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46-529: The United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation ( UKWMO ) was a British civilian organisation operating to provide UK military and civilian authorities with data on nuclear explosions and forecasts of fallout across the country in the event of nuclear war . The UKWMO was established in 1957 and funded by the Home Office and used its own premises which were mainly staffed by Royal Observer Corps (ROC) uniformed full-time and volunteer personnel as

92-530: A 'deterrent' by most governments; the sheer scale of the destruction caused by nuclear weapons has discouraged their use in warfare. Since the Trinity test and excluding combat use, countries with nuclear weapons have detonated roughly 1,700 nuclear explosions, all but six as tests. Of these, six were peaceful nuclear explosions . Nuclear tests are experiments carried out to determine the effectiveness, yield and explosive capability of nuclear weapons. Throughout

138-487: A device known as DIADEM (Direction Indicator of Atomic Detonation by Electronic Means) which measured the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) generated by an explosion. The instruments were in constant operation (state of readiness) between 1968 and 1992 and tested daily by full-time ROC officers. AWDREY was designed, built and maintained by the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston . The design

184-634: A nuclear test. Nuclear tests have taken place at more than 60 locations across the world; some in secluded areas and others more densely populated. Detonation of nuclear weapons (in a test or during war) releases radioactive fallout that concerned the public in the 1950s. This led to the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 signed by the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. This treaty banned nuclear weapons testing in

230-425: A person is from the blast radius. Nuclear explosions can also have detrimental effects on the climate, lasting from months to years. A small-scale nuclear war could release enough particles into the atmosphere to cause the planet to cool and cause crops, animals, and agriculture to disappear across the globe—an effect named nuclear winter . The first manmade nuclear explosion occurred on July 16, 1945, at 5:50 am on

276-651: A scientific education and background. They trained every two weeks from printed materials provided by the Home Office scientific branch and through lectures or practical training organised by the Assistant Sector Controller who was the area UKWMO training officer. The Director UKWMO was located at the United Kingdom Regional Air Operations Command (UK RAOC) at RAF Booker tasked with instigating

322-577: A series of concentric spheres with alternating materials to help boost the explosive yield. In the years following World War II , eight countries have conducted nuclear tests with 2475 devices fired in 2120 tests. In 1963, the United States, Soviet Union , and United Kingdom signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty , pledging to refrain from testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, underwater, or in outer space. The treaty permitted underground tests. Many other non-nuclear nations acceded to

368-752: A variety of different organisations including; Auxiliary Fire Service , National Hospital Service Reserve , Civil Defence Corps and the United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation. UKWMO training effectively ceased in the summer of 1991 after the Home Secretary's stand-down announcement. When the UKWMO was disbanded, and the ROC stood down, the government referred to "possible future developments and improvements in automated nuclear explosion and fallout detection from remote sensors", but it

414-474: Is termed nuclear winter . The idea became popularized in mainstream culture during the 1980s, when Richard P. Turco , Owen Toon , Thomas P. Ackerman, James B. Pollack and Carl Sagan collaborated and produced a scientific study which suggested the Earth's weather and climate can be severely impacted by nuclear war. The main idea is that once a conflict begins and the aggressors start detonating nuclear weapons,

460-491: Is unlikely that any such system has yet to be developed or installed. Civil nuclear defence since 1992 has been devolved to UK local authorities as an addition to their routine emergency planning responsibilities and under direction of the government's Civil Contingencies Secretariat but the four-minute warning air raid alert system no longer operates. Nuclear explosion Nuclear explosions are extremely destructive compared to conventional (chemical) explosives, because of

506-526: The Emergency Planning College , The Hawkhills, Easingwold, Yorkshire. Several major war simulation exercises were held each year 2 x WARMON (Warning and Monitoring) one day UK exercises and the two-day INTEX (International exercise) along with other NATO countries. Four times a year minor and limited exercises called POSTEX were held on a stop – start basis across three evenings of a week, Monday to Wednesday. Realistic simulation material

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552-589: The Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan and yielded about 400 kilotons. RDS-6s' design, nicknamed the Sloika, was remarkably similar to a version designed for the U.S. by Edward Teller nicknamed the " Alarm Clock ", in that the nuclear device was a two-stage weapon: the first explosion was triggered by fission and the second more powerful explosion by fusion . The Sloika core consisted of

