I was drinking my tea this morning and browsing the web when I stumbled across the most bizarre thing I've seen in a while.
Dmitry Rogozin, a former Russian Deputy PM, revealed a list of initial UK targets in a potential nuclear strike. Nothing that unusual in the context of the last few years and it seems pretty much lifted from UK Ministry of Defence contractors list.
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Places you would expect to see I guess, but one stands out to me as fairly insane- Fivemiletown. The other target Northern Ireland is Belfast (which has a number of weapons systems factories).
Now, I know the place prety well, as that's where I grew up. My father was the vet there and we lived in near the town until I was about 19. Its on the Fermanagh/Tyrone border, and its very agricultural. What Americans might call a Podunk town really; a sleepy place of maybe 1300 people. A village more than a town. A place of no significance, I freely admit, and I grew up happy there. A place so dull Tom Paulin, who stopped there once. wrote a poem about how dull it was
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When we lived there there were two main businesses in the town; the creamery (dairy being the main business in the area) and the garment factory; Cooneen Fabrics. For years the ups and downs of the economy would put both in mortal danger and large layoffs would have a severe impact on the town's wellbeing. Rehiring was a Godsend. The creamery eventually went under. Garment making being under threat always by the movement of factories to the Far East in order to take advantage of cheap labour, Cooneen Fabrics was often on the verge of closure. Again, a tiny place very dependent on a small number of rather small businesses. And the Troubles are not helping either.
Now I find out, after years of living elswhere, that Cooneen Fabrics eventually became Cooneen Defence; surviving by making military and police uniforms. Makes sense I suppose.
You can look at it on google maps- its still a fairly small factory.
Apparently this is enough to warrant a nuclear strike. I really don't understand this. If it were to come to that, we'd be in a world were uniforms won't matter much. Is this just a copy-paste job for propaganda? Would this seriously be on a strike list formulated by actual military men who knew what they are doing? From a cynical point of view it seems like a waste of a warhead.
I used to have nightmares as a kid in the 80s (and a waking fear too) of an ICBM falling on my house. Most kids in the Western world did to a greater or lesser extent; Eastern bloc too. Then I grew up and realised this was silly, considering where I lived (still understanding that war would be civilisation ending). Now apparently my childhood nightmares are more real than they were at the height of the cold war.
