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Nuclear apocalypse
BillieTheBot
Posts: 8,721 Bot
I don't know how many of you have seen films like "the postman" depicting life after nuclear war e.t.c.
But does it strike you as unlikely that there would be NO form of government left? When I watched that film I have expected old Kevin to stumble across a whole state that had been left untouched and for him to return with a few units of national guard or something.
Why is it that civilisation would collapse, surely even in a place like England life would still go on, electricity would keep coming and police/soldiers would keep the peace?
But does it strike you as unlikely that there would be NO form of government left? When I watched that film I have expected old Kevin to stumble across a whole state that had been left untouched and for him to return with a few units of national guard or something.
Why is it that civilisation would collapse, surely even in a place like England life would still go on, electricity would keep coming and police/soldiers would keep the peace?
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BUT...The more worrying thing is the total collapse of the economy. When people cant buy food things start going to hell. Notice that our farming industry is decimated..I doubt that we could even feed a county, let alone the whole country.
Once money is worthless and all financial records are lost then people will soon turn to crime, looting and murder. Groups of bandits roaming the countryside etc.
Ever read a book called 'The Stand'? Its a story about a disease getting loose in the states and wiping out huge numbers of people...Quite a scary book.
A large scale nuclear or biological attack on the UK would almost certainly destroy all govt and turn the country into a battlezone.
I dont think so. The police and armed forces (especially) are trained to act independantly of government in an emergency. There would be lawlessness in a few places that are not near a military held area, but if you think about it each city can run independantly of another. If London was hit then local govts would have to take action. Maybe the economy would collapse, but food would still get from place to place, especially as most of our commerce is by road and not rail.
However if large numbers of cities fell then maybe we would have a much bigger problem.
As long as the military and police could remain in control, possibly by declaring Marshall law then it wouldn't be so bad. In a biological attack the only people left would be military and government personnel, they are the only ones with the equipment and training.
Bear in mind that most of our army is elsewhere in the world on UN police operations..
You say cities can run themselves but how do they do that? How do they get food? How do they run the sanitation? How do they control disease? Treat casualties? Keep the peace etc.
How long would it be before the criminals started causing trouble and some madman set himself as some kind of dictator..a la Postman.
There'd be no supermarkets shops etc to rely on. there's be no clean drinking water, no fresh food. The fall out would kill you if the blast didn't.
As Bob Dylan said about nuclear war ...'I've been having the same old dream, except mine's differen't you see... I dreamed after a Nuclear war the only person left was me'
You see .. we all like to think we'd be a survivor, but most of us would be dead!!
All evil needs to thrive is for good men to sit back and do nothing
Even if nuclear bombs fell on every city in the UK , not everyone would die. If they just landed on the major cities then most people would survive. You would be fine over there in Wales as long as you aint in Cardiff. The prevailing winds take all fallout across the channel into France and the Netherlands.
The fallout would be down to livable conditions within around 2 weeks. Nuclear war is more survivable than people think.
Hell yes id want to still be alive...Thats a bit defeatist there Marmite..Bugger dying its crap.
When over 80% of the British population live in a city, I think a LOT of people would die.
I think you should give the police and armed forces more credit, they have to deal with tough situations all the time. besides, if a policman's family die most likely he would too, as they rarely move to different cities from their home towns.
As for food e.t.c. commerce wouldn't stop completely, we would still recieve food from abroad by ship anyway, it would just have to goto different locations, and you saw how everyone managed to feed themselves during WW2.
Where did you get that number? I find that extremely hard to believe.
Tough situations..hmm maybe but I think nuclear war is a whole new ball game. Remember that we no longer have any civil defence preparations. They were all canned after the cold war. The govt institutions no longer have any idea what to do in event of nuclear war.
Ill try and dig out the list of UK nuclear targets..I saw it a few weeks back and bloody lost it.
drugs may be the road to nowhere, but at least there the scenic route
There are around 100,000 in the army
I dont know about the RAF or Navy but id say 50k in the Navy and maybe 20k in the RAF.
Police numbers are around 125,000 as of this year. Of course armed police are but a tiny fraction of that number. Armed police are the only ones who could enforce the law under martial law.
drugs may be the road to nowhere, but at least there the scenic route
Rebuild the country? Its that simple? At least the first years harvests would be destroyed after the nuclear strikes and possibly the next years depending on how much the land is ploughed.
