Four minute warning

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For the song by Mark Owen, see Four Minute Warning (song).

The four minute warning was a public alert system conceived by the British Government during the Cold War and operated between 1953 and 1992 when the system was dismantled after the cold war finished. The name derived from the approximate length of time from the point at which a Soviet nuclear missile attack against the United Kingdom could be confirmed and the impact of those missiles on their targets. The population was to be notified by means of air raid sirens, television and radio, and urged to seek cover immediately. In practice the warning would have been more likely three minutes or less.

1 The warning system
2 Sample script
3 Cultural impact
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] The warning system

[edit] Basic details

The warning would be initiated by the detection of inbound missiles targeted at the United Kingdom. From the early 1960s this would be provided primarily by the RAF BMEWS station at Fylingdales in North Yorkshire. There, powerful radars would track the inbound missiles and allow confirmation of targets. In later years the first indication of any imminent attack would likely come from infrared detectors aboard the United States Defense Support Program (DSP's) satellites. However, BMEWS would still play an important role in tracking and confirming the destination of any launches.

[edit] UKWMO and the ROC

It was the responsibility of the United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation (UKWMO) at the United Kingdom Regional Air Operations Centre (UK RAOC) located at the Strike Command Operations Centre at High Wycombe to alert the nation to an imminent air attack. Once an alert was initiated the national and local television and radio networks would break into transmissions and broadcast a warning. Simultaneously the national air raid siren system would be brought into service. A system which used the same telephone lines as the peacetime speaking clock was employed for this whereby a key switch activation alerted 250 national Carrier Control Points or CCPs present in police stations across the country. In turn the CCPs would, via a signal carried along ordinary phone lines, cause 7000 powered sirens to start-up. In rural areas around 11000 hand powered sirens would be operated by postmasters, rural police officers or Royal Observer Corps personnel.

Linked into the system were the twenty five Royal Observer Corps (ROC) group controls, also with direct links to the carrier control points. In the event of subsequent radioactive fallout local fallout warnings could be generated from the group controls on a very localised basis over the same carrier wave system.

The national warning system saw many changes over the years. During the 1960s and 1970s much of the local authority civil defence planning in the United Kingdom, fell into diservice, although the WB400/WB600 warning system was maintained and kept serviceable along with updating of ROC instrumentation and communications. The system's main problem was that many of the telephone lines it needed had to be manually switched in times of pre-war tension by Post Office telephone engineers; Additionally the links were not hardened against the effects of EMP. In the late 1970s and early 1980s heightened fears and tensions led to a resumption of contingency planning and the upgrading of many systems. The outdated WB400/WB600 systems were replaced with brand new WB1400 equipment, communications links were made permanent and hardened against EMP disruption.

[edit] Sirens

The national siren system had always retained a secondary role of "general warning", particularly for imminent flooding (In some towns, they were also used to summon part time firemen). However a phone based system was found to be generally more appropriate in this scenario and of course cheaper in most parts of the country. Additionally the Government retains an ability to break into local and national television and radio for purposes of alerting the general public. Indeed, the government has the legal power to take over editorial control of the BBC during a national emergency under the BBC Charter and the Broadcasting Act 1980.

However with the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s and early 1990s the national siren system was largely dismantled. The British Government cited the increasing use of double glazed windows, which make sirens harder to hear, and the reduced likelihood of air attack as reasons to eliminate the siren system in most parts of the country; Some coastal areas still retain and regularly test the sirens as part of the flood warning defences.

[edit] Sample script

The following is a script that would have been broadcast in the event of an attack, transcribed from the audio file available from the BBC (from a news report on the Colerad website):

"This is the wartime broadcasting service. This country has been attacked with nuclear weapons. Communications have been severely disrupted and the number of casualties and the extent of the damage are not yet known. We shall bring you further information as soon as possible. Meanwhile stay tuned to this wavelength, stay calm and stay in your own house. Remember, there's nothing to be gained by trying to get away. By leaving your homes you could be exposing yourselves to greater danger. If you leave, you may find yourselves without food, without water, without accommodation, and without protection. We shall be on the air every hour, on the hour. Stay tuned to this wavelength but switch your radios off now to save your batteries. That is the end of this broadcast."

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[edit] Cultural impact

The cold war and the fear of nuclear attack permeated pop culture up until the 1990s. Examples include Four Minute Warning as the name of a 1980s hardcore punk band from England, as well as the name of a solo song by Take That singer, Mark Owen, "Four Minutes" by Roger Waters (of Pink Floyd fame) on his 1987 solo album Radio K.A.O.S., and the name of a 2007 Radiohead song, a track on the second disc of their album In Rainbows. John Paul Jones has a song entitled 4-Minute Warning on the Brian Eno album Music for Films III.

The adult humour comic Viz ran a photo strip in its issue 107 called "Four Minutes to Fall in Love", where a boyfriend and girlfriend cram a whole relationship into the four minutes before a nuclear attack. The Four Minute Warning had become the inspiration for many jokes and sketches in comedy programmes in Britain, in the same way that the Emergency Broadcast System had in the United States (see nuclear weapons in popular culture). In one episode of Only Fools and Horses, Delboy and Rodney Trotter sell fallout shelter kits and have an attack drill. Driving towards their shelter, they are stopped by the police for speeding and asked: "You just heard the four minute warning?" After being sent on their way, Rodney points out: "We died forty-five seconds ago." Around the same time, a sketch on the BBC Scotland programme Naked Video had a mock announcement warning of an attack with a punchline of "...except for viewers in Scotland."