Continuity of government
During and after the Cold War countries developed such plans to avoid (or minimize) confusion and disorder due to a power vacuum in the aftermath of a nuclear attack.
The federal parliament met with only the number of members necessary to form a quorum present on several occasions between March and June 2020, and resumed full sittings from August that year.
[8] Morrison's appointment as Minister for Health was approved in March 2020 by the National Security Committee of Cabinet as part of measures taken in response to the pandemic, but was not publicly announced.
[8] Canada built numerous nuclear bunkers across the country, nicknamed "Diefenbunkers" in a play on the last name of then-Prime Minister John Diefenbaker.
In 2016, the Privy Council Office made an agreement with the Department of National Defence to open two bunkers for government officials amid the ongoing North Korean nuclear crisis.
[10] The People's Republic of China (PRC) once operated Underground Project 131, intended to be the PLA headquarters in Hubei during a nuclear conflict.
Built due to the Sino-Soviet split during that portion of the Cold War, in 1981, the Project 131 site was turned over to the civilian authorities of the prefecture-level city of Xianning, where it is located.
The hardened headquarters of Force océanique stratégique (FOST), France's nuclear SSBN fleet, is at Brest, Finistère.
[13][14] As of December 2003 an underground national crisis management center was being constructed at an undisclosed location in the Judaean Mountains under Jerusalem.
The government has plans to move Parliament and essential staff to Devonport Naval Base in Auckland if such an event occurs.
The bunker is meant to accommodate the Norwegian royal family and the government in case of a nuclear/military attack on the nation, and also function as a wartime headquarters.
[22] KGB defector Colonel Oleg Gordievsky states that an organization, known as Directorate 15, was (or is) tasked with building and maintaining a network of hundreds of underground command bunkers for the Soviet leadership; this includes the vast site beneath Yamantau Mountain, which is often called Mezhgorye / Межго́рье after the closed city that is located nearby.
In spite of this, the primary command posts for the Strategic Rocket Forces remains Kuntsevo in Moscow and the secondary is the Kosvinsky Mountain in the Urals.
[24] The facility at Kosvinsky, finished in early 1996, was designed to resist US earth-penetrating warheads and serves a similar role as the American Cheyenne Mountain Complex.
[26] There is also said to be as many as 12 underground levels beneath the Russian capital of Moscow to protect the government in the Kremlin, known as the Main Directorate of special programs of the President (Glavnoye Upravlenie Specialnih Program: GUSP) (ru) the direct successor of the 15th Directorate of the KGB, which was established in 1977, GUSP is said to oversee, amongst other sites, a parallel track line alongside the Moscow metro, known as the 'Kremlin line' Metro-2 or D-6 to be used in an emergency.
Continuity of the national government was first threatened in late 1776, when British forces advanced toward the Continental capital at Philadelphia.
When British forces burned Washington in 1814, Secretary of State James Monroe received only a few hours' notice to remove the government records.
[35] In 1952, President Truman ordered all federal offices to develop their own continuity plans for the event of a civil defense emergency.
[38][39] Presidential Emergency Action Documents (PEADs) are draft classified executive orders, proclamations, and messages to Congress that are prepared for the President of the United States to exercise or expand powers in anticipation of a range of emergency hypothetical worst-case scenarios, so that they are ready to sign and put into effect the moment one of those scenarios comes to pass.
The designated survivor is an individual in the line of succession, chosen to stay away from events such as State of the Union addresses and presidential inaugurations.
