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British Doomsday: Tea Supply Threat PDF Print E-mail
Written by Jane Blunt   
Monday, 05 May 2008
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teaNuclear weapons and the threat of an attack on Britain presented "much more difficult food defence problems" and a British equivalent of Doomsday: a lack of tea.

The threat of a nuclear attack on the tea-loving UK in the 1950s caused concern over the supply of tea, top-secret documents which have now been released expose.

Government officials planning food supplies said the tea position would be "very serious" after a nuclear war. "It would be wrong to consider that even 1oz per head per week could be ensured," they stated.

The papers were released under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Archives at Kew in Surrey, England. The documents said a nuclear conflict would result in the loss of three-quarters of tea stocks. For Brits used to turning to tea as other nationals might seek air to breathe, this would be a national disaster beyond comparison.

One Government paper from April 1955 said: "The advent of thermonuclear weapons... has presented us with a new and much more difficult set of food defence problems."

The plan was to be "completely ready to maintain supplies of food to the people of these islands, sufficient in volume to keep them in good heart and health from the onset of a thermonuclear attack on this country". "It has become increasingly clear that the severity of the attack which the enemy could launch would produce a catastrophe in the face of which past measures would be fatally deficient," the document added.

For planning purposes, the Ministry of Food listed London, Birmingham, Merseyside, Manchester and Clydeside as H-bomb targets. Tyneside, Teesside, Leeds, Sheffield, Hull, Derby, Purfleet in Essex, Southampton, Portsmouth, Bristol, Plymouth, Cardiff, Coventry and Belfast were named as A-bomb targets.
Subjects down for discussion were arrangements for stockpiling food, emergency feeding and equipment, and the availability of bread, milk, meat, oils and fats and tea and sugar.

Methods successfully used in World War II would be "unable to maintain bread supplies under the conditions envisaged", the documents said.

I can happily state my last shop down at Sainsbury's resulted in me acquiring six boxes of tea bags and I'll be alright, Jack.

Jane Blunt is a British lawyer specializing in counter terrorism.




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