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THE captains of Britain’s nuclear submarines had a bit of a wake up call today - when the BBC mysteriously went off air for 15 minutes.
The Today programme, which is popular with government ministers, went silent just before the 8 o’clock news because of a fire alarm at BBC HQ.
Culture Minister Tessa Jowell was speaking when the programme was cut off and the main news was replaced by classical music.
The unusual event was a crucial test for Britain’s four Trident nuclear submarines, patrolling in secret locations around the world and cut off from base.
On board are handwritten letters from Prime Minister Tony Blair, bearing his instructions for nuclear retaliation. They are locked in the submarines' safes.
Secret orders to the captains say that these deadly instructions are to be opened and acted upon only if the submarine cannot tune in to Radio 4’s Today programme for a given number of consecutive days. That is a reliable sign that Britain has been hit by a nuclear attack.
Originally posted by Skewed
Unless I misunderstood this, I sure hope that Britain does not base their decision on whether or not to launch nukes based off a web site being up or down.
It has been claimed that Radio 4 had an additional role during the Cold War: the commanders of nuclear-armed submarines believing that the UK had suffered nuclear attack were required to check if they could still receive Radio 4, and if they could not would open sealed orders which might authorize a retaliatory strike.[10][11]
#10 ^ "Radio silence puts subs on nuclear alert" 28 November 2003 Manchester Evening News Retrieved 27 July 2010
#11 ^ BBC. "BBC - Press Office - The Today Programme". www.bbc.co.uk...
Starting at roughly 5 pm Central time, the web properties of the BBC, including iPlayer, have been unaccessible around the world.
Twitter has exploded with tweets from grumpy fans of the service’s various websites, complaining almost in shock that a media group as iconic as the BBC could suffer such a complete outage.
Originally posted by Resentedhalo08
But, what is being said here is that if the RADIO is down then they have those orders, is there anything to suggest that it's now based upon bbc websites? Or is this just your random speculation?