four-minute warning

English

Noun

four-minute warning (plural four-minute warnings)

  1. (idiomatic) A UK government public alert system in use during the Cold War to advise of an imminent nuclear attack.

Usage notes
  • Four minutes was not a precise time, but an approximation of the time between the confirmation of a Soviet nuclear missile attack and the impact of those missiles on their targets.
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.