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.
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