editor
hiraethified
I think your best bet would have been to be directly under the oncoming missile.
Threads (1984 BBC post-nuclear film set in Sheffield)
- Thread starter mancboy
- Start date
T & P
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Fuck, I don't consider myself a handyman but I reckon if I was really desperate to cross the channel I could fashion myself a basic raft or find a useable boat stored in in a garage. Most coastal towns must have hundreds stored away, their owners long dead and gone.
Sigmund Fraud
893 all the way.
Anyone thinking of doing a runner to avoid the pending nuclear holocaust might not have got very far. None other than Ken Livingston asked the national civil defence committee in the 80s what plans were in place for refugees leaving London just before kick off. The short and stark reply was anyone trying to leave the smoke would be turned around...and if they didn't comply they would be shot. Its really great when you pay in taxes for nuclear weapons you didn't want and then find that you'll be shot by an army you also paid for when you try to avoid them.
That plan is still in place. Applies to situations where the public may be infected with a biological weapon, or contaminated in some other way too.
Actually, containment of the public in a chem/bio/nuclear event is one of the scenarios that are included in Glastonbury Festival's disaster planning. I once took part in a Fire Service decontamination exercise on site during the festival which involved waiting around for ages and then having a cold shower from a fire appliance water supply.
sleaterkinney
Well-Known Member
I'm reading Command and Control by Eric Schlosser at the moment, it's a good read about nuclear weapons and how close we could have come to an accidental detonation, also about how we relied on them to keep the commies at bay in the cold war.
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
I've seen that on sale around the place and always thought "nah". . . you may have convinced me otherwise.
Even dryer, from my bookshelf: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/artic...rre/the-command-and-control-of-nuclear-forces
pogofish
Testicle Hairstyle
No, the UK War Plan that informed Threads was deactivated soon after the end of the Cold War, 1992 IIRC.
They replaced it with a different one of course for just the reasons you mention but the way they virtually eliminated the Civil Defence aspects of the previous plan for cost-savings suggests it could be very different - except that ordinary people still get the shitty end of an even shorter stick!
likesfish
You can't park here sir
Tbf enough nukes would hit the uk to make being a refugee or worrying about civil defence irrelevant
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-477163/How-Cold-War-turned-Britain-Armageddon.html
Around 400 megatonnes were coming are way
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-477163/How-Cold-War-turned-Britain-Armageddon.html
Around 400 megatonnes were coming are way
pogofish
Testicle Hairstyle
Yup. I think they had given-up hope of anything but a tiny survival by some time in the 1960s, which is when the plan was first modified significantly - and again in the 80s but by then, most authorities only considered it window-dressing by the Thatcher Govt.
I always liked how Aberdeenshire Council deactivated their old sunken bunker as required under the new plan and built themselves a nice new "secure" one, with a bloody great double glazed window in it to watch the advancing devastation - Its now their IT training centre!
I always liked how Aberdeenshire Council deactivated their old sunken bunker as required under the new plan and built themselves a nice new "secure" one, with a bloody great double glazed window in it to watch the advancing devastation - Its now their IT training centre!
A relevant article by Chomsky in the Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/06/hiroshima-day-nuclear-weapons-cold-war-usa-bomb
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/06/hiroshima-day-nuclear-weapons-cold-war-usa-bomb
It was, yes. The Warning and Monitoring Network was culled as part of public spending cuts during the early 90s recession, and with it the air-raid siren network. A lot of civil defence planning had long been abandoned by then - in the 60s, IIRC - because with the advent of H-bombs it was a safe bet that the devastation would be so great as to make it pretty much pointless.
Around 400 megatonnes were coming are way
Square Leg, the table-top exercise that produced the scenario considered most likely in the early 80s, and which Threads was based on, assumed 200 or thereabouts. Still enough to obliterate most built-up areas and kill half the population at a stroke, though.
pogofish
Testicle Hairstyle
Yup - The school I worked-in in till the early 90s had a big emergency siren on its roof, built in the late 1960s - I remember it being replaced and tested, probably around 1990, so whoever got that scrap got a virtually new machine.
