Documents detailing Government plans to rule from an underground bunker have been revealed.

At the height of the Cold War in the 1960s ministers were briefed on the location of a top-secret “check point” railway station in West London, from which they would be taken to a vast underground bunker known as Stockwell, where they would hope to sit out the onslaught if nuclear missiles were launched.

Among the confidential Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) files, released after nearly 50 years under lock and key, were draft notes from 1961 which would be handed to Ministers in the event of hostilities commencing.

One note read: “You are one of a number of key personnel selected for duty at an important war-time headquarters for the department.

“The location of the headquarters... and of the Check Point... are of the utmost secrecy and must not be revealed to anyone at all during or after the emergency.”

Staff selected were told to collect any personal effects and proceed immediately to Addison Road station – now Olympia – in West London, where a train would take them to the clandestine Government HQ beneath Corsham in Wiltshire, with capacity for 3,600 key representatives from government, the armed forces and scientific institutions.

A top-secret JIC document from 1964 entitled, “Probable course of general war after a nuclear exchange”, said: “Should the Soviet Union strike first, the scale of attack would be currently some 330 nuclear weapons.

“An attack of this magnitude would cause the United Kingdom to cease to exist as a corporate political entity.”

Even if an Allied counter-strike could be organised, the document explained, enough of the Russian offshore military would probably survive to carry out strikes against “those sections of the United Kingdom still capable of supporting life”.

The JIC recommended that preparations be “accelerated” to complete work on the secret underground government headquarters, which was to be kept secret with “cunning” cover stories and decoys. An additional underground base codenamed Quadrangle was also proposed, to “take charge of the central direction of Government if London and Stockwell were wiped out”.

No detail was overlooked in the secret plans, which included a code of conduct for those living in the bunker while war raged overhead. A welfare officer would be provided for those feeling the stress of the nuclear holocaust, although it was noted that: “All staff have welfare problems in present circumstances and… what the welfare officer will be able to do is very limited.”

In 1963, the JIC also prepared a list of probable targets of Soviet nuclear strikes, which, it predicted, would focus on British medium bomber bases in East Anglia, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire before turning to the obliteration of London and other major cities.

The document, classified as “Eyes Only”, also warned that the nuclear exchange “would not be the end of the war”.

Responding to intelligence reports coming out of the Soviet Union, the JIC informed the Government that: “In particular envisage ground forces advancing into Western Europe at the outset of general war.”

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