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Graeme Wall

In message
(Nick Leverton) wrote:

In article ,
Graeme Wall wrote:

You are making the mistake of talking about the present day, the policy
was in place throughout the 50s 60s and 70s. And they weren't planning
on stopping the whole population of London, they were talking about the
weak, radiation sick survivors of one or more multi-megaton blasts over
the London area.

I still think it was an un-workable idea in practice for the reason I
gave - even if under Martial Law a shoot to kill policy was introduced
(how would they excuse it to the rest of the country: "putting all these
poor people out of their misery ?) and even if people were a lot more
compliant to authority back then.

Most of the governemnts ideas for post-nuclear attack operation were
un-workable, see Protect and Survive, however that is what the plans were.

They wouldn't be bothered about what the rest of country thought, under
martial law, what you say goes, at the point of a gun if necessary. And
quite what would be left of the rest of the country in the event of an attack
in the scale they were expecting? Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow,
Edinburgh, Leed-Bradford all had similar plans. The smaller towns and cities
didn't need them, a 1 megaton bomb detonated 200ft above the Bargate in
Southampton wouldn't have left anything of a city to survive from for
instance. 5 megatons would have dealt with places like Derby and Nottingham

But as uk.rec.subt knows, most of the official policies to deal with
the civilian population during and after nuclear war would have been
useless if it had actually come to pass.

I said that as well :-)

--
Graeme Wall
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Transport Miscellany at http://www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail/index.html