Posted here October 29, 2007

This is just one of 20-or-so pages of a British study on governing Britain after a nuclear attack. (If you have a lot of time on your hands, you might want to start at "chapter" one and read the entire study.)  While it's not about our country, the ideas and solutions might prove to be a real eye-opener to you ... and will likely give you a lot of ideas as to what to expect in the US in the event of a nuclear detonation ... and how to prepare for it.

I was amazed at the things I hadn't thought about ....  If you're into research, you might want to look into this entire report!

Struggle for Survival

Governing Britain After the Bomb

Steve Fox

File 14  Feeding the Survivors
Rationing - stockpiles - emergency cooking
struggleforsurvival AT hotmail.com

After a major nuclear attack, the future for the survivors would be grim. Theirs would indeed be a struggle for survival and their biggest problem would be getting food. Plans and exercises from the mid-1950s predicted that the loss of raw materials, power and water together with physical damage and loss of workers would seriously reduce if not completely stop all food manufacturing and processing. There would also be no imports of food for months, and this would probably include importing food from another home defence region. Furthermore, the breakdown in transportation systems, communications and the economy in general would stop food moving to the shops. If food was available to the public they could not cook it at home without electricity, gas or water. If the survivors could not be fed even in the short term there would be mass starvation and probably complete anarchy. The plans to feed the survivors were undoubtedly the key to survival and this File looks in detail at this area and in particular, the plans for emergency feeding made in the 1980s.

 The 1984 Regulations required local authorities to draw up plans for “Providing and maintaining a service in their area for the distribution, conservation and control of food in the event of hostile attack, including emergency feeding services and equipment”. The resulting plans at all levels were unfortunately utterly impractical.

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The role of MAFF

The responsibility for food in wartime throughout the Cold War lay with the Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food (MAFF). In a period of crisis, MAFF would monitor the availability of food through its local Regional and Divisional Offices and it would liaise with the REC if it was activated. As the crisis deepened it would aim to ensure the continuity of supply of food throughout the country[1]. It would encourage manufacturers to increase output, increase its buffer stockpile, disperse bulk food stocks, set up its post-attack structure and possibly introduce the rationing system. Its aim at this stage would be to ensure continuity of supply. Day-to-day responsibility for food would lie with the county and district controllers although their role pre-strike would be limited. Their main function at this time would be to issue of ration documents and run the rationing scheme.

Rationing

A rationing system had been considered in the 1950s but only for the post-attack survival period and by 1963 millions of rations document had been printed. A scheme was however introduced in the 1980s to cope with the new problems expected in the transition to war/conventional war phase when the normal food distribution system might be disrupted. It was devised by the Food Distribution Working Party which had been set up in 1981 to consider the problem. It reported in 1983 but the proposed scheme came as a surprise to the local authority planners when MAFF first introduced it into Exercise Vireg three years later.

The new rationing system was relatively simple. The ration would cover long-life products such as tinned and bottled goods and would be expressed in terms of price rather than quantities. People would be issued with ration documents that could be used in one nominated shop. The retailer would then re-order based on the number of people registered with him. The scheme was however riddled with potential problems. An immediate one was how to issue the ration documents, or rather to whom to issue them. The plan was to base the issue on the electoral roll but many people would not have been on it and consequently would not qualify. Another problem was that the scheme was expected to take 7 days to fully implement and during this time the rationed goods would not be available for sale. As well as presenting a problem in itself, this period would clash head on with the expected government advice for people to stock up with 14 days supply of the very foods that would be rationed.

A constant problem envisaged in exercises although not in most plans was that of refugees, many of who would have fled from their homes in the crisis period. A 1979 circular[2] simply said “…there would be no question of implementing emergency feeding arrangements during the pre-attack period for those persons who chose to ignore the government’s advice to stay in their own homes”. The 1980s exercises recognised the potential problem and the need to feed the refugees before they took matters into their own hands but beyond the suggestion to open emergency feeding centres, little practical guidance was given. The situation was summed up in a phrase used during Exercise Vireg when it was said, in the face of 70000 refugees living rough in the New Forest that “food was almost impossible to obtain especially after the New Forest ponies had been consumed”.

