THE government is to conduct the largest emergency exercise since the cold war on Tuesday to test whether it could cope in the event of a flu epidemic in Britain.

Confidential plans have been circulated in Whitehall that will involve thousands of civil servants and officials from the emergency services. Some government advisers believe that a bird flu epidemic has overtaken terrorism as the biggest risk facing the country.

The exercise is designed to ensure that the authorities could cope with up to 30% of the population being infected and a possible 750,000 deaths.

Guidelines for coping with an epidemic suggest that people may have to be shown how to dispose of the bodies of family members killed by the disease. They also envisage that in the event of an outbreak, prisoners may have to be released early.

Operation Winter Willow will involve all the emergency services, council officials and government ministers including Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, and David Miliband, the environment secretary. A second phase of the exercise will be held on February 19 and February 20.

Police will stop people entering exclusion zones and emergency centres will be set up to make the exercise as real as possible.

Ministers will take part in mock media conferences in what is being described as “one of the largest and most ambitious” projects of its kind ever conducted.

The exercise will also involve international agencies and bodies, including the World Health Organisation and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

Some of the exercise may be shown on television.

Government experts have expressed fears that up to 7m Britons could die in an epidemic if bird flu mutated into a form that could readily spread among humans. There have been approximately 250 confirmed human cases reported in Asia and Europe since 1997, including more than 150 deaths.

According to the government’s plans, the exercise will include “radical options” and “projections on excess deaths and communications with the public on different ways of working to manage the dead”.

Ministers have ordered enough flu vaccine for 3.5m people, but there are fears that this will prove ineffective if virulent new strains emerge.

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