598-566: The Trinity test site near Alamogordo, New Mexico , in the United States , an area now known as the White Sands Missile Range . The event involved the full-scale testing of an implosion-type fission atomic bomb . In a memorandum to the U.S. Secretary of War, General Leslie Groves describes the yield as equivalent to 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT. Following this test, a uranium-gun type nuclear bomb ( Little Boy )

644-496: The United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation (UKWMO), for whom the ROC provided the field force were: AWDREY was the principal method by which the UKWMO would achieve its second responsibility. Simultaneous responses on two or more AWDREY units would identify the explosion as a nuclear strike. ROC post bomb detection instruments (see Bomb Power Indicator ) operated by recording the peak overpressure of

690-793: The United States Army Air Forces dropped a uranium gun-type device, code-named "Little Boy", on the city of Hiroshima , killing 70,000 people, including 20,000 Japanese combatants and 20,000 Korean slave laborers . The second event occurred three days later when the United States Army Air Forces dropped a plutonium implosion-type device, code-named "Fat Man", on the city of Nagasaki . It killed 39,000 people, including 27,778 Japanese munitions employees, 2,000 Korean slave laborers, and 150 Japanese combatants. In total, around 109,000 people were killed in these bombings. Nuclear weapons are largely seen as

736-793: The four-minute warning . The Deputy Director would be located at a standby UK RAOC, described at the time as being "elsewhere in the UK". It's since been revealed as being at Goosnargh , Lancashire, within the UKWMO Western Sector nuclear bunker. Warnings were instantly distributed around the country by the Warning Broadcast System via 250 Carrier Control Points located at major police headquarters and 17,000 WB400 (later WB1400) carrier receivers in armed forces headquarters, hospitals, post offices, ROC posts and private homes in remote rural areas where hand-operated sirens replaced

782-538: The 20th century, most nations that have developed nuclear weapons had a staged test of them. Testing nuclear weapons can yield information about how the weapons work, as well as how the weapons behave under various conditions and how structures behave when subjected to a nuclear explosion. Additionally, nuclear testing has often been used as an indicator of scientific and military strength, and many tests have been overtly political in their intention; most nuclear weapons states publicly declared their nuclear status by means of

828-629: The Soviets and "Joe-1" by the US, produced a 20 kiloton explosion and was essentially a copy of the American Fat Man plutonium implosion design. The United States' first thermonuclear weapon, Ivy Mike , was detonated on 1 November 1952 at Enewetak Atoll and yielded 10 Megatons of explosive force. The first thermonuclear weapon tested by the USSR, RDS-6s (Joe-4), was detonated on August 12, 1953, at

874-533: The Treaty following its entry into force; however, France and China (both nuclear weapons states) have not. The primary application to date has been military (i.e. nuclear weapons), and the remainder of explosions include the following: Two nuclear weapons have been deployed in combat—both by the United States against Japan in World War II. The first event occurred on the morning of 6 August 1945, when

920-478: The UKWMO was represented by volunteer and specially trained members. In the event of war the senior UKWMO volunteer present would command the group as Group Controller . Assessing the nuclear burst and fallout information and data provided by the ROC was a team of ten or more Warning Officers led by a Chief Warning Officer . The members of the warning team were recruited from mainly local secondary school science teachers, or commercial engineers and technicians with

966-574: The area control points for power operated sirens, so these were equipped with new WB1400 carrier control warning equipment. If a warning was received then the police could operate the sirens via remote control, the carrier warning signal did not automatically operate the warning sirens (a few of which were those used in the Second World War). Many of the sirens are still in operation in coastal areas and are now used for emergency flood warning. Between 1985 and 1990 all communications links used by

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1012-409: The atmosphere, outer space, and under water. The dominant effect of a nuclear weapon (the blast and thermal radiation) are the same physical damage mechanisms as conventional explosives , but the energy produced by a nuclear explosive is millions of times more per gram and the temperatures reached are in the tens of megakelvin . Nuclear weapons are quite different from conventional weapons because of

