As the Iron Curtain descended across Europe following World War II, countries on both sides began making plans about what to do if the Cold War ever turned physical. As the nuclear arms race took off, the British came up with the top-secret Operation Blue Peacock as a way to stop a potential Soviet attack. The plan: bury nuclear landmines across West Germany that would explode if the Soviets tried to invade. The problem: frigid temperatures might keep the bombs from detonating. The solution: seal live chickens inside the buried landmines to keep the bombs warm. It may sound too outlandish to be true, but Operation Blue Peacock was very real. One of the first dilemmas the British ran into was just how to detonate the new landmines. One option was to bury each landmine with an 8-day timer if Soviet forces ever started to invade. Another option was to activate the bombs remotely, programming them to detonate within 10 seconds if they were tampered with. Weather was another issue. Temperatures often fell below freezing in Germany, and with so many intricate parts, the landmines were liable to fail if they got too cold. That’s when the British came up with the idea to put live chickens inside the casing of each bomb with just enough food for them to survive for 8 days. Their body heat would keep the landmines warm until it was time to be detonated, and the chickens would be killed in the resulting explosion if they hadn’t starved to death first. The British toiled away on Project Blue Peacock for four years before giving it up. In 1958, the Ministry of Defense canceled the “politically flawed” project, citing concerns about radioactive fallout and the destruction of their allies’ territory.
Inside Project Blue Peacock
As the Iron Curtain descended across Europe following World War II, countries on both sides began making plans about what to do if the Cold War ever turned physical. As the nuclear arms race took off, the British came up with the top-secret Operation Blue Peacock as a way to stop a potential Soviet attack. The plan: bury nuclear landmines across West Germany that would explode if the Soviets tried to invade. The problem: frigid temperatures might keep the bombs from detonating. The solution: seal live chickens inside the buried landmines to keep the bombs warm. It may sound too outlandish to be true, but Operation Blue Peacock was very real. One of the first dilemmas the British ran into was just how to detonate the new landmines. One option was to bury each landmine with an 8-day timer if Soviet forces ever started to invade. Another option was to activate the bombs remotely, programming them to detonate within 10 seconds if they were tampered with. Weather was another issue. Temperatures often fell below freezing in Germany, and with so many intricate parts, the landmines were liable to fail if they got too cold. That’s when the British came up with the idea to put live chickens inside the casing of each bomb with just enough food for them to survive for 8 days. Their body heat would keep the landmines warm until it was time to be detonated, and the chickens would be killed in the resulting explosion if they hadn’t starved to death first. The British toiled away on Project Blue Peacock for four years before giving it up. In 1958, the Ministry of Defense canceled the “politically flawed” project, citing concerns about radioactive fallout and the destruction of their allies’ territory.