'Corpses and Other Remains': Body Disposal in Lancashire During the Cold War

Evil shall go forth from nation to nation, and a great whirlwind shall be raised up from the coasts of the earth. And the slain shall be at that day from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; they shall not be lamented, neither gathered, nor buried; they shall be dung upon the ground. — Jeremiah 5.

Death: it’s a funny thing. We all know it’s coming to us one day, and most of us have an idea of what we’d like to be done with our bodies once the Grim Reaper has mowed us down with his scythe. For many, religious traditions bring comfort, with the promise of a lovely relaxing afterlife to follow this manic one. Others might like to have their ashes scattered in a favourite spot. Very few people, however, would be likely to opt for the send-off the UK government had planned during the early 1980s, which would have come into effect should nuclear war have broken out and the country been littered with millions of corpses in urgent need of disposal…

During the later Cold War, the government had finally taken their blinkers off and realised that nuclear attack victims would need far more than a cup of tea and a sticking plaster to make them better. Gone were the days when it was believed that ‘a period of rest with plenty to drink’ were all that was required to treat radiation sickness, as was claimed in a 1963 St. John Ambulance training manual. By the 1980s, it was at last acknowledged that most victims would be beyond any help at all. Experts predicted millions dead within the first few minutes of a nuclear war, with hundreds of thousands more perishing as a result of radiological effects, exposure or crime, long after the bombs had stopped falling. Faced with the unpleasant prospect of rife disease, rampant vermin and public rebellion should bodies be left like ‘dung upon the ground’, local authorities needed to make plans if they wanted to keep control of what would be an already crumbling society.

As a county crammed to the rafters with nuclear targets, Lancashire had greater need than many for adequate planning. When the alarmist Thatcher government compelled UK county councils to draw up their War Plans in the early 1980s, Lancashire’s civil servants leapt on the task with gusto, producing a whopping great tome to rival War and Peace. Section 8 tackled the most gruesome subject of all: Disposal of Human Remains. Neatly word-processed and written in brutally businesslike language, the document dedicates its very first paragraph to quashing any hopes that conventional funeral traditions would survive a nuclear attack:

A major war emergency would result in such large numbers of casualties that the accepted practices and formalities for burial and cremation would have to be abandoned in favour of a system for the effective handling of large numbers of dead.

So, no sentimental service followed by a buffet, then? No booze-fuelled wake for tipsy mourners to fondly chuckle at memories of their dearly departed? Alas, no. Individuality has no place after nuclear war; one corpse is very much like another, each one identical in its ability to spread disease and pestilence. As such:

Emergency [burial] procedures should use mass disposal methods to ensure the greatest economy in the use of time, supplies and labour.

If the 1983 War Plan were to be believed, far from a chaotic, morally and physically repugnant debacle undertaken by forced labourers, the mass burial of thousands of bodies would be as smooth, efficient and timely as a German train, carried out by skilled, trained professionals. Collection parties would travel the local area searching for bodies; temporary mortuary staff would identify, register and prepare the deceased for burial, and disposal teams would carry out dignified, thoughtful funeral services. In theory.

Heading up this fantasy band of dedicated employees would be the District Burials Officer, an unfortunate sap who during peacetime would have held the rather more cheery job title of Parks and Recreation Officer. With his experience in maintaining parks and green spaces, this officer was deemed to be the ideal candidate for identifying the top mass burial sites in his district. Furthermore, the recreation aspect of his peacetime role meant he had ample knowledge of the locations of sports stadiums, leisure centres and entertainment venues – sites possessing wide open spaces and therefore ideally suited for use as temporary mortuaries, where bodies could be stowed before burial.

Shortly before the outbreak of nuclear war, the Burials Officer would receive a summons to join his fellow District Controllers at their regional government headquarters, where they would retreat into a bunker to tackle the hefty stack of administration tasks that would accompany the end of the world. The pre-attack checklist that the District Burials Officer (DBO) had to tick off reads like the to-do list from hell. Here are some of his responsibilities, as detailed in the War Plan:

‘Obtain resources for disposal of human remains, including body bags.’ — The environmental scourge that is single use plastic doesn’t seem to have much troubled Lancashire’s war planners. ‘Stout plastic bags’ abound in their lists of required equipment for human remains disposal, including, horrifically, for use as shrouds. 2,000 ‘large plastic bags’, housed during peacetime in government buffer depots, would upon the outbreak of hostilities be shipped to each mortuary site, ready to be ‘wrapped as tightly as possible’ around naked, decaying bodies, as is infamously described in the notorious public information film, Protect and Survive.

‘Following identification and registration,’ the War Plan goes on to instruct, ‘the body will be prepared for final disposal, [during which] clothing and personal possessions will be removed and passed [on for] subsequent storage.’ These possessions and items of clothing, far too valuable in a post-attack world to be dumped in a mass grave with their original owners, would be stowed in yet more ‘stout plastic bags’, to be guarded under armed surveillance and then doled out to desperate, ragged survivors in return for forced manual labour.