1058-487: The attack, and the readings from ROC posts became the main method of detecting and identifying any subsequent near ground bursts. The 12 ROC AWDREY units were located at the group controls in Exeter, Oxford, Horsham, Bristol, Colchester, Carmarthen, Coventry, Carlisle, York, Dundee, Inverness and Belfast. This siting pattern provided sufficient detectors that the entire UK was covered, but the units were far enough apart that

1104-479: The blast wave from any nearby nuclear explosion. Any ultra-high-altitude nuclear explosion, designed to knock out the UK's communications and electronic equipment would not produce a detectable blast wave, and the AWDREY system was therefore the only method of identifying these bursts. The AWDREY installation consisted of three separate elements: the sensor, the detection unit and the display cabinet (timer). The sensor

1150-456: The detection head to record the intense flash of light produced by the detonation of the weapon followed, within a second, by a second intense flash. This double flash is characteristic of a nuclear explosion and measurement of the short gap between the two flashes enabled the weapon's power to be estimated, and the bearing to be indicated. It had a range of 150 miles (240 km) in good visibility. From 1974 AWDREY units were used together with

1196-480: The event of an emergency) for data and voice with a radio back up option. Some other UKWMO telephone lines and the warning broadcast system were protected by the Post Office's Telephone Preference Scheme that kept the lines active while the general public's system could be progressively attenuated under wartime regulations. Both wholetime and sparetime UKWMO personnel undertook specialist residential training at

1242-470: The event of nuclear war. These were: Headquarters UKWMO was located in a converted barracks building at Cowley Barracks in Cowley, Oxfordshire , and was headed by a Director and Deputy Director supported by a small administrative staff. Five professional Sector Controllers and five Assistant Sector Controllers were co-located at the five UKWMO Sector Controls. At each of the twenty five UKWMO group controls

1288-421: The explosions will eject small particles from the Earth's surface into the atmosphere as well as nuclear particles. It's also assumed that fires will break out and become widespread, similar to what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the end of WWII, which will cause soot and other harmful particles to also be introduced into the atmosphere. Once these harmful particles are lofted, strong upper-level winds in

1334-629: The fieldforce. The ROC was administered by the Ministry of Defence but mainly funded by the Home Office. The only time the combined organisations were on high alert in the Cold War was during Cuban Missile Crisis in October and November 1962. The organisation was wound up and disbanded in November 1992 following a review prompted by the government's Options for Change report. Its emblem-of-arms

1380-435: The form of nuclear fallout. The main health effect of nuclear fallout is cancer and birth defects because radiation causes changes in cells that can either kill or make them abnormal. Any nuclear explosion (or nuclear war ) would have wide-ranging, long-term, catastrophic effects. Radioactive contamination would cause genetic mutations and cancer across many generations. Another potential devastating effect of nuclear war

1426-476: The huge amount of explosive energy that they can put out and the different kinds of effects they make, like high temperatures and ionizing radiation. The devastating impact of the explosion does not stop after the initial blast, as with conventional explosives. A cloud of nuclear radiation travels from the hypocenter of the explosion, causing an impact to life forms even after the heat waves have ceased. The health effects on humans from nuclear explosions comes from

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1472-458: The initial shockwave, the radiation exposure, and the fallout. The initial shockwave and radiation exposure come from the immediate blast which has different effects on the health of humans depending on the distance from the center of the blast. The shockwave can rupture eardrums and lungs, can also throw people back, and cause buildings to collapse. Radiation exposure is delivered at the initial blast and can continue for an extended amount of time in

1518-472: The leading theories about the extinction of most dinosaur species, in that a large explosion ejected small particulate matter into the atmosphere and resulted in a global catastrophe characterized by cooler temperatures, acid rain, and the KT Layer . Atomic Weapons Detection Recognition and Estimation of Yield Atomic Weapons Detection Recognition and Estimation of Yield known by the acronym AWDREY

1564-405: The power sirens in the urban towns. Sparetime warning team members were activated, through a rehearsed transition to war telephone calling card procedure, by wholetime Royal Observer Corps officers located at the twenty five group headquarters. UKWMO communications used private wires (PWs) (permanently available and with greater protection) or emergency circuits (ECs) (switched for exercises or in

1610-570: The shared UK/USA Ballistic Missile Early Warning System in England, (the site is now upgraded and still operational at RAF Fylingdales , on the North York Moors ) and disseminated through UKRAOC to the carrier warning system. This was commonly, and slightly erroneously, known as the Four minute warning . The Civil Defence Medal was instituted March 1961 and awarded for 15 years service in