Expanding the situation a little, a nuclear attack on the scale we are talking would almost certainly be followed up by an invasion force. That puts a whole new slant on things.
11/9 isnt even on a comparable scale. But yes there were looters. Several people were arrested for stealing the watches/wallets of the dead and several more for looting local shops. Its all documented on news websites.
I have no doubt we would survive but the country would be crippled totally.
on the thing about the number of the police/armed forces, you have to remember about the TA, RNR, RAuxAF and RMR. there are also TA units of the SAS and SBS. dont forget the hobby bobbies like Marmite - there must be a few of them knocking around. i just tried to look it up, but their websites are crap - i think the army has about 107,000 troops, the navy much more - something like 300,000 (including Royal Marines) and the RAF will be pretty small - under 100,000 i would have thought.
Because I want more stars.
Youve also got to factor in the number of troops that are out in the wider world. Id bet that at half of our army and airforce are in foreign countries and more than half the navy.
Theres no way theres 300,000 in the Navy nor anywhere near 100k in the RAF. Our military is grossly understaffed.
Threads is a bloody scary film.
Navy:120,000
RAF:115,000
Approx. That also includes logistics, enginneers and support staff. However ALL armed forces personnel are taught combat training and all are taught how to fire a gun and defend the country if need be.
Plus you are forgetting the 300,000 souls in the TA, RAF and Naval reserve, as well as recently demobbed personnel who are required to fight in times of crisis because of their training.
Add onto this the police and special constabulary, roughly 6% of the population are authorised to keep law and order.
Your also forgetting that the Army do have a wide range of armoured vehicles at their disposal, which as well as keeping the peace would be suffieciently dispersed throughout the cities to maintain an effective defence force.
Our forces maybe in other countries, but they would hastily be recalled if there ever was an attack on Britain.
Of course there is the issue that all military bases are on the target sheets. There are 20k police in London alone so that would be quite a loss. Add to that the police numbers in the cities which we are saying will be hit..
Aid ??????? what the hell has ploughing got to do with rebuilding a country ? they can't get aid into ghan quick enough, we have alot of very powerful rich allies in this world, i doubt very much we'd expected to grow our own wheat in order to survive. Same goes for an invading force, allies would send them packing - now if we manage to fall out with the whole world were fu**ed, but in that scenario i doubt they'd bother rendering the country useless for a number of years by blasting it to pieces. I know you can't just put everything back together in a few years, but i suspect within a year or so temporary parliments, police, hospitals, schools would be set up, telephone lines, electricity and broadcasting systems would be installed. Then after 5 a basic infrastructure of roads and bridges would be constructed, then over the following years the country would be re-populated with immigrants looking for asylum, and all would be financed by america, europe, un, world bank etc........ you would never get england back of course, but a whole new country hopefully based on the england that was. It wouldn't take forever to build the basic shell from which to progress
drugs may be the road to nowhere, but at least there the scenic route
The ploughing has to do with fallout levels which was why it was in the same sentance as harvests. IE food availability.
Sorry but the chances of the UK being the only country destroyed by nuclear weapons is laughable...Theres no valid scenario that could lead to the UK being a target and not our allies.
I suggest some of you guys read the civil defence documents that were written up in the cold war. Theres a reason people were scared shitless of nuclear war. It wouldnt be just a couple of years of hardship and then all back to normal.
I make that about 50,000 proper troops and about 20,000 civilian support staff.
From www.raf.mod.uk:
That includes airmen in training. Total ~50,000 again.
From www.army.mod.uk:
Total army 160,000 if my arithmetic serves me correctly.
Total armed forces ~260,000, using 2.7% of our GDP each year.
(Edited to add army stats)
[This message has been edited by Kentish Man (edited 29-11-2001).]
drugs may be the road to nowhere, but at least there the scenic route
How do you know? have you tried it!
All evil needs to thrive is for good men to sit back and do nothing
If it was anything like the films then I hope that I would be in the army. At least they are always the only ones who ever know whats happening and they are the only ones who seem to survive.
All evil needs to thrive is for good men to sit back and do nothing
Realistically though, the police and armed forces have the most chance of surviving. They have guns and tanks. Civvies dont
All evil needs to thrive is for good men to sit back and do nothing
Id rather just bugger off to wales and live in the hills like a hippy or summit.
Theres another group that has vast amounts of guns and thats criminals. Oh and the million or so target shooters and hunters.
Now they're strange
All evil needs to thrive is for good men to sit back and do nothing