
Blue Peacock - benbreen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock
======
saagarjha
One of the more amusing bits:

> One technical problem was that during winter buried objects can get very
> cold, and it was possible the mine's electronics would get too cold to work
> after some days underground. Various methods to get around this were
> studied, such as wrapping the bombs in insulating blankets. One particularly
> remarkable proposal suggested that live chickens be included in the
> mechanism. The chickens would be sealed inside the casing, with a supply of
> food and water; they would remain alive for a week or so. Their body heat
> would, it seems, have been sufficient to keep the mine's components at a
> working temperature. This proposal was sufficiently outlandish that it was
> taken as an April Fool's Day joke when the Blue Peacock file was
> declassified on 1 April 2004. Tom O'Leary, head of education and
> interpretation at the National Archives, replied to the media that, "It does
> seem like an April Fool but it most certainly is not. The Civil Service does
> not do jokes."

~~~
moate
This is the weirdest fried chicken recipe I've ever read.

------
smacktoward
The U.S. Army worked on several similar projects in the 1950s and '60s, under
the general name of "Atomic Demolition Munitions":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_demolition_munition#Uni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_demolition_munition#United_States_ADMs)

The weirdest of these was probably the Special Atomic Demolition Munition
(SADM; see
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Muni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munition\))),
also known as the "backpack bomb" because its relatively light weight (around
50 pounds) made it possible for a single soldier to wear it like a backpack.

The Soviet Union is rumored to have developed even smaller nuclear weapons,
the so-called "suitcase nukes" (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_nuclear_device](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_nuclear_device)),
though the existence of those has never been conclusively proven.

~~~
smacktoward
And if you want to know what it was like to be one of the soldiers tasked with
wearing a backpack bomb, _Foreign Policy_ has an excellent feature article on
that subject here: [https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/30/the-littlest-
boy/](https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/30/the-littlest-boy/)

------
minikites
See also:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulda_Gap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulda_Gap)

>The Fulda Gap route was less suitable for mechanized troop movement than was
the North German Plain, but offered an avenue of advance direct to the heart
of the U.S. military in West Germany, Frankfurt am Main, which as indicated in
its name, is on the Main River, a tributary of the Rhine River.

(The North German Plain is where the Blue Peacock project would have been)

~~~
smacktoward
And if you want to learn about the equivalent thing today's generals worry
about, that would be the Suwalki Gap:

[https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/europe/suwalki...](https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/europe/suwalki-
gap.htm)

[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/why-suwalki-gap-keeps-
top...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/why-suwalki-gap-keeps-top-u-s-
general-europe-night-n469471)

