The fate of Britain in a cold war turned hot

What would happen to Britain if America and the Soviets unleashed nuclear armageddon upon each other?

By one estimate by the government a relative fraction of the Soviet arsenal would kill or incapacitate fifty million. Probably not quite so little effort but its fair to say that Britain's air and naval bases and major cities would all be hit some more than once so tens of million dead seems likely.
 
Many large cities would be ash and ten of millons Brits would die. And radiation would make most of the isles inhabitable.
 
Protect & Survive gives a pretty good account. Not quite the glass car park scenario if the US and Russia unleash upon each other. In fact if it's just upon each other, (no side theatre targets), first hand damage will be pretty minimal.

Radioactive fall out on the other hand will be a bitch, not to mention the possibility of a nuclear winter if the amount of ash and dust going into the atmosphere is significant, but then frankly pretty much the whole world is fucked.
 
There is a chillingly unrelentingly clinical and horrifying documentary style film made by the BBC in the 1980s called 'Threads' - that explores this subject.

I have yet to see it bettered or for that matter watch a film that scared me more than this one.
 

sharlin

Banned
There is a chillingly unrelentingly clinical and horrifying documentary style film made by the BBC in the 1980s called 'Threads' - that explores this subject.

I have yet to see it bettered or for that matter watch a film that scared me more than this one.

I remember watching that in two parts at school. Scared a loooooot of folks, bloody good film. But yeah Englands fate, irradiated wasteland.
 
There is a chillingly unrelentingly clinical and horrifying documentary style film made by the BBC in the 1980s called 'Threads' - that explores this subject.

I have yet to see it bettered or for that matter watch a film that scared me more than this one.

Threads is fairly good up to a few days after the nuclear exchange. After that the fact it is made by film makers and journalists shows. There is a lot more engineering, industrial and management capacity and expertise scattered around the less urbanised bits of the country than the makers of Threads even begin to grasp.

That said, the effect of initial strikes against the more likely targets would have been horrific. If such an exchange had gone off when Threads was made in 1984 we would most of us still be employed in recovery projects now. However we would not have descended to steam technology and would after a relatively brief period have moved away from subsistence agriculture.

Britain has lots of resources it does not need to exploit because it is cheaper to import goods instead. However even with the global supply chain in tatters the knowledge base and machine shops to make the next generation of complex tools would still be there post exchange.

It is hard to give precise numbers on how many would die and who would live and we would potentially be looking at quite a low level of individual prosperity right about now but people would very much alive and with access to technology though advances would likely be stunted, I would hesitate to predict by more than twenty years and possibly less than ten with extreme good fortune.
 
What would happen to Britain if America and the Soviets unleashed nuclear armageddon upon each other?
Well first you have to decide when exactly does this nuclear exchange take place? What year it occurs is going to make a hell of a lot of difference due to both Soviet and British capabilities that were changing over time.
 
There is a presumption that a cold war turned hot must mean a free use of nuclear weapons. What might be more likely is a free use of chemicals.

For Britain it means persistent chemicals used upon military and logistical concentrations. Ports, airfields, military stockpiles etc. Other than airports many cities have little of these critical items today and the affected portions would be generally restricted to the items of interest but deaths would still be in hundreds of thousands at best and single millions at worst. The objective would be to isolate Britain from continental Europe to prevent the deployment and support of British troops to Germany and prevent the use of Britain as a forwarding point for USA and Canadian forces deploying to continental Europe. Similar actions would affect France, especially western ports.

Ignoring who (if anyone) would win, Britain would be left with much of it's infrastructure intact and persistent chemicals will degrade in time. They may be dreadful things to unleash but the quantities that have to be air transported to isolate Britain are so large that accurate delivery is necessary. Throwing them around in city sized quantities is just not practical. Small comfort for the poor b*ggers who receive some though.

As to how long it would take to recover I can only point to 1973, 28 years after WW2, when I began my degree course in Plymouth. The rebuilding of the city centre was only just being completed. Equally the city centre was up and functioning by the end of the war, albeit in temporary sites.
 
There are a few ways of answering this question.

On the one hand, if a nuclear exchange did occur, would it be a limited strike or a full scale one?.

Basically a limited one would be confined to military targets, airbases, army bases, naval and C.3 (Command, Control & Communication) instalations.

A full scale strike would involve targeting every urban area in a country.

If it's a limited one, would it include the UK?, because both the UK and France have a good "Counter-strike" capability. This means the opposition, i.e the USSR would have to think carefully as both countries arsenals are not controlled by the USA.

To get a rough idea of this i advise you to check out the Soviet War plan "SEVEN DAYS TO THE RHINE" which was declassified by the Polish Govt a few years ago.

In the War Plan, despite nuclear weapons being used openly in the former West Germany and other NATO countries, none are used against the UK & France as the USSR didn't want to encourage a "Counter-strike" from those said nations.

Now, for sake of argument, there was a limited strike against the UK, there would still be a large lost of life, between 10% to 20% (according to UK Govt stats). The reason being is that most military instalations are next to some kind of urban area, so you get a loss of life through collateral damage.

If there was a full scale strike, ie the entire nuclear stock was launched - USA to USSR, USSR to USA & UK etc, you would still see at least 20% to 25% of the UK population killed in the first 24 hours of a strike.

After 12 months the population would see a drop of 90%, ie to medieval rates due to lack of healthcare, poor nutrition, poor sanitory states and a lack of shelter for its civilians.

I'd advise you to read a book called "One Second After", it'll give you a flavour of what i'm talking about in respect of the effects on the civilian population.

I hope this has helped filer.

Cheers
 
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One thing that needs to be factored in is that the French did not want World War III fought on French soil given the horrific losses and devestation of the first two. Thus the closer to the Rhine the Soviets got the more nuclear weapons the French would use in order for them to get the message to fuck off. So Soviet restraint against second tier targets would probably be abandoned sharpish.

Then there was the Soviet plan to nuke all the neutral nations so they could not threaten it post war.

To be honest it seems there were a hundred different scenarios to pick from with varying numbers of targets and weapons and that is for each individual nation. Put them all together and it seems impossible to predict just what would get hit or be spared or what plans would continue to be enacted.
 

Lateknight

Banned
The Irish would be hit too to prevent them from becoming powerful in a post-nuke world.

There ports and capital would be definely be targeted but they would still exist unlike the British and just because they would be inheriting what's left doesn't mean it would be worth much.
 
There is a presumption that a cold war turned hot must mean a free use of nuclear weapons. What might be more likely is a free use of chemicals.

Chemical warfare is completely ineffective over wide areas. A Hot War means either both sides backing down before Armageddon, or full-scale nukes.

Anyway, Britain glows in the dark, as does Belfast. The Republic of Ireland probably escapes a direct hit, but gets screwed by the proximity of radiation. Then the Nuclear Winter hits, and everyone starves to death.
 

Delta Force

Banned
The United Kingdom could expect only a four minute warning in the event of a nuclear attack, although more likely closer to three. Some Bomber Command and forward deployed assets of the United States Tactical and Strategic Air Command might escape, but that's about it. There would have been so little time to respond that the orders for the Royal Navy ballistic missile submarines were written by the Prime Minister and placed in an envelope to be opened if communications were lost with the United Kingdom and the BBC was knocked off air.
 
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