1656-400: The troposphere can transport them thousands of kilometers and can end up transporting nuclear fallout and also alter the Earth's radiation budget. Once enough small particles are in the atmosphere, they can act as cloud condensation nuclei which will cause global cloud coverage to increase which in turn blocks incoming solar insolation and starts a global cooling period. This is not unlike one of

1702-455: The vastly greater energy density of nuclear fuel compared to chemical explosives. They are often associated with mushroom clouds , since any large atmospheric explosion can create such a cloud. Nuclear explosions produce high levels of ionizing radiation and radioactive debris that is harmful to humans and can cause moderate to severe skin burns, eye damage, radiation sickness , radiation-induced cancer and possible death depending on how far

1748-475: The warning system, the UKWMO and the ROC were upgraded and hardened against the effects of electromagnetic pulse damage. Point-to-point SX2000 automated telephone exchanges were installed in the UKWMO Sector and Group Controls and old fashioned telegraph equipment was replaced with modern computerised message switching equipment. Ballistic missile air raid warnings for the UK would have originated from

1794-473: Was a desk-mounted automatic detection instrument, located at 12 of the 25 Royal Observer Corps (ROC) controls, across the United Kingdom , during the Cold War . The instruments would have detected any nuclear explosions and indicated the estimated size in megatons. With the display unit mounted in a 3-foot-high (0.91 m) steel cabinet, the system used two sets of five photo-sensitive cells within

1840-603: Was a pair of classic hunting horns crossing each other, pointed upwards, with the enscrolled motto "Sound An Alarm", a title also used for the latter of two contemporary public information films (the earlier one was called "Hole in the Ground"). Members of the UKWMO qualified for the Civil Defence Medal for fifteen years continuous years service, with a bar for each subsequent twelve years. The United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation had five main functions in

1886-533: Was completed from the mid 1980s to bring the UKWMO up to date. Modern detection instruments were provided to the ROC together with back up detectors at certain Sector or Group Controls known as Atomic Weapons Detection Recognition and Estimation of Yield (AWDREY) equipment. Updated warning equipment was installed in most government buildings, nuclear bunkers, armed forces HQs, police and fire stations and private houses in remote areas. Major police stations were used as

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1932-505: Was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, with a blast yield of 15 kilotons; and a plutonium implosion-type bomb ( Fat Man ) on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, with a blast yield of 21 kilotons. Fat Man and Little Boy are the only instances in history of nuclear weapons being used as an act of war. On August 29, 1949, the USSR became the second country to successfully test a nuclear weapon. RDS-1, dubbed "First Lightning" by

1978-484: Was mounted on the roof of the building. The detection unit was installed in a special room that was enclosed inside a Faraday cage ; in the case of the Royal Observer Corps controls, this was the "Radio Room" that already protected the sensitive radio equipment from the effects of EMP. The display unit (timer) (shown in the photograph above) could be mounted anywhere in the building – at ROC controls this

2024-433: Was provided for realtime simulations of a nuclear attack. Approximately every four or five years each group was subjected to a "no notice" and in depth assessment similar to an RAF "TACEVAL" or Tactical Evaluation, where a mixed team of UKWMO and ROC full-time staff would appear and evaluate all aspects of the group's planning and operations under realistic wartime conditions over a period of 48 hours. A large amount of work

2070-457: Was tested for performance and accuracy using real nuclear explosions at the 1957 Kiritimati (or Christmas Island) nuclear weapon trials, after being mounted on board a ship. Although a single AWDREY unit could not differentiate between a nuclear explosion and a lightning strike, the units were installed sufficiently far apart that a lightning strike would not simultaneously register on two adjacent AWDREYs. The first two primary responsibilities of

2116-614: Was usually on the balcony adjacent to the Triangulation Team. The three elements of the installation were connected by EMP-shielded and heavy duty cabling. During the early phase of operations, a spare observer was required to stand next to the display unit and monitor it constantly to identify initial responses. Once a nuclear strike on the UK had been confirmed by the Director UKWMO (or his deputy), readings from AWDREY were ignored during subsequent nuclear bursts within

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