I say the UK is doomed, at lest the South of England is all the Civil defense plans call on local mayors and such to act selflessly and risk death away from their families, also would they know what to do? doubtful, would the Military take orders from the mayor of where ever? unlikely, military men will run away to find whatever family they have left, or in small groups hold up some where with food and guns to ride it out or try and ready for a Russian attack, food riots would over whelm what little police or military a local government could hold together (themselves likely sick and starved) I'd be shocked if anything south of the Glasgow-Edinburgh line will look like anything but the stone age
Based on even the most pessimistic projections, the United Kingdom is not doomed. It will go through hell, it will force good men to do terrible things, but it will survive.
The civilian officials chosen to staff the Regional Control Groups in the lead up to, and following the attacks, would be bound under the Emergency Powers Act, which would be forced through during any transition-to-war period. This means, effectively, they could be forced into their post at gunpoint and their families interned should they refuse to report for their war duties.
I am not suggesting for a second that these Controllers would go to their posts thanks to a stoic Englishness and a stiff upper lip. They would do it because a bunker is the safest place to be when the sky starts falling; it is certainly a better place to be than an over-crowded internment camp or worse. Their families stand a far better chance of surviving with a member of family in control than they do with a member of family in a shallow grave.
The Army will take orders from the local authorities because they are orders given on behalf of the Crown; if they decide to be treasonous, they lose all the advantages that the security forces will enjoy after the attack - guaranteed meals, good discipline etcetera. They also become the targets of loyalist forces hell-bent on restoring order.
Once the food in people's cellars runs out, they are more or less at the mercy of the authorities - almost all the food will now be under the direct control of the armed forces; there is very little chance of more than one or two of these depots being over-run in the whole country; these places are the country's lifeline, and they will be defended by well equipped units (including armour) that will not hesitate to open fire. There is little chance of hunter-gathering given the damage done to the flora and fauna in the affected areas. At best, they will starve. At worst, they will eat something radioactive and starve
painfully
There will be no, repeat, no fear of a Russian attack; even assuming we didn't know for sure the Russians weren't going to try to invade, let us look at it logically; The vast majority of WarPac ground forces will have been destroyed during the fighting that precedes the nuclear exchange; fighting that will almost certainly involve liberal use of tactical nuclear, chemical and biological weaponry. These will include all of the best divisions the Reds have to offer.
Even assuming the Russians had a viable land force, they would still have no means of getting it over here. The Soviet surface fleet was a sorry affair (even without depletion by conventional and nuclear warfare). Combine this with the fact that enough of the Royal Navy will have dispersed (especially her hunter-killer submarines) and that its prime objective is now to protect the British Isles, a slim chance turns to none.
Even supposing Red Stars did get ashore, the UK will still maintain a defensive advantage, including several regular regiments who didn't get to Europe before the exchange. If worst comes to worst, which it will not, there will be no qualms anymore about the use of tactical nuclear weaponry to destroy any emergent beachheads.
We knew that this was impossible at the time, and so it was never seriously planned for or discussed; such a possibility would not be feared after an attack.
The Glasgow-Edinburgh line is arbitrary; several targets north of this line, especially air and naval bases, but also places such as Inverness and Thurso, would be hit; indeed, the only places untouched would be those untouched by man anyway.
The Stone Age is a huge exaggeration. Nuclear weapons are simply huge bombs with bad side effects. They are not, however , supernatural omens of the end times. Even when the UK is hit, the plans exist for recovery and for maintaining control. It will be tough, but life will go on. Fuel shortages and the like will limit the use of modern technology, but aeroplanes will still fly, soldiers will still use rifles, people will still listen to radios. Less advanced technology, particularly Victorian-era manufacturing equipment which doesn't need petroleum or electricity, will experience a resurgence.
The people will still remember Soft Cell and Ted Heath and Fawlty Towers and walks in the park. They will try as best they can to recover; wearing pelts and using rocks as tools, or any such regression, is not conducive to this.
uhm might i interject with the thought that.. hiroshima and nagasaki bounced back so quickly was becuase the first several feet of radioactive topsoil was removed and dumped into the ocean. Dresden was not nuclear.. even Chernobyl while a decent example not the best example..
No topsoil was moved at either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. It would have been a huge, huge logistical effort at a time when, frankly, the US neither knew enough about the dangers of radiation to worry or cared enough about the Japanese to bother. Besides, Little Boy and Fat Man were airburst, which means there was not a huge amount of fallout.
Fires caused by an airburst will not lead to radioactive soot; these are conventional fires that are just giving off whatever they are burning.
Dresden, obviously, was not a nuclear attack. It IS, however, one of the key sources used when looking at the possible effects of atomic weaponry; the sheer magnitude of incendiary weapons and the firestorm that followed are the best equivalent we have to the use of a ground-burst on a real, live city and its real, live population; similarly, the rates of PTSD and the like were extrapolated from Dresden as well as the Japanese bombs in order to fulfil the scientific studies that later inspired films such as
The War Game.
Might i also add that NOONE knows exactly what would have been the climatic outcome of a full on Nuclear Exchange in 1982-83.. lets just say that 80% of all the war heads launch and reach target. thats what? 20 -30 thousand warheads? accounting for almost every major city in the Norhtern Hemisphere and many in the southern.
Obviously no-one knows for sure - thank god we don't. We
can, however, use scientific method in order to extrapolate what would happen, and minds immeasurably superior to mine have proven that, whilst bad, nuclear winter simply would not be as bad as men such as Carl Sagan (whose research formed the basis for the world of
Threads) suggested .