‘Establish contact with HM Coroners, heaIth authorities and funeral directors. Identify local residents with experience of pathology or burials and cremation who could be co-opted to assist with the disposal of human remains.’ — Would you apply for a job if you knew that it meant you’d be compelled to collect, identify and bury bodies after a nuclear attack? Probably not. Thousands of unfortunate employees, however — from funeral home receptionists to coroners — would, in a time of heightened nuclear tension, have received a summons to duty. Anybody with even the vaguest knowledge of burials and bodies would be on the DBO’s headhunt list for ‘voluntary employment’, regardless of whether they wanted the job or not.

It’s likely that the first that these people knew of their assignment would be in the form of an ominous message detailing ‘where to report after attack through their computerised monthly payslips’ during the build-up to war. Talk about spoiling the pay day excitement. Assuming the ‘volunteers’ – and the location they were to report to, for that matter – survived multiple thermonuclear blasts, they would be lumbered with a myriad of revolting tasks, varying in strenuousness dependent on their experience and qualifications, in return for meagre food rations and first pickings over belongings of the dead.

As in any workplace, the Human Remains Disposal Section would have a staffing hierarchy. Top of the ladder would be temporary mortuaries, ‘staffed by personnel from HM coroners, health authorities and private sector funeral directors.’ More familiar with desks than diggers, these blue-collar workers would have the dubious honour of identifying corpses and completing the necessary paperwork, which would likely be filed away in a bunker and never set eyes on again. Identification of bodies could be ‘facilitated by the following means:

a) Personal identification by a relative or close friend; b) From personal possessions, contents of wallet or jewellery, etc.; c) By distinguishing features [such as] scars, warts, tattoos, etc.’

Manual labour such as the collection of corpses and digging of mass graves would be undertaken by survivors summoned to undertake reconstruction work by crackling radio broadcasts or by terrifying bands of armed government vigilantes. With money obsolete, payment for labour would be food, shelter or clothing. Punishment for refusal to work would be reduced or stopped rations, ‘exposure to public disapproval’ – akin to the medieval use of stocks – or even execution, most likely by firing squad.

In light of the obvious drawbacks of accepting a voluntary role with the Human Remains Disposal Squad, the Lancashire War Plan advised that District Burial Officers should repeatedly emphasise the ‘morale boosting’ benefits of the task at hand. It’s difficult to understand exactly how shovelling up the charred remains of one’s family, friends and neighbours would provide a sense of positivity and wellbeing in the dark days following nuclear war. It’s more likely that debilitating symptoms of shock, hysteria or even total mental collapse would plague labourers and render them physically unable to work; subsequently, rations would be given to more willing survivors. Exposed to the radioactive landscape without means for survival, it wouldn’t be long before an uncooperative volunteer wasted painfully away and joined the other corpses in a mass grave. Perhaps it would be better to face the firing squads and end the misery quickly…

‘Ascertain the availability of essential resources such as specialist digging equipment and transport.‘ — Farmers of 1983, lock up your prized tractors! According to the Lancashire War Plan, the build-up to nuclear war would have seen the DBO and his cronies traversing the county’s countryside and industrial districts, on a mission to nab whatever digging or shovelling machinery they could lay their hands on. Each party of casualty collectors was to be allocated a lorry or van to fill with the ‘corpses or other remains’ (severed limbs, etc.) that they found amongst the rubble; in particularly decimated areas untraversable by lorries, old-fashioned hand carts of the type used during the Great Plague would be used to collect bodies. Meanwhile, burial parties would shovel corpses into reeking pits with requisitioned bulldozers and JCBs. Or that was the theory, anyway.

In reality, burial machinery would sit idle and rusting in the post-nuclear landscape, their petrol having been requisitioned by the armed forces pre-attack and diverted to more pressing areas, such as fuelling military vehicles, powering emergency generators in makeshift hospitals and keeping the lights on in the Prime Minister’s cosy bunker. Preservation of survivors would always take priority over the dignity of the dead. Millions of corpses, therefore, would remain unburied across Lancashire, decaying and spreading disease on a scale not seen since mediaeval times.

But could corpses not be cremated, thereby disposing of the deceased and eradicating disease in one fell swoop? Unfortunately not, according to the War Plan, for ‘cremation needs large quantities of fuel to provide the necessary heat to consume a body. Mass cremation [would not] be a practical proposition post nuclear attack, when fuel would be better employed for other purposes.’

Ultimately, hand-carts pushed by exhausted survivors – themselves suffering from extreme shock and crippled by radiation sickness – would be the only means of collecting corpses. Massive burial pits would also have to be dug by hand. The question is, what would be fuelling these forced labourers in a world devoid of food, hygiene and hope?

