Where London’s air raid sirens are located and how we would be warned of attack

With the threat of nuclear war a very real possibility, Londoners are wondering how they would be warned if they were in imminent danger. It is a threat that’s not felt this real since the Cold War and it is worryingly unclear as to how people will be told of a possible attack.

Vladimir Putin has put his nuclear controlling forces on high alert but how will Londoners know if they were ever to be at threat from a nuclear bomb? There used to be air raid sirens that would inform those in the capital but since the apparent end of the Cold War these were mostly removed.

They were positioned on top of tall buildings but it is thought that only very few remain. Around 1,200 sirens remain in the whole of the UK and these are mostly used to warn the public of severe flooding. They are also used for public warnings near gas or nuclear power plants, nuclear submarine bases, oil refineries and chemical plants.

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It is thought that all of these sirens could be adapted and used to warn of a nuclear threat if Britain was to become a victim of an attack. Close to London, Broadmoor Hospital still uses 13 sirens installed in 1952, more sirens that could be used to sound a nuclear alarm.

In London, very few sirens remain, some are still in place close to Westminster Abbey and others near London Bridge. These are some of the only ones known about that still exist in the capital. Instead, different measures will have to be used to warn the public of danger.

New methods include city wide text messages and emergency television broadcasts. The use of social media is also thought of as a viable option.

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This week, former British Army chemical and nuclear weapons expert Hamish de Bretton-Gordon told the Express: “In the depths of the Cold War, we were very prepared and there was a realisation an attack was a reality. We had hundreds of bunkers around the country.

“But fast forward to 2022 and a lot of the planning and infrastructure has gone into abeyance and crumbled.”

The receding threat of the Cold War meant that the UK’s nuclear defence infrastructure decommissioned.

He said he believed that the last few weeks have shown we are “closer to a Third World War than at any point since the Seventies” – the threat is tiny, he says, but one that we must be prepared for.

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