If the UK had ever been nuked...

[Sam the Mut]

tdm34 said:

My Father was a 16 Sqn bod based in Germany, he talks of some pretty scary things
but one thing he used to say to us after he demobbed and we returned to Scouse-ville
Everytime we drove past RAF Burtonwood he used to mention that the USAF used to
store special weapons there, and that if the balloon went up there'd be strikes
against Liverpool, Warrington and Manchester, basically the the North West of England
would've been turned into a sheet of glass.....

Not a bad thing really. Lol

[pacman1]

Pugster said:

That's superb!

A 50Mt bomb takes out most of Bedfordshire!

Not the Bedford Incident I was thinking of.

[after Finlander orders an anti-submarine rocket armed]
Commodore Schrepke: This is insane!
Captain Finlander: Now dont worry, Commodore. The Bedford'll never fire first.

But if he fires one, I'll fire one.

Ensign Ralston: [launching the rocket] Fire One!

[Olivera]

sherman said:

Edinburgh and Glasgow probably wouldnt have been hit too hard but Grangemouth oil refinery in between the two would most likely have been wiped from the face of the earth and taken most of central Scotland with it.

Grangemouth might well have been a Scottish target, but would surely have been far lower down the list than Faslane and Holy Loch.

[Ian Lancs]

Olivera said:

sherman said:

Edinburgh and Glasgow probably wouldnt have been hit too hard but Grangemouth oil refinery in between the two would most likely have been wiped from the face of the earth and taken most of central Scotland with it.

Grangemouth might well have been a Scottish target, but would surely have been far lower down the list than Faslane and Holy Loch.

With a decent sized weapon dropped on Faslane or Holy Loch, Grangemouth would probably have been screwed from the resultant EMP - even in the early Cold War, there would have been some electronic control used in industry.

[Seeker UK]

croyde said:

Isn't there a big early warning site in Cornwall?

Goonhilly a satellite tracking station.

No to both I'm afraid.

Goonhilly is a ground <-> satellite data relay station.

[Seeker UK]

paddyhasneeds said:

Not Australia apparently, I think that's where our remaining nuclear subs would be headed.

It depends on what the PM's Letter of Last Resort directs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resor...

[pacman1]

Has noone mentiond Chelteham yet?!

[Oakey]

Five pages and not one mention of When the Wind Blows?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9aHT-IlkHo

(unless it's one of the links I didn't click?)

[dr_gn]

Oakey said:

Five pages and not one mention of When the Wind Blows?

Page one, post 3!

[Oakey]

dr_gn said:

Page one, post 3!

Ah yeah, sorry, I read that page yesterday and forgot in the interim.

[OctalStan]

I always had it all down as a bit of a historical threat (even with Mr Dinnerjacket's shenanigans!) but Countdown to Zero was on latenight on ch4 not so long ago and gave me pause. A few thoughts on the impact of even a single, rogue weapon and a lot of info about near-misses. Obviously it's got an agenda, but it's hard to argue with one of its central points - any system that can be used, can be used accidentally and over a long enough period that unlikely co-incidence has more chances to happen! I reckon it's worth a watch anyhow.

Or you can go the other way and play the game of the end of the world:

DEFCON: Simple, good and with a brilliant darkness about it.

[Oakey]

Just to cheer you all up

http://www.thebulletin.org/content/media-center/an...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- January 10, 2012 -- Faced with inadequate progress on nuclear weapons reduction and proliferation, and continuing inaction on climate change, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) announced today that it has moved the hands of its famous "Doomsday Clock" to five minutes to midnight.

[DamienB]

OctalStan said:

Or you can go the other way and play the game of the end of the world:

DEFCON: Simple, good and with a brilliant darkness about it.

It is great. The only game I've bought in about 10 years... used to love online play until it got infested with American kids who'd drop as host if it looked like they'd lose. No better way to double cross an ally than by nuking him. Class.

[croyde]

Seeker UK said:

croyde said:

Isn't there a big early warning site in Cornwall?

Goonhilly a satellite tracking station.

No to both I'm afraid.

Goonhilly is a ground <-> satellite data relay station.

Why not. Aliens always take out our satellite stuff so why not the Russians.

[Pugster]

Oakey said:

Just to cheer you all up

http://www.thebulletin.org/content/media-center/an...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- January 10, 2012 -- Faced with inadequate progress on nuclear weapons reduction and proliferation, and continuing inaction on climate change, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) announced today that it has moved the hands of its famous "Doomsday Clock" to five minutes to midnight.

Oh noes it's worse than ever because we now have "inaction on climate change"

We're dooooooomed!

[Famous Graham]

I grew up in Pangbourne, Berkshire. Surrounded by the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, Greenham Common, Didcot power station and Reading.

fked, basically

[hairykrishna]

OctalStan said:

I always had it all down as a bit of a historical threat (even with Mr Dinnerjacket's shenanigans!) but Countdown to Zero was on latenight on ch4 not so long ago and gave me pause. A few thoughts on the impact of even a single, rogue weapon and a lot of info about near-misses. Obviously it's got an agenda, but it's hard to argue with one of its central points - any system that can be used, can be used accidentally and over a long enough period that unlikely co-incidence has more chances to happen! I reckon it's worth a watch anyhow.

Or you can go the other way and play the game of the end of the world:

DEFCON: Simple, good and with a brilliant darkness about it.

I found Countdown to Zero a decent documentary which is high praise seeing as I strongly disagree with it's agenda. It does a good job of stressing that building a nuclear weapon, once you have the fissile material, is easy. It also communicates well that detecting smuggled nukes is not a trivial problem.

Personally I think nuclear weapons have saved millions of lives. Without them and MAD, IMO, there would have been an enormous conventional conflict between NATO countries and the Soviet bloc. We are of course offsetting the numbers that would be killed in conventional wars with a small, but non-zero, probability that one day >90% of the population get wiped out.

[hairykrishna]

The figure of 8 missiles in the OP probably isn't that far off. 8 MIRV's is 24-80 warheads which would certainly end the UK as any kind of viable nation state.

[Grayham]

TheHeretic said:

BertB said:

Not sure if you've ever seen

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/

but certainly worth a look if you're thinking along those lines!

Probably one of the scariest films, mainly because you can easily see how it would turn out like that. All the preparation in the world would not prepare you. No-one is equipped to get by in that situation, except for a few folks who already live off the land. Scary stuff. 'When the Wind Blows' was as good, in my opinion, but hid it with a cartoon, (on a slightly related side note, Mills and whats-her-name did that voiceover in one take)

That cartoon scared the crap out of me when I was a kid. As did the book 'Brother in the Land, which I read at school as it was based in the area I used to live

[rovermorris999]

prand said:

we'd have had a nice view of the mushroom clouds from the top of the hill where I lived!

Your retinas would have been shagged by the flash from the first burst most likely.