Stats for nerds
1recommend
5mentions
3people
2010–2014years
60% recommend40% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Worth noting that Hennessy was talking about the time of Harold Macmillan and the V-bombers.
A great book:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Secret-State-Whitehall-Cold/dp/0...
- Even in fairly "optimistic" attack scenarios over 50% of the UK population were expected to die immediately in an attack:
e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Leg
For those interested in UK government cold war planning I can strongly recommend Peter Hennessy's book "The Secret State: Preparing for the Worst 1945-2010":
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Secret-State-Whitehall-Cold/dp/0...
One particularly chilling part describes how early UK estimates thought that it would only take a small number of H-bombs to destroy the UK as a functioning society, resulting in the following:
"Hennessy tells the story of a jokey 1961 encounter between Khrushchev and the British Ambassador, Frank Roberts. The Soviet leader asked how many H-bombs Roberts thought would be needed to wipe out the UK. ‘Six’, he replied. Khrushchev chided him for his pessimism. He said that ‘optimists’ estimated it would take nine — but reassured him with a twinkle that the Soviet General Staff… had earmarked several scores of bombs for use against the UK so that the Soviet Union had a higher opinion of the UK’s resistance capacity than the UK itself."
- For anyone interested in this kind of stuff I can recommend this book:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Secret-State-Whitehall-Cold-War/dp/0...
The story of how the government planned to communicate with the V bomber fleet is wonderful...
- Is much the same now, the UK doesn't have launch codes and operates the whole thing as a sort of dead-man's switch, apparently partly based on if the Today program has been broadcast on Radio 4.
Are you sure you're not confusing that with nuclear submarine commanders checking that BBC Radio 4's still broadcasting as part of their "is the country still there" checks?
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort :
According to Peter Hennessy's book The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War, 1945 to 1970, the process by which a Trident submarine commander would determine if the British government continues to function includes... establishing whether BBC Radio 4 continues broadcasting
- Humans are probably more difficult to hack (I hope) and more resistant to noise (I hope).
A weak ago, there was a discussion about the “Letters of last resort” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7165048 (56 points, 6 days ago, 50 comments). They are secret instructions for nuclear submarine commanders in case of something killed the whole UK government.
From Wikipedia:
> According to Peter Hennessy's book The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War, 1945 to 1970, the process by which a Trident submarine commander would determine if the British government continues to function includes, amongst other checks, establishing whether BBC Radio 4 continues broadcasting.
This kind of safeguards is easier to implement in humans than in automatic systems. How do you distinguish from the submarine the lack of communication caused by a nuclear attack from a problem caused by a massive electricity outage and a big fire in the BBC building? Maybe you can listen to some Canada and Australia signals to hear if there is a problem.
