The address for Her Majesty was written by Whitehall officials at the height of the Cold War, as the US and Soviet Union jostled to become the ultimate global superpower. The document, released by the Government under the 30-year rule in 2013, was drawn up as part of a war-gaming exercise in the spring of 1983, which worked through potential scenarios. It came in the same year that US President Ronald Reagan enraged Moscow with his denunciation of the Soviet Union as the "evil empire" and the text of the Queen's address written to be broadcasted at midday on Friday, March 4, 1983 would prepare the country for World War 3.

It reads: "The horrors of war could not have seemed more remote as my family and I shared our Christmas joy with the growing family of the Commonwealth.

"Now, this madness of war is once more spreading through the world and our brave country must again prepare itself to survive against great odds.

"I have never forgotten the sorrow and the pride I felt as my sister and I huddled around the nursery wireless set listening to my father's [George VI's] inspiring words on that fateful day in 1939.

"Not for a single moment did I imagine that this solemn and awful duty would one day fall to me.

"But whatever terrors lie in wait for us all, the qualities that have helped to keep our freedom intact twice already during this sad century will once more be our strength."

Striking a personal note, the script continues: "My husband and I share with families up and down the land the fear we feel for sons and daughters, husbands and brothers who have left our side to serve their country.

"My beloved son Andrew is at this moment in action with his unit and we pray continually for his safety and for the safety of all servicemen and women at home and overseas.

"It is this close bond of family life that must be our greatest defence against the unknown.

"If families remain united and resolute, giving shelter to those living alone and unprotected, our country's will to survive cannot be broken."

The speech concludes by saying the Queen's message to the nation was "simple".

It adds: "As we strive together to fight off the new evil, let us pray for our country and men of goodwill wherever they may be. God Bless you all.

In the war games exercise, Orange bloc forces representing the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies launched a chemical weapon attack on the UK.

Blue forces representing NATO retaliated with a "limited-yield" nuclear strike, hoping to force Orange to initiate a peace process.

But, had this hypothetical scenario actually happened, Britain would have also been put on alert along with other countries in NATO to expect an imminent nuclear missile attack from the USSR.

There were several tense moments between 1946 and 1991, where the possibility of a nuclear attack looked more than possible from both nations, but arguably nothing came closer than the period of unrest between 1981 and 1983.

Soviet fears were originally born out of World War 2, when US President Harry Truman kept a secret from Joseph Stalin about the true force of his nuclear weapons that were later dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As a result, the Kremlin scrambled to arm itself with a nuclear arsenal capable of matching that of their new rivals.

By May 1981, these fears had reached an all-time as Soviet leader General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and KGB chairman Yuri Andropov bluntly announced that the US was preparing a secret nuclear attack on the USSR.

Mr Andropov announced the KGB would begin Operation RYaN (Nuclear Missile Attack) the largest, most comprehensive intelligence operation in Soviet history.

Consequently, mass paranoia set in among Soviet leaders regarding the US plans, as memories of Nazi Germany's surprise invasion of the USSR still haunted them.

These fears were not helped by the actions and rhetoric of Mr Reagan.

Asides from his evil empire comments, he also announced a new medium-range nuclear missile to be introduced into Europe Pershing II which could reach the Soviet Union from West Germany in six minutes.

He then sparked a period of psychological warfare, where US fighter jets would test the reactions of the USSR by briefly flying into their airspace.

Just two weeks later, Reagan announced one of the most ambitious and controversial components to this strategy, the Strategic Defence Initiative, popularly known as Star Wars.

While Reagan portrayed the initiative as a safety net against nuclear war, leaders in the Soviet Union viewed it as a definitive departure from the relative weapons parity of Detente and an escalation of the Arms Race into space.

At the start of September, the psychological warfare had dire consequences when Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down by a Soviet interceptor when it entered Soviet airspace.

All 269 passengers and crew aboard were killed, including Congressman Larry McDonald, a sitting member of the United States House of Representatives from Georgia and President of the anti-communist John Birch Society.

On September 26, 1983, the Soviet orbital missile early warning system (SPRN) reported a single intercontinental ballistic missile launch from the US, believed to be an act of retaliation.

Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, who many have since hailed a hero for saving the world from complete destruction, was on duty that night.

While many in the bunker that night believed the launch to be a genuine retaliation from the US, one man kept a cool head.

Despite three warnings of an imminent attack, Petrov remembered his nuclear training, knowing the US would launch more than three rockets in the event of a real nuclear war.

The timing of NATOs yearly Able Archer exercise could not have come at a worse time for the USSR.

In November, Able Archer 83, an exercise to simulate nuclear war, was carried out by NATO forces.

While it was simply a communications test, paranoid Soviet agents believed this was exactly how the US would mask a real attack.

The Soviet politburo believed their only chance of surviving a NATO strike was to preempt it, and so readied its nuclear arsenal.

The CIA reported activity in the Baltic Military District and in Czechoslovakia, and it determined that nuclear-capable aircraft in Poland and East Germany were placed "on high alert status with readying of nuclear strike forces".

Days later, on November 11, 1983, Soviet fears were ended upon learning the Able Archer exercise had finished thanks to double agent Oleg Gordievsky.

Mr Reagan would later comment: "I don't see how they could believe that but it's something to think about."

Despite this, many historians including Thomas Blanton, Director of the National Security Archive, and Tom Nichols, a professor at the Naval War College, have since argued that Able Archer 83 was one of the times when the world has come closest to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

The Soviet Union and the US later negotiated a reduction in the number of nuclear weapons, as the Cold War came to an end, but it was Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) that would ultimately stop the pair from an all-out nuclear war.

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Queens WW3 speech exposed amid imminent nuclear threat: Let's pray for our country - Express