Emergency alarms and Bells will go off, tv
and radio stations will cut off their programmes, the stock exchange will close, people will
go home, sporting events will be scrapped, newsreader will dress in black, RAF will be
grounded, parliament will be hastily reconvene - the whole country will come to a halt, it
will feel no less than a national emergency. And this all will begin with a single code-phrase
- LONDON BRIDGE IS DOWN. It's been 66 years since the death of a monarch
in Britain and accession of a new one. King George VI died in 1952 making Queen Elizabeth
II the new Queen and she has been holding the throne since then. At an age if 92, she is not only the longest
reigning monarch in the history of Britain but the most loved one too, three of last
four UK’s prime ministers were born AFTER she came to the throne and most of living
world population has seen only one queen on the throne for all of their life, which makes
her absence an unimaginable thought. As the law of nature dictates, her reign must
end with her unfortunate demise sometime in future and when this happens this will mark
as the biggest event of the 21st century. Britain will lose the last living link with
its former greatness and the country will use this occasion to revisit its glory once
again. The Royal Palace has been preparing for this
day since the 1960s, under the codename of "Operation London Bridge", and there have
been meetings several times a year behind closed doors to refine the details. The particulars of this grandest plan had
remained a closely kept secret until Sam Knight, a journalist for The Guardian newspaper, interviewed
dozens of people involved, with a promise of confidentiality. Everything down to the last minute is carefully
planned to give Queen Elizabeth a farewell of the kind the world has never seen, and
most probably will never see again. So, watch till the end and let me know your
thoughts in the comment section below. In finals hours, the queen will be with her
family and a team of doctors led by the queen's senior doctor, Professor Huw Thomas. He'll constantly monitor her health and also
consider what information should be made public. People will be notified about queen's health
at a regular interval until the last bulletin which may read something like this - "The
Queen's life is moving peacefully towards its close" as it happened in case of George
V. George V's doctor then injected him with 750
mg of morphine and a gram of cocaine - enough to kill him twice over - primarily to ease
the monarch's suffering and give him a peaceful quick death in time for printing presses of
the times, which rolled at midnight. It's expected the Queen's doctor will do the
same. The moment queen closes her eyes, Charles
will be the new king. The first official to get the news of Queen's
demise will be the queen's private secretary - Edward Young. He will then pass on the information via a
secure phone line to the Prime minister Theresa May. The demise of George VI was conveyed in a
code word, "Hyde Park Corner" to prevent switchboard operators from finding out. The civil servants are expected to use code-word
"London Bridge is Down" to convey the message. The Foreign Office's Global Response Centre,
based at a secret location in London, will communicate the news to the 15 governments
outside the U.K. where the Queen is also the head of state and the 36 other nations of
the Commonwealth for whom she has served as a symbolic figurehead. Governors-general, ambassadors, prime ministers
and other important people in the country and abroad will be informed first through
secure lines and it may take anywhere from some minutes to a few hours before the news
is made public and rest of the world come to know about the demise of their beloved
queen. I suppose it'll be a lot quicker than planned
because we now have something we didn't have back in 1952 - The Mighty Social Media. The Press Association news agency and all
other global newswire services will be informed simultaneously. As a formal announcement, a footman in mourning
clothes will emerge and post a black-edged notice to the gates of Buckingham Palace detailing
a 10-day mourning period that will commence. At the same time, the palace website will
be transformed into a single page showing the same notice on a dark background. At BBC, a cold-war era alarm system called
RATS, short for "radio alert transmission system", will be activated. Reporters and anchors have been rehearsing
the death of the Queen for over 30 years, substituting the name “Mrs. Robinson”. For many years, they have performed mock storylines
about the Queen Mother choking on a fishbone. These rehearsals will immediately be put into
action. BBC 1, 2 and 4 will be interrupted, programmes
will stop and after a pause, news will be broadcasted on all of them together. The newsreaders will be wearing black suits
