- Buckingham Palace has a secret codename which will be used to inform government officials when Queen Elizabeth passes away.
- The codename, "London Bridge is down," was leaked by Guardian reporter Sam Knight in 2017.
- Knight reported that the codename will be used to alert the British Prime Minister, as well as governments where the Queen is officially head of state, before alerting the rest of the world.
- It's possible the name was changed after the London Bridge terrorist attack in 2017, although this is not likely, Majesty magazine's managing editor Joe Little told Insider.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
Britain's Queen Elizabeth is the longest-reigning monarch in the world at the age of 93, and is beloved by many.
The inevitable, however, is that one day Her Majesty's reign will come to an end.
When that happens, Buckingham Palace has a strict set of rules it must follow in order to correctly inform government officials. One of these rules is the code name "London Bridge is down," which will reportedly be used to communicate the Queen's passing.
The code name was unveiled by Guardian reporter Sam Knight in 2017, who told how the phrase will be used to communicate the news with the Prime Minister and other governments across the world before alerting the public.
"The prime minister will be woken, if she is not already awake, and civil servants will say 'London Bridge is down' on secure lines," Knight wrote.
"From the Foreign Office's Global Response Centre, at an undisclosed location in the capital, the news will go out to the 15 governments outside the UK 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 — a face familiar in dreams and the untidy drawings of a billion schoolchildren — since the dawn of the atomic age."
Of course, if the Queen's death is quick or unexpected — like the passing of Princess Diana in 1997 — the news could break in an unplanned manner. Not to mention, the last time a monarch died — King George VI back in 1952 — there was no social media to contend with.
In a time where the arrival of royal babies are being announced via Instagram, there's nothing to say this couldn't also be used to inform news of a death — and hence speed up the process entirely.
Either way, when the news breaks, most staff members at the palace and other royal institutions will be instructed to go home. The royal court has a staff hotline for distributing information and instructions to employees for such events, Business Insider's Rob Price reported in 2017.
Since the code name was initially reported in 2017, it's possible it has been changed without the media's knowledge, particularly after the London Bridge terrorist attack in 2017, but no official plans have been acknowledged.
"The code name was never meant to be made public," Joe Little, managing editor at Majesty magazine, told Insider.
"But it was leaked by a journalist after a palace media briefing. I doubt that there are any plans to rename the project."
Buckingham Palace did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Read more:
7 times Queen Elizabeth was a royal rebel and broke her own protocol
12 hilarious photos of the Queen using public transport
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