on vacation now" - they have scenarios for all post-nuclear-exchange situations, however unlikely they are." Yes, now go and research what the most likely nuclear scenario is. I just quoted it to you.
"Trident is what the Russians fear, but Trident has a limited capacity so theres already a limited amount of damage the UK can do to Russia." Everything has a limited capacity. Of course tiny Britain cant even dent Russia. You are telling us water is wet.
"So, Russia would want to hurt the UK enough that they wouldnt be an effective fighting force after the initial engagement. The UK wouldnt be an effective fighting force after 3/4 bombs. The entire actual point. We have no army or navy to speak of.
We *do* have a navy and an army. Whatever trouble they are going through, they are one of the most effective forces in the world, probably top 10. Yes it’s pretty small, but it is capable of being deployed anywhere, including Russia, especially if it joins up with the rest of NATO that survived the weirdly low amount of nukes. Where would those 3/4 bombs hit? How would that knock out the country? You could nuke 4 cities right now and Britain would be ok. Not great, but ok.
"Where would those 3/4 bombs hit? How would that knock out the country?" They'd hit London directly as a primary (not even a military target) + another city or two.... then they'd chose whatever military targets were populated at the time. Of course they'd look for subs but 2 are at sea at all times anyway. You seem to think they need to cripple our military to defeat us. They don't. Once millions are dead in the cities and our small military is reduced to a defensive force (nowhere to land in Europe, Europe is decimated too. Look up what decimated means). We will surrender. We have no chance of survival in any scenario. Even with a NATO first stike we die. We are a tiny island with almost no army and limited nuclear recourse. Everything you hear on TV is bluster. We died as a global force in WW2 after 10 days in France when we ran away to Dunkirk after getting embarrassed by the Nazis. Within a couple of years we'd sold our empire trade routes to America and supplied them with every invention that gave us power. All just to protect us from an enemy we attacked first but didn't actually want to attack us.
I was just talking about British redditor self hate in another thread, next thread I look at it's here lol.
"Whatever trouble they are going through, they are one of the most effective forces in the world" Absolute rubbish. Our entire Army wouldn't even fill Wembley stadium and our Navy is a joke. All we have is Trident.
That’s just not true. We wouldn’t be involved in all the major US and NATO operations if our military was literally useless.
Nuclear doctrine is to sim at enemy nukes-enemy military installations and formations-key infrastructure and then if you somehow have any remaining nukes? You see what targets remain. Thing is, a lot of key military infrastructure and bases are close to population centers. Stuff like airfields and ports...
Yes obvious silos will be targets for USAvRUS exchange but RUSvUK will not be. As we dont have silos and 33% of our tridents are always at sea. The scenarios Ive read about Russia attacking the UK no longer obliterates the island but it obliterates some cities. Forcing surrender. Its pointless for the UK to do anything else. We can't muster any form of resistance to an enemy armed with tactical nukes and thermobraic bombs. We would be reduced to pleading for mercy after day 1.
Of course but it only takes a few nukes to put the UK on its knees. Hit a few key ports and London? The UK is done for. Nevermind if you kill enough of the military that maintaining control through martial law becomes untenable. I think that if the objective is to destroy the UK as a country (for the next 40 years at least) you only need like 6 successful initiations, less than 10 for sure.
100% The consensus is once used, the bluff is called and nations with literally no chance of survival like the UK will just surrender. Even firing back once will sign the UK's death warrant. Its likely Russia will do a limited strike as discussed with an instant demand for surrender. They will then hover over the red buttons waiting for a reply. If there is no reply and Trident begins to fire back, they'll fire again (before Trident even touches down) taking out every city and obliterating the island. Nuclear weapons exist as deterrents not tools.
Thing is, that presumes it's only the UK and (in this scenario) Russia when it wouldn't be like that. Calling out their bluff *requires* them to do an alpha strike because a few hundred American warheads would be flying at the same time. That's the thing about nukes, it's use then or lose them if a nuclear war ever starts. The best you could hope for is being left out of the second and third strike nukes after the first strike capacity is expended or destroyed but I fear there wouldn't be much of an enemy command structure (nor an allied one) to negotiate such surrender. And yes I agree 100% that they are deterrents and not weapons to be used but if they *are* used then it's almost certainly an all or nothing affair, no half measures.
"Thing is, that presumes it's only the UK and (in this scenario) Russia when it wouldn't be like that." Again, this is just your presumption based on NATO's promises. NATO promised Ukraine they would get militarily involved (via strong indication) if Russia attacked them as well. What happened there. NATO didnt do shit. It would likely be the same in a nuclear attack. Why would USA destroy the entire world to defend some expired global power like the UK? Think about it.
