How Scottish independence would threaten Britain’s defence

THE GARELOCH seems a tranquil place. At its northern tip there is a tiny village with a pub, a café and a welding shop. But the ramshackle camp on the loch’s eastern shore, whose signage exhorts that there be “nae bombs, anywhere!”, hints at its unusual nature. An exploration of the surrounding countryside reveals another—a density and attentiveness of police jeeps that is somewhat higher than average. A pair of squad cars arrives to check on your correspondent within half an hour of his arrival in the area.

Their scrutiny is warranted, for the Gareloch is home to Britain’s nuclear weapons. A rotating fleet of submarines is stationed at Her Majesty’s Naval Base, Clyde, a streak of buildings that runs along the loch’s eastern shore. The policemen, who work for the Ministry of Defence (MoD), explain that the base, also known as Faslane, is just one component of the infrastructure in the area, a network of roads, bunkers and jetties all focused on a singular mission: keeping several megatonnes of atomic weaponry in the Atlantic at all times.