Last Resort Letters: Nuclear Payback UK Style

[madanthonywayne]

I heard an interesting news report on This American LIfe the other day. Apparently, every prime minister of the UK writes four letters addressed to the commanders of Britain's four nuclear armed Trident submarines telling them what to do if the UK is destroyed in a nuclear attack.

One such submarine is always out on patrol, so if anyone should ever launch a sneak attack and leave the UK a smoking radioactive ruin, the nuclear armed subs would give the UK a last chance for payback.

But no one knows what the letters say. They are written and then locked away in a safe in each sub and then destroyed unread when a new prime minister is sworn in.

They could say, "Nuke those bastards until they glow.."; or they could say, "Fuck it, we're already dead, what's the point of more killing?" Or even, "Do whatever you think is best".

So, what would you say if you were the prime minister?

What would you do if you were the sub commander? Would you do nothing if so ordered knowing that your nation and everyone you loved had been destroyed? Would you launch the nukes, knowing that many innocent civilians would be killed in so doing?

BBC

 

[Read-Only]

What would you do if you were the sub commander? Would you do nothing if so ordered knowing that your nation and everyone you loved had been destroyed? Would you launch the nukes, knowing that many innocent civilians would be killed in so doing?

BBC

If I was the sub commander and the orders said "launch" I would go post-haste to the command center and slam the Big Red Button!

 

[PieAreSquared]

and leave the UK a smoking radioactive ruin

if that were to happen.. we are all dead anyway even if we aren't in the UK....so wtf

oh the premise of a survivable nuclear war ...:roflmao:

 

[Nasor]

if that were to happen.. we are all dead anyway even if we aren't in the UK....so wtf

oh the premise of a survivable nuclear war ...:roflmao:

The people in non-targeted countries would be more or less fine, and a great many people in the warring countries would probably survive as well. To repeat something that I recently said in a different thread, most people have a badly over-exaggerated sense of how dangerous nuclear weapons are.

 

[madanthonywayne]

and leave the UK a smoking radioactive ruin

if that were to happen.. we are all dead anyway even if we aren't in the UK....so wtf

oh the premise of a survivable nuclear war ...:roflmao:

We nuked Japan, and the rest of the world was just fine. And we've tested nukes much more powerful than those used on Japan and the world survived. Hell, one guy actually survived both nuclear attacks on Japan and recently died at a ripe old age.

 

[PieAreSquared]

the closest time frame between any 2 nuclear weapon explosions has been what?

 

[Pinwheel]

So, what would you say if you were the prime minister?

I would say: sorry folks, our nukes are fakes - budget cuts.

 

[madanthonywayne]

the closest time frame between any 2 nuclear weapon explosions has been what?

Who knows, but consider this, the Rusians tested one bomb with a yeild 1400 times that of the two nukes dropped on Japan:

The Tsar Bomba was a three-stage hydrogen bomb with a yield of 50 megatons (Mt).[2] This is equivalent to 1,400 times the combined power of the two nuclear explosives used in World War II; Little Boy (13-18 kilotons) and Fat Man (21 kilotons), the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.[3]

The Tsar Bomba detonated at 11:32 on October 30, 1961 over the Mityushikha Bay nuclear testing range (Sukhoy Nos Zone C), north of the Arctic Circle on Novaya Zemlya Island in the Arctic Sea. The bomb was dropped from an altitude of 10.5 kilometres (6.5 mi); it was designed to detonate at a height of 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) over the land surface (4.2 kilometres (2.6 mi) over sea level) by barometric sensors.[1][4][5]

The original U.S. estimate of the yield was 57 Mt, but since 1991 all Russian sources have stated its yield as 50 Mt. Khrushchev warned in a filmed speech to the Communist Parliament of the existence of a 100 Mt bomb (technically the design was capable of this yield). The fireball touched the ground, reached nearly as high as the altitude of the release plane, and was seen and felt almost 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) from ground zero. The heat from the explosion could have caused third degree burns 100 km (62 miles) away from ground zero. The subsequent mushroom cloud was about 64 kilometres (40 mi) high (seven times the height of Mount Everest) and 40 kilometres (25 mi) wide. The explosion could be seen and felt in Finland[citation needed] , breaking windows there and in Sweden.[citation needed] Atmospheric focusing caused blast damage up to 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) away. The seismic shock created by the detonation was measurable even on its third passage around the Earth.[6] Its seismic body wave magnitude was about 5 to 5.25.[7​

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

 

[PieAreSquared]

I know about the Tsar. They discovered that bigger wasn't necessarily better.In the realm of nuc's.

but hey you are advocating that mankind can survive the uk being toasted. How about some numbers on what , how many bombs is it going to take.. One big one in London or a couple across the country.

Since you can't answer the simple question I posed. Don't deflect and say wow here's a big one...it's not sex

 

[Nasor]

but hey you are advocating that mankind can survive the uk being toasted. How about some numbers on what , how many bombs is it going to take.. One big one in London or a couple across the country.

You can find an interesting and very thorough discussion (complete with numbers) here: http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Effects/wenw_foreword.shtml

Based on the best available data, ten thousand megatons of nuclear explosives going off (which is vastly more than would be necessary to toast the UK) would produce an estimated 1.5 to 30 million deaths from radiation across the world over 30 years. In other words, the vast majority of the world's population would probably be fine.

 

[PieAreSquared]

Thanks for the link but .....the best you going to get is well maybe we will survive.

While we have had tests and some big ones.. we never have popped off say 5 or more in a short time period.. so hitting say London, Birmingham and Manchester etc. in a short time period may have effect we don't quite know what are yet

maybe we need a test run

from link page 1....