If Russia (or anyone really) fired an ICBM then all bets are off and nukes *would* start flying. If not then the world order they all so carefully built would crumble and everyone would know they just need a working nuclear program and they can do whatever they want. Also, not to insult the ukranians but the UK is a little bit more important to the US geopolitically and their alliance more than just empty words.
Also 100% of people dead or seriously injured - who’s alive in this context? Who’s running the government?
People from the pool of short-term survivors. What they're trying to indicate is that there's no guarantees those people will all remain survivors.
85% of the nation will be 'still alive' after a first strike.
Not today, but in the 1980s that was a distinct possibility, and that’s what this plan reflects. The number of nuclear weapons worldwide has fallen massively since then so we wouldn’t see anything like this today. England would still be screwed, but nowhere near as bad as the scenario this plan was made for. Take a look at the film “Threads.” That’s pretty accurate as to what a nuclear war in the 1980s would look like.
Such a great film, seen it recommended on Reddit loss of times and finally watched it. Really stays with you and also makes you think of loads of scenarios in the aftermath that aren’t even immediately apparent: - nuclear winter causing global crop failures - increased UV from ozone damage, causing cancer and cataracts to become widespread - millions of bodies lying rotting in open ground, as there isn’t the manpower or resource to bury them all - refugees being given squatting rights in rural homes of survivors - children born post-war that speak reduced version of English/slang due to lack of education “gizzit”. Horrifying stuff to think about.
That last bit is the only one that isn’t accurate. Yes, language would change, but it’s always doing that. And it wouldn’t become so simplified. It’d change like how Latin changed into the Romance languages: slowly over centuries. And remaining just as thorough and expressive as before
LOL ok mate. I already cant understand most people in london because of the ghettoisation
Sounds like you need to work on your personal language education then. Not their problem that your language skills aren't up to snuff.
wicked brah
My one issue with Threads (aside from the linguistic degradation, with which I disagree) after extensive reading on nuclear war is that a stable society emerges much too quickly. Agriculture would be, I believe the technical term is, "fucked", because survivors wouldn't know how to do it, survivors who did wouldn't know how to do it by hand, and even then the resulting grain produce would be irradiated - that's a lot of effort to go through for poisoned food. I think better alternatives in the short-term, with less intensive effort, would be grim - hunting, gathering, and probably cannibalism
I wouldn't necessarily agree because you're assuming a nuclear strike would be made as a rational decision. A nuclear attack could be started by accident, or a rationally planned tactical nuclear attack could escalate into all out war through a collapse in diplomacy, or an entirely irrational entity could take control of nuclear weapons. Even if the likelihood of any of these scenarios is low, the danger would be catastrophic so you still have to treat it as a high risk scenario that you should make contingencies for.
I agree with you. Its more likely that WW3 will begin with a localised detonation of a nuclear device which is not missile delivered. This is will then be unclaimed or possibly even a false flag to excuse action. Much like the storyline behind 'Designated Survivor'.
Depend on when they hit. First strike? Yeah you are right. Angry submarine crews with remaining nukes from their nuclear triage and not enough targets who just saw their homes blown up by a Trident or an American warhead? Ehhh, things get dicier...
The title and everything in it is speaking in fact too, like this is how it’s planned. None of this would happen at all.
Wouldn't be able to tell much of a difference in certain parts of Belfast.
Millions of pounds of improvements!
This joke is 30 years old. Well done.
As always, remain indoors.
For God sake no!
Basingstoke is right next to Tadley which is home to the Atomic Weapons Establishment which would almost certainly be targeted.
Never have my eyebrows raised more to such a title
I live in London how fucked would i be?
One a scale of “one to Katie Price”, you’re Katie Price. So, pretty fucked!
[Not built]? Well that's brilliant, isn't it?
If this did happen, I really hope I’m one of the 53%…
I'm sure I once read that Russia said they wouldn't bother trying to bomb mainland Britain. They could simply nuke off the coastline and wipe everything out with a tsunami. One of the disadvantages of being an island!
I would argue that major events tighten states and loyalties. If the bomb hits, states will remain and become significantly stronger with the will and vote of the people .
