I caught this by accident on the BBC's iPlayer and thought it was interesting enough to occupy a spare hour or so on a Sunday afternoon.
Although this sort of contingency planning must have been of major importance back in the dark days of the Cold War, this tale is set in the (more-or-less) present where the tensions between Pakistan and India spill over into open warfare and a nuclear device is deemed to have been used on Dehli. A group of Civil Servants have to come up with the response of the British government as they are presented with the effects of this unfolding catastrophe on the world order. To start with, the Civil Servants act fairly calmly and reasonably rationally but as the scenario's threat vectors multiply the group's internal cohesiveness is put under strain and while the outside world doesn't really intrude into the closed world of the War Room, it becomes clear that there are external pressures on the members of the team that are affecting their decisions within the scenario. Overall, I felt that the situation was reasonably realistic and certainly chilling especially as the group made their final decision to release the British nuclear missiles to NATO control.
Although this sort of contingency planning must have been of major importance back in the dark days of the Cold War, this tale is set in the (more-or-less) present where the tensions between Pakistan and India spill over into open warfare and a nuclear device is deemed to have been used on Dehli. A group of Civil Servants have to come up with the response of the British government as they are presented with the effects of this unfolding catastrophe on the world order. To start with, the Civil Servants act fairly calmly and reasonably rationally but as the scenario's threat vectors multiply the group's internal cohesiveness is put under strain and while the outside world doesn't really intrude into the closed world of the War Room, it becomes clear that there are external pressures on the members of the team that are affecting their decisions within the scenario. Overall, I felt that the situation was reasonably realistic and certainly chilling especially as the group made their final decision to release the British nuclear missiles to NATO control.