Operation London Bridge

Operation London Bridge is a codename given to the plan for what will happen in the several days after the passing of Elizabeth II. The plan exists since the 1960s and is updated several times each year according to many factors including Britain’s economic situation, the throne heritage and much more. It involves planning from several government entities like the Church of England, British Armed Forces, Metropolitan Police Service, Royal Parks of London and the media and press. Some decisions regarding the plan were even made by the queen herself.
The phrase London Bridge is down will be announcing the death of the queen to the prime minister and key personnel which in turn set this plan into motion.
Media
Every British radio station has a blue LED somewhere in a visible place of the studio. This gives the DJ a heads up that the news of the royal family member’s death is on the way. They won’t yet know that it’s the queen but the protocol is still to switch to a pre-prepared playlist of somber music in the anticipation of the announcement. The BBC as the British national public service broadcaster gets its heads up from a system put in place during the 2nd world war as a way to warn people of incoming missiles. Before the on screen announcement the presenter will switch to a black tie that the station keeps on hand just for this purpose. Then BBC1 will show a collage of her portraits and play the national anthem simultaneously. The network will then begin this sad announcement. “This is BBC Television News. Buckingham Palace has just announced the death of the Queen.” After this somber announcement TV stations will air tons of premade footage just for this occasion. The most famous royal family experts have signed deals with various TV networks to be on the airings after this sad loss.
The Cost
British law states that the funeral for a reigning monarch is paid for entirely by state. While we haven’t seen a funeral for a reigning monarch in over 50 years, Princess Diana’s funeral viewed by 2,5 billion people worldwide had a direct cost of 10 million dollars and that counts just funeral expenses. The bank of England has over 3.6 billion individual bank notes in circulation each of which displays the image of the queen. Each note costs around 5 cents to produce so reminting the entire currency stock would cost close to 200 million dollars. The UK however isn’t the only country that would need to reprint their currency. Worldwide there are a lot of countries that have some form of the queen displayed on their currency. There is no definite number but conservative estimates to reprint this amount of money hover around 1 billion dollars. The last added cost is the day on which the queen died will be declared a national holiday which will in turn cause a loss of productivity across England of over 3 Billion dollars.