Square Leg 960519 175405118 2007-12-03T03:32:42Z WriterHound 266293 Punctuation goes before footnote [[Image:Square_leg.gif|thumb||right|'Square Leg' target plot]] :''Square leg is also a fielding position in cricket; see [[Fielding (cricket)]].'' '''Square Leg''' was a [[1980]] [[United Kingdom|British]] [[Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom)|government]] [[Civil defense|"home defence"]] exercise that assessed the effects of a [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] [[nuclear warfare|nuclear attack]]. 131 nuclear weapons were assumed to fall on Britain with a total yield of 205 [[megatons]] (69 [[ground burst]]; 62 [[air burst]]).<ref>''Doomsday, Britain after Nuclear Attack'', p. 102</ref> This was felt to be a reasonably realistic scenario, although the report stated that a total strike in excess of 1000 megatons would not be unexpected. Mortality was estimated at 29 million (53% of the population); serious injuries at 7 million (12%); short-term survivors at 19 million (35%). Square Leg was criticised for a number of reasons: the weapons used were exclusively in the high yield megaton range--with an average of 1.5 megatons per bomb--whereas a realistic attack based on known Soviet capabilities would have seen mixed weapons yields, including many missile-based warheads in the low hundred [[kiloton]] range; no targets in [[Inner London]] are attacked (for example [[Whitehall]], the centre of British government); towns such as [[Eastbourne]] are hit for no obvious reason.<ref>''Doomsday, Britain after Nuclear Attack'', p. 105</ref> Operation Square Leg was one of the exercises used to estimate the destructiveness of a Soviet nuclear attack in the [[1984 in television|1984]] [[BBC]] production ''[[Threads]]''. ==References== * ''Doomsday, Britain after Nuclear Attack'', Stan Openshaw, Philip Steadman and Owen Greene, Basil Blackwell, 1983 ISBN 0-631-13394-1 * ''War Plan UK'', Duncan Campbell, ISBN 0-09-150671-9 ==Footnotes== <references/> ==See also== * [[Nuclear weapons and the United Kingdom]] [[Category:Nuclear warfare]] [[Category:Nuclear history of the United Kingdom]]