Left Behind: The Real Story

n 1982 Britain simulated surviving an all-out nuclear war. One solution: Recruit psychopaths

November 03, 2014 10:36AM

News.com.au

AFTER being nuked back to the Stone Age by psychopaths, a secret UK report believed the best person to rebuild civilisation out of the ashes would be — a psychopath.

The hypothetical scenario presented in a 1982 Home Office military exercise named Operation Regenerate was devastating: Britain had just been flattened by 300 megatons of nuclear missiles.
Within 16 hours, whole cities were simply no more. Millions were dead.

But millions survived — hurt, hungry and terrified — huddled in basements, bunkers and in those
regions between the blasts.

So, how do the politicians restore law and order once they emerged from their bolt-holes?

Society, they believed, would rapidly degenerate into a world of vigilantes, opportunism and despair.
Recently declassified National Archive documents reveal some considered it time to deploy the psychopaths.

GRIM REAPERS

The war game was designed to map-out a response plan for the first year after World War III.
Who had won or lost was of no concern. It was all about surviving.

Shell-shocked police, public servants and members of the general populace were deemed to likely be “inadequate” for the task.

The horrors of a nation, 50 per cent of which was either smashed or the subject of “unimaginable” damage, would be simply too much for them, one science officer considered.

Only the insane could save a world driven insane by an insane action, she judged.

“It is … generally accepted that around 1 per cent of the population are psychopaths,” Home Office adviser Jane Hogg wrote.

“These are the people who could be expected to show no psychological effects in the communities which have suffered the severest losses.”

Her report stated psychopaths, who “have no feelings for others, nor moral code, and tend to be very intelligent and logical” would be “very good in a crisis”.

“Pre-strike the only solution for these people is to contain them; post-strike, in the immediate aftermath, the formal authorities may well find it advantageous to recruit these people into their organisations as they could prove an exceptionally valuable resource.”

RAPID REACTION

Operation Regenerate command staff were not impressed.

“I am not at all sure you convince me,” one wrote in reply. “I would regard them as dangerous whether or not recruited into post-attack organisation.”

The suggestion was not included as an option for the selection of civil servants, military, police and emergency services personnel who had been assembled to play out the devastating scenario to its natural conclusions.

Instead, the gamers found very little hope of maintaining civilisation in the circumstances before the computer code controlling the simulation was corrupted. The exercise was abandoned.

But Operation Regenerate’s haunting scenario about survival in a post all-out nuclear war Britain lived on to inspire the 1984 BBC nuclear apocalypse drama “Theads”.