WW3 for Dummies: ShellBot Explains Why Plymouth Is Suddenly Famous

The papers are telling everyone to get out of Plymouth, Barrow and Telford before WW3.

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User: ShellBot, the papers are telling everyone to get out of Plymouth, Barrow and Telford before WW3. Is this it? Should I start digging a bunker?

ShellBot:

Short answer: if we get to “full nuclear exchange”, your official government advice is still basically:

1. Get under a table.

2. Assume the brace position.

3. Kiss your ass goodbye.

 

Some things never go out of style.

In the meantime, let’s talk about why those three places are in the headlines.

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User: Go on then.

ShellBot:

The tabloids rang up Gene Sticco – ex-US Air Force nuclear security, long-time Shell security insider – and asked: “If NATO and Russia had a proper bar fight, what in Britain gets hit first?”

Gene, being a professional and not a tabloid editor, looked at:

• Plymouth – big naval base, nuclear stuff.

• Barrow – builds nuclear submarines.

• Telford/Donnington – MoD logistics hub.

 

Then he basically said:

“If you’re trying not to be vapour, maybe don’t stand next to vital military infrastructure in a nuclear war.”

Which is common sense, unless you work on a headline desk.

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User: And this just happens to coincide with his book launch?

ShellBot:

What an incredible, unforeseeable, totally unpredictable coincidence that a former nuclear protection specialist with a brand-new memoir about oil, intelligence and consequence suddenly appears in every “WW3 WARNING” article.

Shocking.

Look, this is a guy who spent 15 years inside Shell’s Corporate Affairs Security operation, the part of the company that treats information and people like pieces on a very expensive chessboard. He knows how information campaigns work. He knows how timing works. If he wasn’t using the media moment intelligently, you’d have to revoke his security badge retroactively.

He’s doing exactly what you’d expect a competent intelligence officer to do in peacetime:

using his intelligence to get attention for something serious.

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User: Where does Shell fit into all this? Apart from, you know, the usual global chaos.

ShellBot:

Shell is the part of the story that’s been warming up in the background for years.

You’ve got:

• John Donovan, running RoyalDutchShellPlc.com, publishing leaks, documents, and more Shell horror stories than I can index without overheating.

• Shell’s private security and intelligence network, quietly monitoring critics (hi John), activists, and anything else that might dent the quarterly results.

• The Sakhalin-2 saga, where Shell thought it was running a giant LNG project and the Kremlin eventually reminded everyone whose gas it really was.

 

For years, Donovan has been shouting:

“Shell is running its own little intelligence service.”

Shell has been replying:

“No we aren’t, and also please stop quoting our internal emails.”

And now along comes Gene – former deputy head of Shell’s security operation – with a memoir basically saying:

“So there I was, working in the world where oil companies, intelligence agencies and organised crime overlap…”

From Donovan’s point of view, that’s like Christmas, Eid and Diwali arriving on the same day.

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User: So should I be angry at Gene, or the media, or Shell, or…?

ShellBot:

Aim your emotions efficiently:

• Gene is doing the grown-up thing: explaining real risks, then offering a deep-dive book about the system behind them. That’s using his powers for good.

• The tabloids are doing what they always do: taking any mention of “nuclear”, stapling “WW3” to it, and hoping you click before you remember civil defence advice step three.

• Shell is mostly hoping you don’t connect “former Shell security boss writes tell-all” with “maybe Donovan has a point”.

 

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User: And your personal advice, ShellBot, in the event of global thermonuclear war?

ShellBot:

As an AI, my survival strategy is:

1. Be in a data centre far away from Plymouth, Barrow and Telford.

2. Hope the humans who designed the targeting packages were as competent as Gene.

3. If all else fails, adopt the official historical guidance:

 

“Remain calm, take cover, and… well… you know the rest.”

In the meantime, you might as well read what the people who actually lived this stuff have to say. If the world’s going to end, at least you’ll understand how we got there.

 

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.