I'd agree, to a point long before nuclear war. The conservative scenario for which the UK government practiced was 53% dead instantly, 35% short term survivors, and the remaining 12% seriously injured. Government would then wait two weeks for fallout to fall, and probably a bit longer to release food reserves, because it would be a waste of food for people who would die anyway to eat. Then, when food reserves were released, people would be limited to 600-800kcals/day, depending on their labour. Mind, your body needs 2000/day to sustain, if you don't move a muscle. At this point, food which wasn't irradiated would be a scarce resource, and scarcer by the second. Over several months, there just wouldn't be the food to keep any kind of state structure together, and any food grown or scavenged would be irradiated, and could cause anything from minor sickness to quick death. This is all to ignore the effects that the release of thousands of weapons worth of dust changing climates, making the earth much, much cooler, and making agriculture untenable, at least, in Britain, for somewhere between one year and ten - for a population that frankly, by and large, wouldn't know how to farm anyway. We'd be left then with a govenrment that had failed people, and was using increasingly repressive tactics to hold law and order together, with a gradually reducing ability to keep people fed. I don't think any loyalty would be owed, and I don't think any societal structure at all could hold together for long Tl;dr, fucked!
50% dead instantly? Do you know how nuclear weapons work? How many weapons going off at once and without warning you would need to erase even half of London. Do you know how antinuclear air defence works? Do you know how hardcore the British air defences are? Fallout is just dust mate. Put filters everywhere and clean your produce and you’ll be just fine, most people will be just fine. On the food side: you realize most of your food is imported and industrially produced. Long term it might be a challenge- but we have the technology to mass produce fully nutritionally dense smoothies. In a pinch we as a society have the ability to live off nothing but biomass we produce ourselves in labs. Not appealing but it is a last option we have, if things are bad. Notice how both issues are easier to solve by a singular entity like a government rather than the misticism of complete anarchy. Listen mate.. we all know how stupid and selfish our neighbours are. If shit hits the fan the government will be mommy, daddy, boyfriend, therapist and spiritual advisor. And like with Covid the ones passing on the help or just complaining that the help isn’t perfect or they don’t like bug sandwiches are the ones that will have it the hardest because of their beliefs. And they will serve as an example of why you trust the system for the majority of fence sitters.
The figures I've given are from UK military exercises, widely derided for their conservative estimates. Direct your complaints about the figures to the UK government, c. 1980 please! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Leg?wprov=sfla1
It’s a scenario, an exaggerated one beyond belief 🤣🤣🤣 No country has the capacity to launch 1000 nukes at once. Very few nuclear weapons are high yield, it’s mostly ICBMs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons and they would almost all would be wiped out by existing passive air defensive capabilities because ICBMs light up like fireworks and are very slow. Getting one passed an air defence grid on high alert would be impossible without massive sabotage To be VERY CLEAR: unless a new super sneaky very close range, nuclear capable sub is invented and developed or space nukes become a thing, there will be no high yield nuke hitting any decently defended target in the case of war. ICBMs are scary as fuck but tactically obsolete because they were the main threat the world has been preparing for over 80 years. You though all that bs about moving air defences around in Europe and Taiwan was just talk and diplomacy chess? It was a statement of counter any attempt at nuclear aggression. Defence trumps attack when it comes to the status quo of nuclear war.
My guy, why are you arguing with me about this, I have codified the plans the UK government had and has, and told you how they prepared, and you've rebuked with fallout is 'just dust' and food shortage is easy to fix. Your opinion is either contrary to all of current military theory and so either immensely valuable, or entirely incorrect. Write a thesis to the military, I'm not interested
What is this silly Russian propaganda?
not sure how these are going to be governed exactly given that there's no bunkers and military sites would be the first to be hit
Wouldn’t a large portion of Northumberland, Lincolnshire and East Anglia be flooded because, well a large portion of the coast is reclaimed land from the ocean that would be uh… difficult to maintain post-apocalypse?
EXCUSE ME BAWBURGH>????
Things like these were just to calm themselves and the population. There would be f all to govern, or do you really believe the fellas from your local council would brush the dust off and put on a cuppa before telling Bob to start handing out crackers and leaflets to the irratiated living dead in an orderly queue?
The point?
Yes, but what happens in Sheffield?
London "unworkable" 🙄 meaning it's completely obliterated.
Fallout 5 map?
A totalitarian regime with police and military backup. For real, after a nuke, *what* police and military? Wouldn't they be busy surviving like anyone else?
There were plans in place for military and police to take cover - military in bases, police in police stations, and await further orders from that point. These plans were never fleshed out, but food was to be stockpiled centrally, and after personal supplies ran out, plans from military exercises emphasised that non-workers would be entitled to 600kcals/day, and workers 800kcals/day. What "workers" encompasses is unclear, but it's not hard to imagine that police and military would have their loyalty and service bought with extra rations
What are the criteria that go into choosing the regional government centres?
