UK Cold war memories....

[Flapjacker48]

One for the slightly older members - what did you think of the world situation when you were growing up in the cold war period? Were you ever worried about a nuclear attack? Was it mentioned at school?

Watched "Threads" on BBC?

Anyone had a nuclear shelter dug in the garden? Stockpiled tins?

I have recently been sorting out some old stuff of a deceased family member - they were in the Post Office/BT in the 70s/80s and actually was one of the team responsible for looking after the national air attack warning system and "war plans" for BT in a region of the UK. Obviously at the time this was all classified, but all in the public domain now. The UK's civil defence planning by the 70s/80s was very much a "continuity of government" plan rather than the impossibility of doing much for the general population.

The UK's nuclear warning system however, would have given a warning of a impending air attack (once!) - prob longer a little longer than the popular "4 minutes" often quoted.

I’m amazed by all this. I was born in 1951, so at University in the seventies, working full time through the 80’s. I can remember watching Threads and the American version, and being horrified and moved, but it just never really worried me. I don’t remember it being discussed amongst friends or family, either, except as a passing matter. I suppose both my parents had been through the war as fighting adults for the full duration, and my grandfather had done four years in the trenches 1914-1918, so maybe as a family we were more robust (?) or Stoic.

Some of the stuff I'm looking at makes me laugh - the minutiae of some details - allowances and overtime for example for telephone engineers in a war situation seem hopeful at best!

I was 4 at the time of the October missile crisis, the closest we've ever been to Nuclear annihilation.
I don't remember it but my Mum told me many years later that they'd agreed Dad would kill us 3 children, then Mum, then himself, if it really kicked off.
I was terrified of the prospect of atomic bombs being dropped on us all my life, until the break up of the Soviet empire.

The fear is back now, but I'm so much older I'm a lot more stoic about it.

I was a teenager in the 80s and was terrified of nuclear war. We lived near an American airbase so we would have been wiped out pretty sharpish. Threads, When the Wind Blows and a mother in the WRVS exacerbated my fear too.

@Flapjacker48 another great place to visit is the Cold War bunker in York. Made more interesting by a map that showed all the bunkers and monitoring posts over the UK - made chilling for us living near Greenham, AWE and Harrell no monitoring posts in our area - they figured we be gone.

Not at all! Far from it.

Remember from When the Wind Blows, if you've seen/read it. Mutually assured destruction. As in a retaliatory attack against an aggressor would be almost immediate.

It's thought to act as a deterrent and one of the arguments against unilateral disarmament.

On the Beach by Nevil Shute is another book worth reading if people like that sort of thing. That's about countries not targeted by the nuclear bombs but succumbing to radiation poisoning eventually.

CND, Trident, ban the bomb, threads, where the wind blows.

Our school had air raid siren practices.

My dad was rather high in the NHS at the time, & was supposed to report to the local bunker.

I suspect he would have gone. He says now (he's 80) that he'd have stayed with mum, db & me...but the father I remember always put work first!

I remember being quietly, coldly terrified by Threads. Dm's take was very much 'well, we live in a big city, we won't know a thing about it.'

This was not reassuring when I was 13! I remember being very angry that all the adults around me were not Doing Something - my parents were both stridently anti-Tory & didn't believe in sugar coating, so I definitely had the impression that Reagan's thumb was permanently hovering over the button, with Margaret Thatcher egging him on to push it for the lols, pretty much.

I couldn't understand why everyone was going about life normally. I absolutely believed that my chances of living until 20 were, at best, 50/50.

It was a bloody scary time. & I do think we came a lot closer to Armageddon than is comfortable to contemplate.

I was a teacher at the time and I never heard of any schools in London doing that.

I'm 52, grew up in Central London. Went to a very lefty comp in the 1980s. We were all fully conversant in "Threads", "Z for Zachariah" etc. I spent a lot of my teens marching - well actually for many things - for nuclear disarmament. DM was horrified. DDad was congratulatory - he'd matched to Aldermaston earlier. I was very miffed that I wasn't allowed to join my bff and her mum at Greenham Common. We had no food stashed, but always had a few gallons of bottled water in.

