The Bantam of the Opera

No history of the use of poultry in warfare would be complete without a reference to the BLUE PEACOCK nuclear landmine, and to the chicken-powered heating scheme that the boffins came up with when it was pointed out to them that British-made steam-radio trigger circuitry was probably not up to the rigours of a European winter.

The chickens would be sealed inside the casing, with a supply of food and water; they would remain alive for a week or so. Their body heat would, it seems, have been sufficient to keep the mine's components at a working temperature.

Why a seven-tonne 10-kiloton nuclear landmine? To save Germany from Soviet invasion by rendering large parts of it uninhabitable with fallout.

Supposedly the mines were never deployed, and BLUE PEACOCK was cancelled in 1958 when Whitehall realised that German popular opinion would not look kindly upon a British plan to turn their country into a radioactive buffer zone vapourise fluffy little chickens. But they would say that... even if they'd just lost track of the secret locations. Where chickens have been buried, mutating, for the last half-century... competing for a restricted food supply... breeding for ever-greater ferocity and intelligence.

One can only hope that the chooks do not join forces with the Canaries in the Coal Mines, who have been breeding down there, and will one day find their way back to the surface -- flightless, blind, and very very angry.