and black ties and they'll inform the world of this unfortunate event in a depressed voice. This news will be repeated several times with
silent breaks in-between after which BBC may go completely silent for a few hours. There is a network of blue lights, called
"obit lights", installed at Britain's commercial radio stations. They are supposed to light up in event of
a National catastrophe and are tested once a week. When the news of Queen's demise breaks, these
lights will start flashing to alert the DJs to switch to the news in a few minutes and
to play inoffensive music in the meantime. There is already a prepared list of music,
made up of two categories of sad and saddest songs, available at every radio station to
reach for in times of sudden mourning. Online media outlets and newspapers already
have news stories about Queen's death, lengthy obituaries and articles lined up to publish
at a moment's notice. Major news organizations like the Guardian
and Times are said to have as much as 10-12 days of coverage ready to go. Experts on royal matters have already signed
contracts with media houses to speak exclusively on those channels. For those who'll be in the air, aircraft pilots
will announce the news to them and social media will do rest of the work. Flags of all possible description, including
beach flags, will be flown at half-mast and bells will toll. Great Tom at St Paul's is expected to ring
every minute for several hours while some others will sound for times equal to Queen's
age at her demise. This will be the beginning of 10 days of sorrow
and spectacle, which are officially numbered as D-Day, D+1, D+2...and so on till D+9. Both houses of parliament will be called within
hours of the monarch's death. People will go home early. If there's a home test match at Lord's, it'll
be scrapped. The Marylebone Cricket Club already holds
insurance for that matter. Rugby and hockey fixtures will be called off
too, while football matches may go ahead. The national theatre will close if the news
breaks before 4 pm. Big screens will be erected in provincial
cities so crowds can follow events taking place in London. Mayor across the country will mask their decorations
with black flags. News crews will assemble on a pre-agreed site
outside the palace. They have got a confidential instruction book,
a couple of inches thick, with every detail of what to do and what to not. TV schedules for all coming days will be changed. Comedy shows will be restricted on BBC and
satire will completely go off-air. Messages will pour in from presidents and
parliaments in the world. Many nations are expected to announce weeks
long mourning for the queen. Around 10,000 tickets will be sent for printing
for invited guests, the first of which will be required for the proclamation of the new
king. 18th Duke of Norfolk will be in charge and
Lord Chamberlain's office in the palace will the center of operations. Despite the plethora of planings, everything
will have to be signed off by the New King and Duke of Norfolk. Dignitaries coming from European Royal families
will be put up at the palace; the rest will stay at Claridge's Hotel. In the days that follow the announcement,
The Royal Mint will begin producing new coins with the new Monarch's image on them, for
issue upon his or her accession. The demise of the queen will also be the moment
of the accession of a new monarch. Both things will go hand in hand. There'll be diplomatic assembling in London
not seen since the death of Winston Churchill in 1965. Both houses will gather and MPs will swear
the oath of allegiance to the new sovereign. In the House of the Lords, the two thrones
will be replaced by a single chair and in the evening, Charles will make his first address
as head of state. At the same time, the queen's body will be
prepared to be kept in the throne room. The coffin must have a false lid, to hold
the crown jewels, with a rim at least three inches high - everything will be pre-calculated
and perfectly planned. But what if the queen dies abroad or when
she is in other parts of the country? There's nothing to be foreseen. In case of Queen dying overseas, a jet aircraft
from RAF's No 32 Squadron, known as the Royal Flight, will take off from the western edge
of London to bring her back, with a coffin on board. A "first call coffin" is always kept ready
by Royal undertakers in case of Royal emergencies. If she dies at Windsor Castle or Sandringham
House, the coffin would be moved by car to Buckingham Palace within a couple of days. The most elaborate plans are for what happens
if she passes away at Scotland, where she spends 3 months of the year. This will initiate a complicated series of
Scottish rituals in different cathedrals, at the end of which, the coffin would be transported
to Waverley Station and then taken by the Royal Train to London. People will line-up to meet their queen at
railway stations and throw flowers. A second train will run behind the first one