We were all convinced that either
1- we'd be nuked and frazzled and die a long, lingering death of radiation sickness by the time we were 18.
2- our protests might actually work.

My cousin was in a band called "4 minute warning".

Then Chernobyl happen... and we realised nuclear energy/power/arms wasn't a game anymore. I've always been far left-er leaning than my friends and family.

I was born in the 50's and remember being very frightened about the threat of nuclear attack. It is one of the reasons why I chose not to have children. I didn't think it was fair to bring someone into the world who might have to die like that.

In the 70's I worked in local government and they had a room there for the civil defence organisation that would be used to co-ordinate help for any survivors. There were lots of plans up on the walls. How to deal with radiation sickness and the like. I had to walk through it every time I went to the loo and I hated it. They had monthly meetings and drills.

At the time I also lived near a US Air Force base (in the UK) and obviously from time to time they would have exercises. It used to make me very nervous because I would always wonder if they were really just exercies or whether something was happening which we hadn't been told about. Low level night flying was the worst. Being woken up with jets screaming overhead. I remember lying there with my heart racing, waiting to hear a massive explosion.

It was an awful, very frightening time.

Folks remember public info films saying that in the event of nuclear attack to hide under a table or in a cupboard
LOL

That is fiction

I was born at the very start of the 60s and the threat of nuclear war was a constant topic. We used to discuss it at school all the time, whether we would commit suicide, whether we would kill each other etc. One girl kept a big bar of chocolate in her satchel to ear during the 4 minute warning.

Lots of CND protests, lots o

That is fiction

Bit rude @barneshome If you read my other posts you'll see I know what I'm talking about.

Clearly When the Wind Blows is fiction. I was using an illustrative example people might be familiar with. Mutually assured destruction was not fiction and one of many theories discussed during the Cold War period.

If you want to discuss sensibly in more detail then I'm happy to oblige.

Interestingly there is still a peace camp at Faslane in Scotland.
It's been there for 40 years.
The nuclear threat is still very much there and I hope my belief that I would die in a nuclear attack won't still come true.
I didn't think studying when there was no future was worth it,and I had terrible nightmares.

@CorvusPurpureus we did come extremely close in 1983.

I watched threads far too young but what really hit home was a tomorrows world special based on what would happen if a bomb was dropped on Trafalgar Square, we lived in the obliterated zone!

Yes, there has been a resurgence in interest in the nuclear bunkers (due to the current situation in Ukraine), though few of the official bunkers were found to still be in good working order.

I was terrified too. I seem to remember that there were instructions on what to do in case of attack in the Yellow Pages? My dad worked for BT and part of his job was to do with the nuclear bunkers. Many years later they dismantled them and he brought home an ugly industrial sized microwave. My mum was not impressed!

I do wonder what effect all that terror had on us.

@barneshome Unless someone was living in America, where there was the "duck and cover" public information films, no-one in the UK would actually "remember" seeing the protect and survive short films on TV - they would only ever have been broadcast if the international situation was at high tension and the Government really believed we were in a transition to war.

The only times the protect and survive films were briefly seen on TV in the cold war was in a Panorama documentary and in the 1984 BBC drama Threads.

Obviously since the end of the cold war museums have had the film and they were released on DVD and are on youtube.

There are plenty of people however who are convinced they saw the protect and survive films on TV and a copy of protect and survive was pushed through their door - neither of which actually happened (only oddity being the Isle of Man DID issue a very similar book to protect and survive all households)

@Swissnotswiss Yes the post office and BT had a massive role in both the warning of nuclear attack on the UK and for comms post attack.

Bought up near a naval Dockyard, can honestly say i never gave it a 2nd thought in the 70s and 80s, we were always told of Mutually Assured Destruction... so knew it would never happen!

I think my Mums generation probably worried more..... so Berlin wall, invasions into eastern Europe, Korea, Cuba, Vietnam... very real possibility of conflict.