Blue Peacock

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a Whitehall clock, a typewriter, a chicken)
Nineteen fifty-seven. A classified British problem. A classified British solution.

[Verse 1]
The plan is to bury nuclear landmines across the North German Plain
so that if the Soviets come through, we can make the ground unusable.
Seven tonnes each. Ten kilotons. Buried, or dropped in a lake.
And the engineers identify one difficulty with the design:
the electronics will not survive a German winter underground.
The detonator gets too cold. The whole thing simply fails.

[Chorus]
So they proposed CHICKENS! Live chickens, sealed inside!
With enough seed to last a week, and water, in the casing,
because a chicken runs at forty-one degrees and gives off heat,
and a chicken is, and I quote the actual thinking, a biological heater!
Blue Peacock! A nuclear mine! Kept warm! By poultry!
It was a real proposal. It was costed. It was drawn up.

[Verse 2]
Two prototypes were built. The project got to the point
of an order for ten, before it was cancelled in 'fifty-eight,
on the grounds — not the chickens, the chickens were fine —
on the grounds that detonating ten-kiloton weapons on the soil
of an ally you are ostensibly defending presents, and I quote,
"political problems." That was the objection. Not the birds.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
And it stayed secret for forty-six years, and when it was declassified,
on the first of April, two thousand and four, the National Archives
had to issue a statement saying it was not an April Fool,
that it was genuine, that the chickens were in the document,
and the historian who released it said, memorably:
"The Civil Service does not do jokes."

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(the typewriter, one final key)
Seven days of seed.
That was the specification. Seven days of seed.