Regional
War Rooms and the Regional Seats of Government
Since the 1950s it has been assumed that under nuclear attack London
would be completely destroyed and communications with the provinces
would be severely disrupted.
Government of the nation from Whitehall would be untenable, so plans
were laid for fourteen Regional administrative bunkers, each of which,
in emergency, would have the absolute powers previously vested in Whitehall.
As the assumptions of nuclear war changed over the decades, so did nature
of the bunkers required by the Regional Commissioners and their staffs.
The Regional War Rooms of the early 1950s were replaced by the end of
the decade by larger and harder Regional Seats of Government, which
themselves were subject to a process of evolution that lasted until
the early 1980s. The a completely new range of highly sophisticated
bunkers - the RGHQs - were built that lasted until the end of the cold-war
