Recently Peter Donaldson died in the UK. He was a newsreader for the BBC and he recorded an announcement that would have been used if nuclear war had broken out. Considering that I have been talking a lot lately about the possibility of nuclear war, I thought it would be interesting to explore how the BBC intended to speak to the British people in the eventuality of a nuclear attack on Britain. After talking about the British Cold War system, I will talk a bit about the use of the Internet for such purposes.
Following a nuclear attack, the BBC would activate something called the Wartime Broadcasting Service which it would operate on behalf of the British government to replace commercial radio broadcasts. A recorded message would be broadcast from a nuclear bunker at Wood Norton in Worcestershire and actually transmitted from a facility in nearby Droitwich.
The BBC staff at the two facilities would have used something called the “War Book”, a Cold War instruction manual that was only declassified in 2009. All engineers at all transmitting facilities in Britain had a copy of the War Book in a safe at their facility. Originally it was planned that there would be light entertainment broadcast over the WBS such as music and variety shows. Eventually, it was decided that only official government service broadcasts would be transmitted in order to preserve power.
The first broadcast of Peter Donaldson would have been a recording which said, “This is the Wartime Broadcasting Service. This country has been attacked with nuclear weapons. Communications have been severely disrupted, and the number of casualties and the extent of the damage are not yet known.” It was thought to be important to use the voice of a well-known media figure to help reassure a traumatized public.
Following the introduction, the first broadcast called for calm and asked people to stay in their homes. It pointed out that if people tried to flee they would be exposed to dangerous radioactivity and might be unable to find food, water or shelter. People were encouraged to turn off gas and electricity and to conserve water because the cities’ water supplies would be needed to fight fires. Food was to be rationed and fresh and perishable food consumed first. People were told not to use toilets. After the main instructions were summarized, people were assured that sirens would signal the end of immediate danger.
With the advent of television, the BBC can now broadcast a nuclear war message to television audiences. In the U.S., we have the Emergency Broadcast System which is regularly tested by breaking into radio and television broadcasts with an annoying tone and a simple announcement that a test is being conducted. I always get a little nervous during the tests until I hear the part about it being a test.
While the developed nations still use radio and television, the Internet has added a major new communication capability. The Internet evolved from a system developed by the DARPA agency of the U.S. government. The DARPA system was invented for the express purpose of allowing communications to be maintained in case of major damage to the nation’s infrastructure caused by a nuclear attack. The idea was to have a mesh or network which could offer a message many different paths between two nodes so that the destruction of any node such as a city and its communication infrastructure would not impede the exchange of vital messages.
With so many people on computers, tablet, smart phones, etc. messages about wars and other disasters can be distributed thru the Internet and cell phone systems. There are a couple of types of phones and software being promoted that would allow short range message transfer between two smart phones. As long as there were enough phones in proximity such as in a city, messages could skip between phones and be conveyed a considerable distance. This would be useful in case the electrical grid, the data networks and/or the cell tower systems were damaged or destroyed.