The strategic stockpile 

The plans assumed that MAFF would take over all bulk food stocks in the crisis period although it has not been publicly stated how this would be done. After regional government had been introduced, the supply of food would be controlled by the RGHQ although local Controllers might have emergency powers to requisition stocks held locally in shops. The RGHQ would release food from bulk stocks held by warehouses, food producers and farms although the supply might be restricted and “demands for food to meet the needs of the surviving population in the immediate post-attack period would have to be balanced against the need for greater agricultural production later”.[3]

The RGHQ would also have access to the “strategic food stockpile” maintained by MAFF since the 1950s in a series of buffer depots throughout the country of which there were 136 in 1966. The idea of such reserve stocks dates back to the last war and in 1943 there were some 6.5 millions tons of food held in bulk stores. Food stocks were held throughout the Cold War and MAFF were very vocal in their defence although their views were rarely held by other government departments. The stocks held were however much lower than held during the last war and peaked in 1956 at some 750000 tons held in various depots including 43 massive government owned cold stores.

 In 1960 the reserve stood at 582500 tons, made up of –

Corned beef (in 12oz and 6lb tins)             75000 tons

Flour (in 140 lb sacks)                              196000 tons

Sugar (raw)                                              252500 tons

Raw materials for processing                     36000 tons

(mainly oils and fats)

From 1961 the idea of an immediate “survival element” of biscuits and boiled sweets was introduced but the corned beef was all sold by 1967. In practice, the storage costs were covered by selling off the stocks and by 1971 only 402000 tons remained. This was considered to be totally inadequate. In the 1960s it was assumed there would be some 40 million survivors who would need feeding for 3 months until food imports could be resumed (although it was accepted that, unlike during World War 2 no plans had been made to buy food from abroad after the attack). It was thought that normal commercial stocks could provide food for 33 days but the strategic stockpile would only provide for another 23. There were frequent calls from MAFF to increase the stocks by up to a million tons to cover the shortfall and for example in 1969 a MAFF report advised that “…current arrangements for food supplies in the UK in the aftermath of nuclear war are inadequate to prevent widespread starvation” but with the continual absence of money for civil defence measures these concerns fell on deaf ears.

When the decision was made in 1991 to finally dispose of the stockpile there were probably around 200000 tons of food in store. According to a MAFF brochure “the stockpile along with commercial wholesale and retail stocks was intended to provide a reserve to feed up to 40 million survivors sufficient to cover a 60 day recovery period following a nuclear attack”. The hope would be to increase the amounts of food held in these reserves during the crisis period and Exercise Hard Rock envisaged doubling the number of buffer depots to 250 in the pre-strike period.

EPGLA said the foods in the stockpile “have been chosen for their value as sources of energy and nutrition : they do not constitute a balanced diet nor are the quantities related to the needs of the population in a particular area”. In practice the stockpile in the 1980s consisted of –

1. Flour  –  this was a special high protein, low moisture content flour that was turned over every 4 or 5 years.
2. Yeast  –  packed in tins with an expected life of 10 years.
3. Sugar  –  held in 56-pound sacks and turned over if it started to deteriorate.
4. Fat  –  known as “Ministry marge” with an expected shelf life of 20 years.
5. Biscuits  - sweet biscuits in large tins apparently made in the 1960s

During the 1960s tinned meat and cake mix was held but at is peak during the last war the stockpiles held large amounts of frozen anincluding beef hash, baked beans, tinned rice pudding and “ministry soup”. By including beef hash, baked beans, tinned rice pudding and ministry soup”. By coincidence, some of the corned beef, margarine and yeast were held at the government owned cold stores in Hexham and Loughborough that later became RGHQs.

Up until the mid-1980s government advice to the public in a crisis period would probably have been to stock up with 14 days supply of food and water. The idea of advising people to stock up with food dates from the 1950s and originally people would have been told to stock up for only 7 days although even then there were doubts that most people could afford to do this even assuming the shops could provide it. This advice appears in the Protect and Survive booklet although neither EPGLA nor any of the 1980s exercises material mentions it and it is possible that the idea may have been dropped along with the booklet in the early 1980s. EPGLA however does say that emergency feeding might not start until up to 21 days after nuclear attack in the worst cases and 7 days in the best.

