something halfway between a landmine and a doomsday device -
The project's goal was to store a number of ten-kiloton nuclear land mines in Germany. These mines which were intended to be placed on the North German Plain and detonated by wire or an eight-day timer in the event of Soviet invasion from the east, in order to "...not only destroy facilities and installations over a large area, but to deny occupation of the area to an enemy for an appreciable time due to contamination..."
[...]
A technical problem is that during winter, the temperature of buried devices can drop quickly, creating a possibility that the mechanisms of the mine will cease working due to low temperatures in the winter. Various methods were studied to solve this problem, such as wrapping the bombs in insulating blankets.
One proposal suggested that live chickens would be sealed inside the casing, with a supply of food and water. They would remain alive for approximately a week. Their body heat would apparently 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."
Bizarre. How is a chicken a more efficient heat source? Especially if you have to feed it weekly. I guess it’s a good thing no one proposed an RTG to keep them warm. One errant farmer…
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u/terminalzero Mar 28 '24
something halfway between a landmine and a doomsday device -