Pinch me is this really happening.... is the appetite for clickbait so intense. Even the name Tom Ough makes me feel that the Telegraph has been pranked.
www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/03/05/britain-nuclear-strike-russia-ukraine-war/
Downing Street must ‘dust off Cold War plans and prepare for Russian nuclear strike’
Cambridge expert urges politicians to make contingency measures in case Ukraine conflict spills over into all-out nuclear war
By
Tom Ough,
NEWS WRITER
5 March 2022 • 1:31pm
Boris Johnson, here with Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain, warned this week that the West must stop a nuclear disaster in Ukraine
Boris Johnson, here with Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain, warned this week that the West must stop a nuclear disaster in Ukraine CREDIT: Andy Rain/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Government departments must urgently make contingency plans in the event of a nuclear attack on Britain, a Cambridge academic has warned.
The risk of such an attack remains relatively small, said Paul Ingram, a researcher at the university’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, roughly estimating a one-in-80 chance of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine resulting in nuclear conflict.
Despite the relative unlikeliness of such an escalation, Mr Ingram said, the damage would be so severe that it merited contingency planning.
“We are going to need to dust off some of the plans from the past,” he said, referring to the plans made during the Cold War. “I assume that somebody inside government is doing exactly that.”
Speaking to The Telegraph, Mr Ingram explained that the Government would need not only to provide leadership, but key services. These might include providing food, shelter, drinking water and energy, as well as maintaining or restoring telecommunications.
Vladimir Putin’s thinly-veiled threats to the West, said Mr Ingram, made nuclear war a more realistic prospect than it was before the invasion.
“It does look like government departments across the piece need to plan quite urgently what each of them would do in this sort of scenario,” he said.
Warnings of a ‘nuclear winter’
Mr Ingram, who was the executive director of the British American Security Information Council from 2007 to 2019, said that a large-scale nuclear conflict would blast enough smoke and soot into the atmosphere to create a “nuclear winter” in which sunlight would be partially blocked for years.
Such a scenario would cause widespread crop failure, exacerbating the plight of the war’s irradiated survivors.
He said: “We need to be thinking about if there was radiation, and if there was less sunlight. What are the best crops to be growing? How can we ensure that seed banks are fully stocked with the seed that we would need?”
Mr Ingram referred to research done by organisations, including the Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters, which seeks to identify resilient food solutions in the event of a global catastrophe.
The group suggested that, in a pinch, people could turn indigestible plant matter into edible material by processing it in a paper mill and mixing the pulp with enzymes that break the cellulose into sugar and the hemicellulose into other sugars.
Because it thrives in low light and grows quickly, seaweed might also be a viable food source.
Insects provide food for thought
People might also find themselves turning to insects, said Mr Ingram, “because they’re a source of protein and because they are more resilient to radiation”.
Gastronomes will be relieved to learn that more conventional foods might also be possible. Potatoes, canola and sugar beet are typically grown in low-light environments and, as such, would probably be viable in a nuclear winter.
It is not the right time, Mr Ingram said, for the Government to brief the public about what to do during and immediately after a nuclear strike, adding: “It would be premature.”
Nevertheless, he said, being seen to be prepared might have an additional benefit: making a nuclear strike a little less appealing to our adversaries.
The Telegraph requested comments from several government departments. In response, a Government spokesman said: “As the Prime Minister has said, Russia’s actions are an attempt to distract from the reality of what is going on in Ukraine.
“What we are seeing is innocent people facing a totally unprovoked act of aggression against them, and in response they’re fighting back with a far greater level of resistance than the Kremlin had bargained for.”