Protect and Survive gave some general advice on what foods to stock but oddly it was the guide on domestic nuclear shelters that suggested a list of food sufficient for 2 weeks as follows –

                Biscuits, crackers, breakfast cereals, etc                                                      2750g

Canned meat or fish (eg tinned beef, luncheon meat, stewed steak, pilchards)  2000g

Tinned vegetables (eg baked beans, carrots)                                                  1800g

Tinned margarine or butter, or peanut butter                                                     500g

Jam, marmalade, honey or spread                                                                  500g

Tinned soup                                                                                                 6 tins

Full cream evaporated milk                                                                  14 small tins

Sugar                                                                                                           700g

Tea or coffee (instant)                                                                                    250g

Boiled sweets or other sweets                                                                        450g

Tinned fruit, fruit juices, drinking chocolate                                    if sufficient storage available

This list has its origins in some 1950s advice and was frequently repeated in local authority food plans apparently oblivious to the problems of millions of people trying to obtain vast amounts of, for example, evaporated milk or of finding any “tinned butter” at all. In practice most exercises assumed that many people would not have a 14-day supply of food but they had little answer to what to do about the resulting shortage. The 1960s booklet “Advising the Householder on Protection against Nuclear Attack” did not give a list of suggested foods but it did remind the householder “do not forget your pets”.

Requisitioning 

After attack, the Controllers would organise emergency feeding but they had no responsibility for providing the food. This would be the task of the MAFF Regional and Divisional Offices, or rather their staffs who were assumed to have survived and turned up for work, operating under the direction of the RGHQ. Food would have to be requisitioned under emergency powers from wholesalers and farms although there is no mention in the MAFF Civil Defence Manual published in 1988 or the small booklet Civil Defence and the Farmer issued 3 years earlier of requisitioning or how it would be done or if for example the food taken would be paid for. Once requisitioned, the County Food Officer to relate the food released by the RGHQ to the needs of the districts. It was then the responsibility of the district food officers to collect and distribute it to the emergency feeding centres.

Emergency cooking

In the early 1950s, the expectation was that any problems would be short lived. The local civil defence resources notably the Welfare Section of the Corps supported if necessary by Food Flying Squads would feed the survivors until they could be re-housed or normal conditions were restored. But with the advent of the H-bomb, the plans had to change. In the absence of publicly available food or any means of cooking it the whole population would have been fed under emergency arrangements from a few days after a nuclear attack until a normal food distribution system and domestic power could be restored. This was expected to take months in most areas. Some plans recognised that there would be additional refugees to feed but the 1980s Essex plan said that it would be impractical to feed the whole population of the county and proposed only to feed 25%. This figure dates back to at least the days of the Corps but there was no indication about how the remaining 75% would be fed or chosen.

It is at the level of emergency feeding that the plans become little more than ill-conceived fantasies. As with so many plans they normally became less detailed as they moved down the control chain. Emergency feeding would have had to be run at the basic grass roots community level but rarely were there any practical plans for this level.

The standard county food plan in the 1980s plan mirrored the Emergency Services circulars, EGPLA and the “Emergency Planning Guidelines Handbook 3 Emergency Feeding Guide” (EPG3) published by MAFF in 1986. This replaced, but was still largely based on, the earlier Civil Defence Corps Handbook last published in 1960. EPG3 gave vast amounts of often impractical advice about sitting emergency feeding centres, emergency cooking arrangements, sanitation, etc. It suggested that an Emergency Feeding Centre (or EFC) would be set up some time after nuclear attack probably at a school to serve a community of say 2000 people. It would operate a system of 3 8-hour shifts aiming to give each person “half a pint of stew” per day with a calorific content of 1200 calories. “Half a pint of stew” was almost a mantra in civil defence plans and quoted constantly although according to one county plan this 1200-calorie figure  “…is below the normal basal metabolic requirement…the persons on such a diet would be lethargic, depressed and unable to carry on much activity”.

The official assumption was that the stew would consist of meat and barley. Meat would be readily available, as many animals would be slaughtered to save feeding them although butchering would be a problem. Barley is the commonest grain grown in the country but it would need milling before it could be used; a factor rarely taken into account.

EPG3 gave the following recipe for 120 portions of the stew to be cooked in a Soyer Boiler –                                           

                         Fresh meat                   16 lbs

Crushed barley                 8lbs

Water                              7 gallons

Seasoning (if available)

The method of cooking was essentially to boil for 3 to 3 1/2 hours, stirring continuously and skimming off as many barley husks as possible. This recipe would give each serving less than 4 ounces of solid food and nowhere near the supposed 1200 calories.

EPGLA said little about food except that it would be “scarce, lacking in variety and unevenly distributed”. This is a far cry from Civil Defence Corps days when the food-training manual gave a detailed suggested weekly diet for sometime after an attack “when a wider range of foodstuffs became available”. One day’s menu was -

Breakfast          porridge, bread/biscuits, jam, marmalade, tea.