to clear the flowers and debris off railway tracks. In every scenario, the Queen’s body returns
to the throne room in Buckingham Palace. On D+1, the day after the Queen's demise,
the flags will go back up, and at 11 am, Charles will be proclaimed king at the Entrée room
of St James's Palace. He will carry out the first official duties
of his reign by swearing to protect the church in Scotland. The national anthem will be played on drums
wrapped in black cloth and trumpeters from the Life Guards will step outside to give
three blasts. The proclamations will only just be getting
started. Britain will be getting its new king for the
first time in the last 66 years and the world will be watching. This will be the time Britain will show its
lost glory for one more time. There'll be no fleet of bullet-proof limousines
and fancy cars for on the streets, rather, there'll be horses, carriages, and men wearing
cocked hats everywhere. A group of men, dressed up as characters of
some Shakespeare drama, will go by carriage to the statue of Charles I and read out the
news again. A 41-Gun salute will be fired from Hyde Park. Heralds with trumpets will then go around
spreading the news across the country. High Sheriffs will stand on steps of town
halls to announce the new sovereign as per local customs. People will be busy capturing a glimpse of
the Might British Empire in their latest smartphones. Things will very new to everyone, even for
the ones doing it. This will be the time for Charles to go out
and meet his people. A four-nation tour by the new king will immediately
kick-off. He'll stop-by in places to attend services
for remembrance of his mother and meet the leaders of the nation. Lots of it will be done walking around and
not being in a car. On D+4, that is the fifth day of queen's demise,
her coffin will be taken from the Throne Room in Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall,
to lie in state for public viewing for full 4 days. The procession from Buckingham Palace will
be a huge military parade expected to accommodate a million people on the streets of London. It's planned that the parade reaches Westminster
hall just on the hour so that the Big Ben starts to chime as the wheels come to a stop. King Charles will the first of expected half
a million mourners who'll pay homage to their beloved queen - a wondrous queue at least
9 Kms long, equipped with canteens, portable toilets, and police, will stream past the
queen for 23 hours a day. Everything inside the hall will be fantastically
well-ordered and designed to within a quarter of an inch. The coffin will be placed on a catafalque
draped in pink, the imperial crown, and the royal Sceptre will be fixed in place. The Sceptre holds "The Star Of Africa" - the
second largest cut diamond in the world. Four soldiers will stand vigil for 20 minutes
at a time, with two ready in reserve. The most senior of the four will stand at
the foot the coffin while the most junior at the head. An exact replica of the hall will be set up
somewhere nearby, so soldiers can practice their movement before they go on duty. The Queen's children and grandchildren - including
women for the first time - will arrive unannounced and stand vigil over their coffin as per tradition. The night before the funeral, there will have
been church services in towns across the UK, football stadiums will be opened for memorial
services if necessary. Before dawn on D+9, the funeral day, the jewels
will be taken off the coffin and cleaned in the silent hall. It'll the day of great sorrow. People will wake up to a day off, the stock
market will not open, shops will close or go to bank holiday hours, people will display
the picture of the queen in their windows. At 9 am, Big Ben will strike, the bell's hammer
will then be covered with a leather pad and it will ring out in muffled tones. Queen Elizabeth II will be the first British
monarch to have her funeral in the Westminster Abbey since George II in 1760. At 11 o'clock, the coffin will arrive at the
abbey doors, the country will fall silent. The clatter will stop, train stations will
cease announcements, buses will stop, drivers will get out at the side of the road, RAF
will be grounded - time will come to a halt. The archbishop will speak inside the Abby
with 2000 guests sitting. Broadcasters will refrain from showing royal
faces. When coffin emerges again, it'll be placed
on the green gun carrier and hauled by 138 junior sailors of the royal navy. From Hyde Park Corner, the hearse will go
23 miles by road to Windsor Castle, where the Queen's body will be buried. The royal household will be waiting for their
Queen standing on grass. The coffin will go inside, the cloister gates
will close and cameras will stop broadcasting. This will be the end of an era. This will be the start of turbulence. The Royalty will never be the same again.
The thumbnail says “1926-20XX”
How dare they?!
How can they be so smugly sure she won’t live to the year 2100 and beyond!