New Scientist reports:
To counter the threat of Soviet invasion, the UK planned to bury 10 huge nuclear landmines in Germany, declassified army documents from the 1950s reveal.
The extraordinary weapon was designed to cause mass destruction and radioactive contamination over a wide area to prevent an occupation by Soviet forces. Each mine was expected to produce an explosive yield of 10 kilotons, about half that of the atom bomb the US dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki in 1945.
The mines were to be left buried or submerged by the British Army of the Rhine. They would then have been detonated by wire from up to five kilometres away or by an eight-day clockwork timer. If disturbed or damaged, they were primed to explode within 10 seconds...
In the end, the risk from radioactive fallout would have been unacceptable...and hiding nuclear weapons in an allied country was deemed "politically flawed." As a result, the Ministry of Defence cancelled (the nuclear landmine project) in February 1958.