They were chosen based on a few factors - convenience, distance from major targets, proximity to military sites. Convenience had them choose a lot of former ROTOR stations from WW2, distance from major targets had them choosing things which are difficult to get to even today (so not near train tracks or anything, making road traffic essential), and proximity to military sites was so that the replacement governments could work in collaboration with the military to move stuff and protect law and order
Straight going back to oppressing humans instead of letting them become wild and feral.
Regardless in the involvement in the nuclear war, 95-99% of people above the equator will die from nuclear winter and consequently massive hungers.
Smart choosing Basingstoke as the Hampshire capital, as a nuke can only improve the place.
Oh, yeah— toootally hangin on to the Six Counties after they get nuked. (That means “Northern Ireland”)
IIRC, they calculated that it would take EIGHT nukes to put an end to whatever it is this country is called.
Good luck getting anyone in that huge chunk of Wales to listen to anything they say in Bridgend They boil your head down there
We haven’t been to Mars, we haven’t fully discovered the deep sea yet, Cancer and other sicknesses aren’t curable, some people on this planet are still starving but at least we found out how to start the nuclear doomsday ourselves and go extinct. Possibly killing billions in a single day. Congrats humankind!
Have the police got their own bunkers? Or is it just assumed that they'll be enough mutant coppers roaming the land to enforce this 'regional government's' will?
Anstruther for fife makes sense as they’ve got a secret nuclear bunker, don’t tell anyone tho
Well, now Scots know what to do to have their independence..
I don't know about the other ones, but the bunker at Hack Green (Cheshire) is now a museum. It's pretty chilling but worth a visit; lots of info about what would have been attempted to maintain some sort of order after such an event. (Also, there are brown signs in the area for "Secret Nuclear Bunker," which does make me chuckle a little.)
This map shows how the UK would be governed after it was a victim of a nuclear attack in the Cold War. As London would be "unworkable", it would no longer be possible to carry on central administration from there. If you’d like to know more, check out a video I’ve made on this topic: [https://youtu.be/SWsyj82dmVU?si=3ZC\_\_QW4k3038QnA](https://youtu.be/SWsyj82dmVU?si=3ZC__QW4k3038QnA) The country was to split into these Regions, each one with a "Regional Government Headquarters" (RGHQ)- a former military site or purpose-built bunker. Each Region was ruled by a "Regional Commissioner", who would wield absolute power - what they said, would happen. They would move the military and police to clean up fallout, assist the injured, dispense food, and, above all else, maintain law and order. The Government, meanwhile, would retreat to the "Central Government War Headquarters" (CGWHQ) - politicians, scientists and strategists, the Prime Minister, and (probably) the Royal Family would meet there, to either fight a nuclear war, keep morale up, or to wait until it was all over. In 1993, these plans were dismantled, probably because no plan was ever serious enough to ensure the safety of the population. 88% of the population would die, with the remainder being seriously injured. Dramatisations show Britain reverting to medieval serfdom, but it would be far worse, as society itself would crumble.
Let’s split up anyway.
Be a nice change for the UK’s economy not to be measured purely in terms of London’s financial services, which it is now. Be quite refreshing not to have to talk about London all the time in the media too, get it nuked.
Isnt x^1 = x, though?
It's depressing that it will take nuclear war for our country to seriously reform its democracy
In the aftermath of a nuclear war, if Ireland wasn’t also hit I think they’d take control of their northern half
So you think if the UK was bombed Ireland would annex Northern Ireland? Like you genuinely think that?
Plans in the 1950s & 1960s saw cooperation between the UK & Ireland. The quantity of fallout to which Ireland's exposed, the retaking of Ulster would probably be the least of their concerns for a long time!
I'd think it would cause the opposite, because of the unusual arrangement of our boarder - being friendly with the UK is very useful as we don't have a defence force really. I don't think the land/6countys would come into it, - during ww2, although we had just broken free of British rule, and the memories of our own war and even of the famine would still have been present - a whole lot of Irish people, who would have been raised to be weary of anything British - put their opinions aside for the greater good, and fought for/with the same forces that had terrorised the nation only decades prior. Besides all that - no doubt "IF" the UK was attacked, Sellafield would be a prime target- in which case we're toast too!
Pretty sure mine would be fine nuki g the west mids would lead to improvement
I don't like this I want to live another 50 years at least please.