What's 'Oceans Deep' All about?

Oceans Deep is really about four sheets of rather superior paper.

   Four identical letters.

   Not the mundane A4 sheets you and I commonly use for printing.

   These are thicker, with a luxurious feel, the quality one might find in stationery exclusive to Smythson of Bond Street, for example.

    At the top, the address is engraved: No 10, Downing Street, SW1A 2AA.

   At the bottom, the script reads: ‘From the Office of the Prime Minister’.

    Four blank sheets then, on which the prime minister must personally write out one of four nuclear targeting options, producing four identical letters, signed and sealed.

    It’s his or her decision, not be communicated to anyone else, and it must be done on the very morning the new incumbent takes office. (My fictional prime minister needs a stiff scotch to summon up the courage)..

    Only in a state of extreme crisis will the submarine captain open his letter and read the prime minister’s final order.

    Just a line, that’s all.

    This is the kernel of Oceans Deep.

    (I’m not going to waffle on about characters or plot; Oceans Deep won’t be available for months yet. The idea came from one of Peter Hennessy’s excellent non-fiction books investigating how government works — or doesn’t — and specifically Whitehall’s preparations for nuclear war.)

    The prime minister having chosen one option, and having written the four letters and signed them, he or the Cabinet Secretary hands over the top secret missives to a courier, who carries them to the underground Norwood command headquarters, and from there, still sealed, to the recipients, the captains of the UK’s four Trident strategic nuclear missile submarines or SSBNs based at Faslane in Scotland. The letters are placed in each submarine’s safe, and only accessible when a safe is opened simultaneously with two keys available to the captain and the first officer, sometimes known as the executive officer or, in Royal Navy jargon, as number one.

    The letters will only be needed as a last resort when the firing sequence fails to authenticate.

    An error of coding? Successful cyber attacks on communications? Sabotage? An all-out Russian nuclear first strike on the UK, utterly destroying the chain of command along with everything and everyone else?

    At least one of the four submarines is on continuous deterrent patrol, usually lasting 90 days or thereabouts. Not a single day has been missed since the patrols began in 1968. Some patrols have been much longer, twice that, usually from necessity; for example, when the replacement boat suffers an unexpected fault, another is undergoing maintenance, and the third is in the United States for routine missile checks by the Lockheed manufacturers. All four are showing their age and in need of replacement (or retirement).

    The UK authorities adopt a stance of deliberate ambiguity when asked about the number and payload of missiles on board these boats, but there seems to be an unofficial consensus that there are normally twelve Trident missiles on board each one, each missile equipped with four, independently targeted warheads of 100 kilotons apiece.

    More than sufficient to destroy the Russian state by neutralising its central command and control system, mostly located at some forty to fifty sites in, around and under Moscow. The Russian capital would be uninhabitable for generations, and around 750,000 of Moscow’s children would likely die in the first hours of a strike. In such an all-out exchange of ballistic missiles, many more would succumb subsequently to radiation sickness, extensive burns, thirst and hunger.

   A nuclear ‘winter’ would cover the planet.

    It’s also likely each boat carries at least one additional missile with one, possibly two, lower yield warheads intended for a sub-strategic strike, possibly in response to a request for help from the UK’s non-nuclear European allies in the face of a full-scale Russian assault or invasion.

   And what are those four options from which a prime minister must select just one on his first day in office?

   First, retaliate.

   Second, don’t retaliate.

   Third, order the boat to be placed under U.S. command or proceed to Australia, if it still exists.

   Fourth, leave the ultimate decision to the submarine’s captain.

   Would you trust a Liz Truss, a Boris Johnson or a Keir Starmer with such a decision, both moral and political, on the fate of humanity?

   I suppose the point that Oceans Deep makes is that the failure of deterrent wouldn’t have a single cause, but several. Fire in the reactor room, a total loss of communications, espionage, a loss of political nerve, or any combination of these could shatter the deterrent’s effectiveness.

   You’ll have to wait for Oceans Deep to find out…

John Fullerton