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Britain faced military rule after Russian N-strike Secret papers warned cold war governments of 12 million deaths from Soviet attack Alan Travis, home affairs
editor Britain would have been placed
under the control of local military commanders with powers to take "whatever
steps, however drastic" were necessary in the aftermath of a Soviet nuclear
attack during the cold war according to newly-released official war plans.
The top secret official assessment of whether Britain could survive a Soviet
thermonuclear attack was drawn up for the cabinet by Sir William Strath in March
1955 and formed the basis of civil defence planning throughout the late 1950s
and 1960s.
It was considered so sensitive that it was kept secret until yesterday, when
it was released at the public record office.
It estimated that a successful Soviet night attack on main population centres
using 10 hydrogen bombs, each of 10 megatons, would kill 12 million people and
seriously injure or disable 4 million others. "This would mean the loss of
nearly one-third of the population. Blast and heat would be the dominant hazard,
accounting for more than 9 million fatal casualties, against less than 3 million
from radiation. Four of the 16 million casualties would be caused by a single
bomb on London," concluded the report.
"Even allowing for a degree of aiming error, the direct local effects of a
hydrogen explosion in the most probable target areas would be of such magnitude
that deaths from blast and fire would heavily outweigh fatal casualties from
fallout elsewhere."
Strath was the head of the cabinet office central war plans secretariat. He
said that the initial phase of attack would be followed by a critical period
during which the surviving population would be struggling "against disease,
starvation and the unimaginable pyschological effects of nuclear bombardment".
The report confirms defence estimates that a Soviet nuclear strike on that
scale would be a "knock-out blow" to Britain as a major military power and says
that in parts of the country civil control would collapse.
"The local military commander would have to be prepared to take over from the
civil authority responsible for the maintenance of law and order and for the
administration of government. He would, if called upon, exercise his existing
common law powers to take whatever steps, however drastic, he considered
necessary to restore order."
Emergency plans were drawn up to allow the military authorities to take over
from regional or local authorities and to dispense justice through special
military war zone courts. Peter Hennessy, author of The Secret State, a study of
Whitehall and the bomb, said last night: "This is the first direct confirmation
that post-nuclear attack there would have to be military government for a time."
But the Strath report did conclude that if what was left of the population
could get through this initial critical period then it would be possible for
Britain to make a slow recovery despite the destruction of half its industrial
capacity.
"The standard of living of the reduced population, although substantially
lower than at present, would still be well above that of the greater part of the
world. The country would be left with sufficient resources for a slow recovery."
Strath believed some of the impact of a nuclear attack could be minimised by
mass evacuation plans, a national network of nuclear fallout shelters and
emergency stockpiles of food. Some of his recommendations were acted upon but
cabinet papers show that a proposal to build basement shelters in all new
buildings was rejected on cost grounds. Instead, a top secret underground bunker
was built in the Cotswolds to shelter the cabinet and selected military, civil
service and intelligence figures.
Detailed plans were drawn up to evacuate more than 15 million people from the
target areas, but they would have taken at least nine days to implement.
Britain's war planners worked on the assumption that it would be known seven
days in advance that a nuclear attack was inevitable. But they could only count
on a very short tactical alert of up to one hour that the bombers were on their
way. If the Russians risked a low-level approach to avoid radar the warning
could be as short as three minutes, Strath said.
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