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Series writer Deborah Haynes and producer James Shield have been answering your questions on our new podcast The Wargame.

Thank you to the hundreds of you who sent questions in. Scroll down to catch up on the team's answers - and you can watch the Q&A again in the stream at the top of the page.

James Shield says seeing how the participants operated in a tense scenario was fascinating.

"We normally never get a view into that world," he says.

"How do they respond to a crisis situation? How do they make decisions? What does the national security adviser do? What's the prime minister's role in all of it?

"In terms of the defence topics, I didn't quite realise that our defences were quite as weak as they are."

Deborah Haynes says she was surprised by the dilemmas that were thrown up in the game surrounding the impact and uncertainty of America's role in such a conflict.

"That throws up such a huge cluster of problems and challenges that really need to be talked about," she adds.

"That's one of the things we looked at for the podcast," says series producer James Shield.

"Imagine that you were you're kind of in the world of The Wargame. How do you find out?"

He said they looked at the emergency alert system, which readers may remember was launched in 2023.

"So that's probably the first sound of the UK at war that a normal civilian would hear, rather than an air raid siren."

"If the phones work," series writer and presenter Deborah Haynes interjects.

"Where's the resilience? In Ukraine there are these air raid sirens you hear when there's incoming drones and missiles. 

"The UK during the Cold War a lot of air raid (sirens) but goodness knows what's happened to them."

Deborah Haynes says the way national service is framed needs to be changed if this was to happen.

She points out Rishi Sunak's decision in the build-up to the last general election to get young people into national service "didn't go down very well".

"By contrast, the Nordic countries have really well established programs," she says.

"They're elite, people compete to get in, and it's not just military service, but different forms of sort of government service for a year before they carry on with the rest of their lives."

Haynes says she's reminded of a quote from an expert: "Armed forces fight battles, countries fight wars."

The series producer James Shield says the government launched a '' website on the day the 2024 General Election was called, which says people in Briton should keep essential supplies ready for an emergency. 

This includes bottled water, torches, tinned food and a wind up radio.

But Deborah Haynes points out this is only online and there are no public physical copies, so people would need to have read these in advance - before any war scenario.

She adds: "It's not about tin hats and things like that. It's just about sensible recommendations in case, you know, even like we saw in Spain when the power went out."

"No," says series writer and presenter Deborah Haynes, when asked if the UK could defend itself against onslaughts of drone attacks like Russia unleashes on Ukraine.

She adds: "It has capability and it's expanding that capability. So it hasn't it's not that it hasn't got a capability. 

"I think one of the big weaknesses is ballistic missiles - it's not a secret. The only way the UK can defend against a ballistic missile, which is the sort of massive great lump of metal that can go out of the Earth's atmosphere and descend down at great speed. are Type 45 destroyers, warships and we only have six of them, and not all of them are at sea."

Deborah Haynes says that Article 5 of NATO does not necessarily require force to be used if one nation is attacked. 

She explains that she did not originally appreciate this position. 

She explains: "What I hadn't appreciated was that all the members of NATO need to agree before article five can be invoked, and then, even if it is invoked, it doesn't mean that you automatically give weapons or send military force. 

"You can just send warm words."

The only time it has been used was after 9/11, and it wasn't the US that originated the use of this.

James Shield, producer of The Wargame, says it wouldn't necessarily be an obvious target.

He says the Russian team on the podcast are trying to "follow the Russian playbook" and that means adopting a different approach to war.

"War in the 21st century isn't all about missiles and bombs," he explains.

"It's also about cyber warfare and information warfare. It's about critical national infrastructure.

"You see that in all the different ways in which they've attacked Ukraine."

"No" is the simple, sobering answer from series writer and presenter Deborah Haynes.

"It's stated in the defence review, it literally says in black and white that we are not ready for war at the moment," she says.

It's not scaremongering, she says, to answer the question of the UK's military readiness.

Haynes speaks of the decline in military spending and capability since the fall of the Soviet Union.

"And so the armed forces that we have today, as a result of the past 30, 40 years of evolution and change and what is being argued now by those inside defence, and outside too, who have a grasp of history, is that reality has changed, the threat has changed, and therefore the armed forces need to reconfigure to confront that threat," she says.

James Shield explains that nothing in the podcast is not in the public sphere. 

He says: "You could read about it in reports, in documents, it's being covered in the news an awful lot. Also there's parliament. 

"There's nothing in here that isn't known."

Deborah Haynes points out some of this is also covered in the strategic defence review - watch her explain what's in it here...

James adds: "In a democracy, you deserve to know what the state of our defence is.

"If some people listen to this and learn something and there is a sense that society becomes a bit more resilient, then actually is absolutely benefiting our country, to the detriment of our enemies."