BBC Magazine Monitor publishes, as their first item of the new year, 100 things which we did not know last year. Extracted mostly from their own reporting it is a list of the things we learned which were either hidden from view or just forgotten about over time.
Think back for a minute. Do you recall that whenever James Bond, in whatever 007 movie you wish to refer, was dealing with the humanity-destroying weapon of whatever sinister master-mind formed the Bond antagonist?
You might recall that, in 007's world, the fictional weapon had various lock-outs and mechanisms preventing it from being armed by... well, anybody except the person with all the right codes. And, you probably thought it was pretty cool. A bit silly, but cool. The real thing would be far more difficult.
Maybe.
One of the things I had obviously missed was this little bit of information.
Newsnight has discovered that until early days of Blair government the RAF's nuclear bombs were armed by turning a bicycle lock.It's not like there wasn't an effort to bring the nukes up to a safer standard.There was no other security on the Bomb itself.
While American and Russian weapons were protected by tamper-proof combination locks which could only be released if the correct code was transmitted, Britain relied on a simpler technology.
The British military resisted Whitehall proposals to fit bombs with Permissive Action Links - or PALs - which would prevent them being armed unless the right code was sent.You can watch the procedure here.
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