Chicken Nuclear Landmines
There are a few schemes during the Cold War that are quite as strange as Blue Peacock. The Blue Peacock was a British tactical nuclear weapon project in the 1950s. The idea was that these ten-kiloton nuclear mines would be stored in Germany. If there was ever a Soviet invasion from the east, the landmines would then be placed on the North German Plain. The landmines were able to be detonated by a wire or with an 8-day timer.
The justification for such a scheme was that it would ensure that the Soviet invasion would be stopped. Not only would the initial blast create large numbers of casualties, but the resulting contamination would prevent any further invasion. Once the bomb was armed, it would detonate 10 seconds after being moved, if the casing of the landmine ever lost pressure, or if it was filled with water.
Strangely enough, the plan got far enough into development that they began to be concerned with cold temperatures. The landmines would be buried underground where the temperature would drop significantly in the winter. There were fears that the electronics in the bomb would not survive the cold. One idea to keep the electronics warm was to design the casing in such a way that a chicken would fit inside.
The chicken would be placed inside the casing of the landmine and given enough food and water to last a week. The chicken would only survive a week but it was determined that it would keep the components warm enough. The project was abandoned over concerns of fallout and the political repercussions of destroying and contaminating allied territory. When the project was declassified on April 1, 2004, many assumed that it was an April Fools’ joke. That was until the National Archives confirmed that it was real stating that, “the Civil Service does not do jokes.”