Chicken-powered nuke

[avram]

Published on April 1st, but the Times of London swears it isn’t an April Fools joke:

According to the plans, the seven-tonne Blue Peacock bomb, with half the explosive force of the device that destroyed Nagasaki, was designed to stop the Red Army advancing across West Germany during the height of the Cold War.

Wrestling with the problem of how to keep the landmine at the correct temperature when buried underground, nuclear physicists at the Aldermaston nuclear research station in Berkshire proposed that live chickens would generate enough heat to ensure that the device could remain operational when buried for seven days. The birds were to be placed inside the casing of the bomb, given seed to keep them alive and prevented from pecking at the wiring.