Aside from Civil Defence, I've also heard tales of a major "Game change" as far as defence provision went - around 1977/78, when it seems they greatly reduced the numbers of men to be kept alive through any nuclear strike - it looks like they were paring away any hopes/expectations of maintaining any viable country/form of government even then?
In the early 1950s construction of a mass of hidey-holes for government and the military to hide from A-bombs was coming along nicely - the predecessors of the Regional Seat of Government bunkers, the massive "Rotor" radar-control bunkers, the secret tunnel that runs from Club Row to Holborn and beyond...
Then the Soviet Union tested H-bombs large enough to blow the whole lot out of the ground. They carried on building most of them, though...
I've not looked into this for a few years now so my memory is a little hazy, but my guess is that 1977/8 was just a matter of spending cuts post-1976 and the IMF loan. IIRC the real step change was in the 60s, when they basically gave up on civil defence. There was always an intention to keep some form of government going, though, hence the regional command posts and the central government bunker at Corsham.
pogofish
Testicle Hairstyle
A lot of the earlier Rotors were only built to withstand heavy conventional bombing and were just retrofitted to deal with fallout, not a full-on strike - but they kept-on building, right up to the R12s, which were being constructed into the early 1970s (and there is stil at least one R12 that has not been declassified to this day)! Ain't it wonderful how even the high likelihood of failure in a nuclear war was not enough to cancel the construction contracts!
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pogofish
Testicle Hairstyle
Have you seen the book Cold War from English Heritage?
No - is it worth a look?
'I know where I'm gonna be if they do drop the bomb: pissed out my mind and straight underneath it.'
For any bunker spotter, most certainly
(I had a quick look for references to the Bishopsgate-Holborn cable tunnel and haven't found any online. I'll have to dig out Duncan Campbell's printed account of taking a folding bike down the access cover at Club Row one Boxing Day in the 1970s...)
pogofish
Testicle Hairstyle
Three of Caledonian Macbraynes Scottish Island Ferries (Columba, Hebrides and Clansman) were built as seagoing command posts - With extensive washdown systems, filtration and extra accommodation. They were expected to put well-out to sea and stay there if a strike happened. When eventually they ripped-out the protected accommodation, the ships capacities increased by nearly half - from 600 to 870 passengers!
One is still sailing today if you have deep pockets:
http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/hebridean/princess/index.html
pogofish
Testicle Hairstyle
A friend's brother worked extensively with Campbell in the 80s and 90s - he is a mine of interesting tales!
Three of Caledonian Macbraynes Scottish Island Ferries (Columba, Hebrides and Clansman) were built as seagoing command posts - With extensive washdown systems, filtration and extra accommodation. They were expected to put well-out to sea and stay there if a strike happened. When eventually they ripped-out the protected accommodation, the ships capacities increased by nearly half - from 600 to 870 passengers!
One is still sailing today if you have deep pockets:
http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/hebridean/princess/index.html
Blimey, I didn't know about them!
pogofish
Testicle Hairstyle
Blimey, I didn't know about them!
Two were built to the full spec but it seems very likely that the third was only partially fitted-out, as a reserve/economy measure.
This is quite possibly one of the main reasons why the govt kept the ongoing financial disaster that was CalMac afloat during the 70s and 80s.
There is another tale I've heard about a different part of their business and its role in cold-war provision that is so staggeringly ridiculous that it might actually be true. Its so daft, surely nobody would make it-up!
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TheHoodedClaw
acknowledging ur soup leg
There is another tale I've heard about a different part of their business and its role in cold-war provision that is so staggeringly ridiculous that it might actually be true. Its so daft, surely nobody would make it-up!
You can't leave us dangling like that!
That would explain a great deal...
There is another tale I've heard about a different part of their business and its role in cold-war provision that is so staggeringly ridiculous that it might actually be true. Its so daft, surely nobody would make it-up!
Gwaaaaaaaan!
