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Comment by arethuza | Hacker News Reader

I think the UK government has always realised that any level of nuclear war was not survivable let alone "winnable" - estimates from the 1950s suggested that it would only take 3 H-bomb strikes to cause a total breakdown in the UK (and some UK diplomat had a drunken debate with Khrushchev over that very point).

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I think there was significant effort devoted to making sure there could be some sort of "continuity UK" in the event of that happening; the Trident at-sea deterrent, the PYTHON project, all sorts of subterranean bunkers, and so on. It would clearly be pretty desperate, but there was real money spent on it. A bleak version of "thinking the unthinkable", I suppose.

(http://burlingtonandbeyond.co.uk/wp/part-3/ etc)

I doubt any of the UK bunkers would have survived an all-out attack - their locations were fairly well known and none of them were designed to resist a direct attack. In fact, nobody has bunkers that can resist a direct attack - not even Cheyenne Mountain.

Alas, Babylon has a good bit about that. One of the characters is stationed at strategic air command in Nebraska. He warns his brother about an impending nuclear war, and that is the last that is heard from him. The other characters speculate about whether he survived, given the fact that strategic air command is sure to have a very sturdy bunker. It turns out the base ended up being a very large radioactive hole. A bunker is, after all, a very static target, and it just ends up being hit by many bombs.

That's my recollection anyways. I read it in 6th grade, so it's been well over a decade since I read it. I really ought to re-read it.

The novel Arc Light has an account of a fairly limited "counterforce" attack by the Russians against the US. Cheyenne Mountain, Omaha and Raven Rock Mountain are all destroyed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_Light_(novel)

Speaking of warnings about a nuclear war, there's a great 80's movie that centers around one such warning and how ordinary people react to it: Miracle Mile.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_Mile_(film)

that movie traumatized me as a young man and definitely impacted my sleep for years thereafter.

I read it a few months ago and your recollection is accurate. I think it's one of the best fictional books on the subject.

The Dover facility (which in case of an imminent all-out nuclear exchange supposedly would've accommodated the Royal Family as well) was shut down (or never really commissioned) in the early 1970s because someone found out that chalk rock is permeable to nuclear fallout ...

So, I'm sure that despite the effort the UK Government was well aware of its futility.

'Now, we shall receive four minutes warning of any impending nuclear attack. Some people have said, "Oh my goodness me — four minutes? — that is not a very long time!" Well, I would remind those doubters that some people in this great country of ours can run a mile in four minutes.' - Peter Cook, Beyond the Fringe, 1960

Part of the UK preparation for nuclear war sound like black comedy - my favourite being that we were too cheap to build a dedicated communication network to allow the PM to launch the V-bombers when out and about so the AA radio network was to be used:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/in-the-eve...

Yes - that AA - the Automobile Association....

That's almost as bad as US launch codes being all zeroes for 15 years:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/05/nuclear-missile-cod...

Good thing it changed.. imagine trying to pair a bluetooth keyboard.

The national air raid sirens were controlled over random POTS lines[1]. The theory was that a dedicated system would need proper upkeep and testing, but when a telephone line goes down the customer at the end of it will notice and file a complaint.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HANDEL

I think some civil servants realised this. That's not the same as the entire government realising it. It's certainly not the same as specific Prime Ministers understanding it.

There are maps from the early 1950s - pre H-Bomb - which show large areas of the UK reduced to radioactive desert after a relatively small attack.

Unloading tens or hundreds of larger weapons on the UK would do very little to increase its survival prospects.

From that POV, Threads is terrifying but optimistic. It's not clear anyone at all would survive a full exchange. Spending a few years in a bunker would simply delay the inevitable.

"Spending a few years in a bunker would simply delay the inevitable."

All of life could be said to be merely delaying the inevitable.

I am reminded of the story of a man running away from a tiger when he reaches the edge of a cliff and falls over, managing to grab hold of the edge and hanging by one hand. Below him is certain death from the fall, above him is death by the tiger. The man notices some sweet dew dripping from a blade of grass by his face. With moments left to live, he licks the dew.

There were preparations for such a case in West Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_bunker_%28Germany%2... The english article also mentions Fallex 66, where for the first time, politicians were involved in a (favorable setting of a) NATO war game.

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