How Britain would react to nuclear attack as Russia’s planned targets for UK were ‘leaked’

The idea of being attacked with nuclear weapons is one we would ideally not have hanging over our heads.

However, Russian propagandists adore talking about it, and especially love bragging about the damage their nuclear arsenal would do to Britain, even recently calling it their 'number one target'.

Vladimir Putin's cheerleaders have said that 'one Sarmat [missile] means minus one Great Britain', and while that's not entirely the case, the UK is an island with enough important things close together that a few nuclear weapons would cause catastrophic damage and loss of life.

It has been 80 years since a country last targeted another state's land with nuclear weapons in warfare during the closing days of the Second World War.

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ushered in the atomic age and a new kind of warfare to contend with, where a nuclear attack with enough bombs could not only defeat a country, but also potentially wipe it off the map altogether.

Ideally, a nuclear war would not happen, but with Vladimir Putin's Russia, you can never be too sure (Contributor/Getty Images)

Russia's plans 'leaked'

Last year, a list of alleged targets that the Russians would direct their weapons towards named 32 sites across Europe that Vladimir Putin supposedly sees as necessary for destruction.

In the UK, Russia's targets would include a factory in Hull, a shipyard in Cumbria, and an unnamed site in Edinburgh.

As the Financial Times reported, this list of targets comes from documents drawn up between 2008 and 2014, but the paper says experts have told them it remains relevant to Russian plans, should they ever attack Europe with nuclear weapons.

Given how many nuclear weapons Russia has (over 4,000), it's unlikely they would restrict their bombings to just a few locations when they have the arsenal to target major population centres as well.

The UK's military simulated the impact of a Russian missile attack on British soil and the results were 'not a pretty picture'.

The UK has nowhere near the number of nuclear weapons Russia has, but it has enough (Oli Scarff - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

The UK's nuclear arsenal

Compared to the Russians, the UK's nuclear arsenal is significantly smaller and stands at about 225 warheads, of which 120 are operationally available.

The nuclear weapons the UK uses as a deterrent against being nuked are stationed on four Vanguard-class nuclear submarines named the Vanguard, Victorious, Vigilant, and Vengeance.

The UK's intention is to use its nuclear arsenal as a deterrent to other countries that might try to target Britain with a nuclear attack.

Based on the idea of mutually assured destruction, the idea goes that if you have nuclear weapons, then you won't be attacked by nuclear weapons because then you'd fire back at them.

Since 1969, the UK has maintained a 'continuous at sea deterrent', and the government says it keeps 'only the minimum amount of destructive power' to function as a deterrence against other nations.

It also says that since 1994, the UK's nuclear weapons have not been aimed at any country, and that maintaining a level of ambiguity about Britain's arsenal of weapons is part of the deterrence so potential enemy nations would struggle to know exactly how the UK would react.

The UK's nuclear weapons are kept on board Vanguard class submarines (ANDY BUCHANAN/AFP via Getty Images)

How Britain would react to a nuclear attack

Only the prime minister can authorise a nuclear strike using the UK's arsenal of weapons, so it's all up to Sir Keir Starmer and whether or not he would press the button.

How the prime minister would respond and whether they would press the button or not tends to be something they keep to themselves.

Former UK PM James Callaghan once said he 'would have done it' if he was in a situation where the use of nuclear weapons was on the table, adding 'but if I had lived after pressing that button, I could have never forgiven myself'.

However, in the event of a nuclear attack, the country's leadership would likely be high on the list of targets.

Should the UK's leadership be wiped out by an attack, Britain's response to a nuclear attack would all depend on a series of letters the prime minister writes upon entering office which are sent out to the Royal Navy's fleet of nuclear submarines.

These are known as the Letters of Last Resort, and the instructions contained within are known only to Starmer, who will have written his shortly after winning the general election last year.

The decision on how Britain would react rests with the prime minister, or if they have been killed it's up to the letters they wrote (Oli Scarff - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Letters of Last Resort

In the event of a nuclear attack where the UK's leadership is dead and unable to give orders, the commanding officers of the nuclear submarines will open and read the letters which will roughly instruct them to do one of four things.

The first option the prime minister may have chosen is to order a retaliation against whichever country fired the nuclear missiles at the UK and condemned millions of Brits to death, an option which could trigger a global nuclear war.

Assuming it wasn't already underway, of course.

Options number two and three do not involve a nuclear retaliation, as the second option is to do nothing in response to a nuclear attack on the UK while the third option is for the submarine to join up with an allied navy since the destruction of the UK in a nuclear attack would leave it a vessel without a country.

The fourth and final option leaves the British nuclear response up to the submarine commander so they do what they decide is best.

What Starmer wrote in his letters to the submarine commanders is unknown, and in the ideal scenario of the UK never being hit with nuclear weapons his Letters of Last Resort will be destroyed without being read when he leaves office.

Let's hope we never have to find out which choice he would make.