Mid-day             roast meat, Yorkshire pudding, carrots or cabbage, boiled potatoes, milk pudding and stewed  figs, bread, tea or coffee.

Evening             bread, cheese, margarine, tea or cocoa.

All this would be cooked and served under emergency conditions. These proposals would probably give most people a better diet than they would have had in peacetime and were of course ridiculous in their expectations.

Local plans however rarely accepted the meagre “half a pint of stew” regime. The London General Training Course for community advisers written in the late 1980s talks of a “typical emergency meal” consisting of 11 different food items totalling 2000 calories but there was no consideration as to where the food itself would come from or how it would be cooked or served. 

Until domestic power and water supplies could be resumed to homes, or at least to establishments with bulk cooking facilities such as factory or school canteens the food would have had to be cooked in public emergency feeding centres. Local authority plans invariably listed potential emergency feeding sites, mentioning that MAFF will provide emergency equipment and how many staff will be needed. There was little practical advice on for example who would build the cooking facilities, how the food would get to the emergency feeding centre, who would run it, where the fuel would come from, etc.

Much mention was made in EPG3 and all plans of the “manufactured cooking equipment” which MAFF held in store ready to be distributed in an emergency. The main items held were Soyer Boilers and No4 Field Cookers.

The Soyer Boiler was invented during the Crimean War but it was simple and robust and could boil up to 10 gallons of liquid eg a stew to give say 125 servings. The larger No4 Field Cookers could also boil but had an oven and hotplates. Other equipment was also held such as milk churns, baking trays, camp kettle and a large number of half-pint plastic bowls. These resembled a flower pot (without the hole) and look very impractical for holding boiling liquid.  

                        Corps cooking exercise in the mid-1960s using Soyer boilers and improvised ovens                              

The amount of the equipment available was acknowledged to be inadequate. Essex, with a population of 1.5 million would receive as part of its allocation, 600 Soyer Boilers, 900 camp kettles and 38300 plastic spoons[4]. Chelmsford’s allocation would feed at best about 30000 of its 140000 population. The London Borough of Ealing’s 1980s plan proposed to use 30 Soyer Boilers to provide meals for 1000 people even though the total issue for the whole borough was only 97. 

No 4 Field Cooker

If there was insufficient manufactured equipment EPG3 said “...it will be necessary to improvise”. Numerous diagrams were included for emergency cooking equipment ranging from converted oil drums to the massive emergency feeding centre shown in the diagram below. The diagram actually comes from the 1960 Corps manual but it was redrawn for EPG3. It is a substantial work of civil engineering but there was little guidance on how it might be built although EPG3 said it it would require 3500 bricks. There is no provision for a water supply in this diagram but this was solved in the EPG3 version by adding a drawing of a tap. In theory, such a centre could cook and serve 1000 meals at a sitting. Three sittings a day were expected on an 8 hours cycle. To feed a hypothetical town of 150000 people 50 such centres would be needed requiring, according to EPG3, 75 tons of food a day. These centres would be completely outdoors situated for example on a school playing field and would have to operate continually day and night in all weathers perhaps for months. But the plans made no allowances for darkness or bad weather. Cooking equipment, crockery, cutlery and where people would actually eat was also rarely considered.

EPG3 says that 11 people under emergency conditions could feed 1000 people and many local plans repeat this figure without question. This feeding would include food preparation, stoking fires, cooking (the recipe for emergency stew said it had to be stirred constantly), washing up and serving. This sounds a lot for 11 people. A College emergency feeding exercise said 60 people would be needed for the task but even on the EPG3 figure London plans said they would need 50000 people to run its expected 3000 emergency feeding centres. This figure itself appears to be a gross under estimate as it only allows 18 people per centre, which would be operating 24 hours a day, every day for an indefinite period until electricity or gas supplies became available. The centres would also require vast amounts of water and fuel. In the early decades of the Cold War, supplies of coal would have been readily available but in later years wood would have had to be used. The emergency feeding centres would consume huge amounts and re-supply would have become increasingly difficult. In the absence of a piped water supply, the plan was for the fire service to deliver potable water to the feeding centres although the source of this water is not obvious.

The sheer logistical and organisational problems of feeding the survivors for weeks, possibly months under these emergency conditions in the absence of electricity, lighting, heating, water supply, sewage and refuse disposal, adequate communications and the constant threat, according to many exercises of thefts of food would be immense. It is difficult to believe that any of the plans would have worked except under the most favourable of conditions for example in an isolated rural community with local sources of food and an organised, self-sufficient and motivated community.

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