New discoveries have been made, yet much uncertainty inevitably persists. Our knowledge of nuclear warfare rests largely on theory and hypothesis, fortunately untested by the usual processes of trial and error.

So in saying we can survive such a thing ????.. court is still out, there is not enough conclusive evidence to support the THEORY

 

[Dywyddyr]

So, letters to our SSBN commanders in the event of the UK having been wiped off the map...

How about:

The co-ordinates of France are..... Remember Agincourt!

Or:

Make sure Milton Keynes has gone - give it a couple of extra warheads

 

[James R]

Arthur C. Clarke wrote a short story about this kind of thing many years ago, during the Cold War.

It is a message from a President to the people in charge of his country's nuclear arsenal. It starts with something like: "If you're receiving this message, then our homeland has been under nuclear attack. All our cities will have been wiped out. ...."

It goes on to describe how the recipients of the message were set up precisely so that a retaliatory strike would be possible, to wipe out all of the enemy's cities in revenge for the first strike nuclear attack, and so on.

It ends with the President telling his submariners and other nuclear controllers that further loss of life and the complete destruction of civilisation is pointless. The President orders his men to lay down their weapons and to put themselves at the disposal of the enemy commander: the President of the United States.

 

[Thoreau]

I heard an interesting news report on This American LIfe the other day. Apparently, every prime minister of the UK writes four letters addressed to the commanders of Britain's four nuclear armed Trident submarines telling them what to do if the UK is destroyed in a nuclear attack.

One such submarine is always out on patrol, so if anyone should ever launch a sneak attack and leave the UK a smoking radioactive ruin, the nuclear armed subs would give the UK a last chance for payback.

But no one knows what the letters say. They are written and then locked away in a safe in each sub and then destroyed unread when a new prime minister is sworn in.

They could say, "Nuke those bastards until they glow.."; or they could say, "Fuck it, we're already dead, what's the point of more killing?" Or even, "Do whatever you think is best".

So, what would you say if you were the prime minister?

What would you do if you were the sub commander? Would you do nothing if so ordered knowing that your nation and everyone you loved had been destroyed? Would you launch the nukes, knowing that many innocent civilians would be killed in so doing?

BBC

Good topic!!!

If I was the Sub Commander I would float my happy metallic ass over to nearest enemy coastline city and unload my arsenal.

 

[Repo Man]

Arthur C. Clarke wrote a short story about this kind of thing many years ago, during the Cold War.

It is a message from a President to the people in charge of his country's nuclear arsenal. It starts with something like: "If you're receiving this message, then our homeland has been under nuclear attack. All our cities will have been wiped out. ...."

It goes on to describe how the recipients of the message were set up precisely so that a retaliatory strike would be possible, to wipe out all of the enemy's cities in revenge for the first strike nuclear attack, and so on.

It ends with the President telling his submariners and other nuclear controllers that further loss of life and the complete destruction of civilisation is pointless. The President orders his men to lay down their weapons and to put themselves at the disposal of the enemy commander: the President of the United States.

This was exactly what I was thinking. If one side has managed to pull off a massive strike, and has clearly won, then they have become the future of mankind. To lay waste to the "enemy" (the war is really now over, they won) would only further set back human progress. The only time fission bombs have been used in anger came about as a result of an enemy refusing to acknowledge their defeat. Hydrogen bombs as a deterrent to war have worked well, but as a revenge weapon would only serve to likely usher in a dark age, both literally and figuratively.

 

[madanthonywayne]

This was exactly what I was thinking. If one side has managed to pull off a massive strike, and has clearly won, then they have become the future of mankind. To lay waste to the "enemy" (the war is really now over, they won) would only further set back human progress. The only time fission bombs have been used in anger came about as a result of an enemy refusing to acknowledge their defeat. Hydrogen bombs as a deterrent to war have worked well, but as a revenge weapon would only serve to likely usher in a dark age, both literally and figuratively.

You may be right, but if the US were wiped out and it was up to me, I'd shoot off every last nuke I had at my disposal to avenge my countrymen.

To me, the hard choice would be if the letter said to do nothing. Would I obey that order or nuke the bastards anyway? Doing nothing would be very hard.

 

[Repo Man]

You may be right, but if the US was wiped out and it was up to me, I'd shoot off every last nuke I had at my disposal to avenge my countrymen.

You generally have a higher opinion of humans and our future than I do, and yet you freely admit that you'd do your best to, at worst make humans extinct, or at best deliver a crushing setback to civilization because of national ideology? How far would you take that? If you had the power to launch a weapon capable of destroying the sun, would you be willing to use it in such circumstances?

 

[visceral_instinct]

"Nuke them into molten slush"

 

[Killjoy]

Hell's bells... ...if the powers that be were dumb enough to put me in command of a nuclear missile sub, I'd have a hard time not trying to pull some con-job which resulted in launching our full load O' goodies on any given day of the week. Frankly, I wouldn't even bother to read the contents of the letter, but boldly declare that it stated "AWAY ALL NUKES !!!" and stand there with my jaw jutting out with manly determination as them frikkin' keys were spun.

had the power to launch a weapon capable of destroying the sun, would you be willing to use it in such circumstances?

My orgasm would hit just as total darkness fell forever...
:xctd:

 

[madanthonywayne]

You generally have a higher opinion of humans and our future than I do, and yet you freely admit that you'd do your best to, at worst make humans extinct, or at best deliver a crushing setback to civilization because of national ideology?

It's not just national ideology, it's the murder of every man, woman, and child I care about. I'd have nothing left to live for but vengence.

How far would you take that? If you had the power to launch a weapon capable of destroying the sun, would you be willing to use it in such circumstances?

No, my attack would be aimed at whoever had attacked us.