‘Identify non public sector resources which could be utilised, including hygiene requisites and stationery.’ — Prior to the Bomb dropping, the DBO and the stooges at his disposal – police, armed forces, reservists, etc. – would have gone on a massive shopping spree to ensure their soon-to-be mortuary sites were well-stocked with supplies. Not that they’d be paying for any of their loot, of course. Pharmacies, chemists and other healthcare providers would be ransacked to provide the personal protective equipment and hygiene supplies that corpse collection squads would be in dire need of. Ironmongers, DIY stores and garden centres would be stripped of spades, shovels and wheelbarrows, all essential tools of the gravedigger’s trade.

Other requisitioning squads would pay a visit to newsagents and post offices to collect some much-needed stationery supplies; equipment lists printed in Lancashire’s War Plan state that each corpse collection party and temporary mortuary would require 40 felt tipped pens, 120 biros, 2 bottles of indelible ink (for marking foreheads of corpses) and 2000 luggage labels for tagging bodies. It’s to be hoped that W.H.Smith would have had a large delivery prior to being requisitioned.

‘Check the availability of premises and sites earmarked for use as temporary mortuaries and mass burial sites. Consult the present occupiers as to their availability and preparedness.’ — Unbeknownst to the people that managed them on a day to day basis, hundreds of sites across Lancashire would, in the run up to nuclear war, have received a phone call from the District Burials Officer. During this rather awkward chat, the DBO would break the news that the property in question had been earmarked for use as a morgue or mass grave, and that the authorities would shortly be descending to turf out the current occupants, in readiness for the arrival of thousands of rotting corpses.

Like house hunters on an apocalypse special of Location, Location, Location, government planners tasked with selecting suitable sites had to make sure that their chosen property ticked multiple boxes. A mortuary had to possess a ‘large area of covered floor space’, ‘provision for sanitation and water’, and had to be ‘located centrally to the population with reasonable road access’. Worryingly, mortuaries would also require stringent security, including ‘rooms that [could] be locked, to ensure the security of all corpses’. Exactly why an already dead person would need to be guarded by an armed bouncer is a mystery.

The vast majority of premises chosen to act as temporary mortuaries were schools, supplemented by churches, sports clubs, multi-storey carparks and motor factories, to name but a few. Blackpool Zoo’s large animal enclosures were also earmarked for use; the animals who usually occupied them would most likely be put to death in the run up to nuclear attack, the argument being that surviving in a nuclear wasteland is tough enough, without throwing an escaped pack of ravenous lions into the mix.

But what about the mass grave sites? These included allotments, school playing fields, country estates and even a carpet factory in Burnley! Unfortunately for football fans, various stadiums — including Morecambe’s former ground, Christie Park and Blackpool’s Bloomfield Road — would also be commandeered, dug up and filled with corpses who’d hold season tickets for the rest of time. Preston North End would be unavailable to house bodies, as it had already been designated for use as a giant cess pit for the people of Preston’s poop in Section 7 of the War Plan.

The gruesome thoroughness applied to the collection and storage of bodies is sadly absent when it comes to Lancashire War Plan‘s guidance for ceremonies – religious or otherwise – that would be performed over mass graves. Skirting around the subject like a nuclear attack survivor trying to dodge fallout, the war planners suggested that a ‘burial ceremony [should] be carefully organised into a Form of Service agreeable to the representatives of the various churches and creeds involved.’ Several problems of mushroom cloud proportions arise here. Firstly, it’s doubtful that the civil servants hunkering down in the council bunker and tasked with planning said ceremonies would have had much religious, spiritual or ceremonial training. How, therefore, they were supposed to know how to ‘carefully organise’ a service in keeping with centuries-old traditions is a mystery. Secondly, the method by which collection parties were expected to discern the ‘church, denomination or creed’ of the charred remains they found simply by looking at them is not specified. Far from the respectful sorting of the dead into groups by faith for burial, bodies would simply have been lumped in together, irrespective of religion or human decency.

Ultimately, Lancashire’s plan for the disposal of human remains after nuclear war focused neither upon the dignity deserved by victims, or on the need for hygienical body disposal to maintain a shred of sanitation. Maintenance of public morale, instead, was the oft-repeated priority throughout post-attack planning. While their rotting relatives littered the landscape, angry survivors were more likely to rebel against authorities, refuse to cooperate with compulsory reconstruction work and engage in violent crime. Better to cram corpses into pits far from the eyes of survivors, who could all the sooner turn their attention to the rebuilding of a world that never needn’t have been wrecked in the first place.

In a Lancashire destroyed by nuclear war, ‘human corpses and other remains’ would be easy to find. Compassion, dignity and any scraps of human decency would be somewhat more elusive. In fact, it would be a miracle if any remained at all.

Rebecca Shaw

Sources

Lancashire War Plan, Lancashire County Council, 1983.

Images from Protect and Survive: Casualties.

Film still from Threads, 1984, BBC.

The Authorised Manual of First Aid, St. John Ambulance, 1963.