The Cold War was an odd time in many ways, one of which was the nuclear sword of Damocles that hung over the entire world's heads. From Nevile Shute's "On the Beach" to the 1983 TV movie "The Day After," nuclear war and its aftermath were the topic of a lot of ink and film; we all watched, read, and were worried about what might happen if the missiles flew.
They didn't. But the nuclear weapons programs weren't limited to bombs and missiles. The United States developed "Atomic Annie," the atomic howitzer, and even the "Davy Crockett" atomic bazooka — because nothing says "nuclear weapons release authority" like two members of the E-4 Mafia in a Jeep.
Our British cousins, though, may have done us one better. In the early '50s, the newly-minted NATO was worried about a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. When you're facing invasion, it's common for the defending forces to want lots of gadgets that will go BOOM in between the defensive lines and the invading bad guys. The Brits proposed taking the concept of the land mine to the next level, proposing — yes, really — nuclear landmines.
There was a problem. The winter temperatures of northern Europe. Nukes are tetchy things, and cold temperatures over time can degrade them. So, the Brits needed a creative way to keep their nuclear landmines warm.
Chickens are warm. Thus was inspired Project Blue Peacock, a chicken-powered nuclear landmine.
Britain’s Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment (RARDE) had investigated numerous ways to thwart the Soviets using nuclear weapons, but Project Blue Peacock involved something a little unconventional: atomic landmines.
RARDE suggested burying the mines in the North German Plain. If the Soviets ever crossed into Western territory, the British would wait just long enough for them to set up headquarters and supply depots — then detonate the bombs right beneath them.
These landmines weren’t small, either. At 10 kilotons, each weapon was about half as powerful as the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki in 1945 and would leave a crater larger than a football field in the ground upon exploding. In the aftermath of their detonation, huge swaths of Europe would be blanketed in radioactive fallout.
Then, they encountered the temperature problem.
One of the first dilemmas the British came across was just how to detonate the new landmines. One option, as reported by Popular Mechanics, was to hastily bury each landmine with an eight-day timer if Soviet forces ever started to invade.
Officials also considered activating the bombs remotely or programming them to detonate within 10 seconds if they were tampered with. However, there was still another issue: the weather. Temperatures often fell below freezing in northern Germany during the winter, particularly underground. With so many intricate parts, the landmines were liable to fail if they got too cold.
Chickens, like all birds, are warm-blooded. A healthy adult clucker has a body temperature of 105 to 107 degrees — Fahrenheit, not Commie Celcius. Birds have fast metabolisms. They run warm, and if you need something compact and manageable to keep a buried nuclear weapon warm, well, you could do worse than to put a chicken in with it.
That's what the Brits thought of.
Engineers first suggested wrapping each seven-ton bomb in fiberglass pillows to keep them warm, but then they had another idea: chickens. Live birds would be placed inside the casing of each bomb with just enough food for them to survive for eight days. Their body heat would keep the mine warm until it was time for it to detonate — and they would be killed in the resulting explosion if they hadn’t yet starved to death.
And there you have it — a chicken-powered nuclear land mine. I bet that wasn't on your Bingo card for today.
See Related: King of Battle: US Army to Get New, High-Tech Artillery
OPINION: Women in Combat Arms? A Female Veteran Has Some Thoughts.
Project Blue Peacock, after a few years, was canceled. The Red Army was still a threat to Western Europe; there was still the possibility of a few thousand Soviet tanks storming through the Fulda Gap on any given Sunday. But the British government, likely with some input from the newly-minted NATO, decided that detonating hot rocks in the faces of incoming Soviet soldiers may well cause more problems than it solved.
Like, a full-blown nuclear war.
The Cold War was an odd time. Weapons systems came and went quickly, and we should remember that this was only ten years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki — a time when many of the top brass thought of nuclear weapons not as harbingers of universal Armageddon, but as just another weapon, albeit one with a slightly larger BANG.
But if all the oddball weaponry developed in those first years of the nuclear age, the chicken-powered nuclear landmine has to be the oddest.
