How the British Government planned to deal with Armageddon: make sure we had enough tea

The nightmare aftermath of a Soviet nuclear assault is outlined in apocalyptic detail in a secret government report in 1955.

And among the issues troubling civil servants is...tea.

More precisely, would there be enough to go round and help the nation recover from Armageddon?

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"The tea position would be very serious," notes one civil servant in the report. "With a loss of 75 per cent of stocks and substantial delays in imports and with a system of rationing, it would be wrong to consider that even 1oz per head per week (enough for about 12 cups) could be ensured."

It adds that "no satisfactory solution has yet been found" to the tea problem and calls for a plan to ensure a decent supply.

The report's writers suggest a huge effort to stockpile staple foods and prepare the nation for the aftermath of a nuclear strike.

Their shopping list includes 40,000 tons of condensed milk, 200,000 tons of oils and fats, 700,000 tons of raw sugar, and 800,000 tons of wheat and flour.

Another crucial ingredient for the UK's survival would be corned beef.

Officials recommend putting aside 240,000 tons of the canned meat, noting that it is "an ideal food for stockpiling" and praising its nutritional value.

The report from the Defence Plans Division, released by National Archives today, outlines what officials "assumed" would happen in the first two weeks of a nuclear war.

The top five targets of the Soviets, which were each expected to be hit by a 20-megaton hydrogen bomb, were London, Birmingham, Merseyside, Manchester and Clydeside, according to the document.

A further 14 less powerful atom bombs, similar to the one dropped on Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War, were likely to strike Tyneside, Teeside, Leeds, Sheffield, Hull, Derby, Southampton, Portsmouth, Bristol, Plymouth, Cardiff, Coventry, Belfast and Purfleet in Essex.

The report warns: "At least five million people would be killed at once and up to another 10million injured or affected by fall-out.

"The machinery of Government in such conditions would be crippled.

"The mechanisms of finance, commerce and industry - including transport and communications- would for a time be paralysed.

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"All the normal means of food distribution, based as they are upon the great towns, would vanish."

The National Archives yesterday admitted it had been fooled by a master forger.

It discovered in 2005 that 29 documents relating to alleged treachery during the Second World War were fakes. These include claims that the Duke of Windsor was a traitor and that British agents murdered SS boss Heinrich Himmler on the orders of Winston Churchill.

"Forensic examination confirmed that the suspected documents had been introduced to the files from 2000 onwards," said an archives spokesman.