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.

Found them!

Marvellous! @CoffeeBoy

It was terrifying. The threat was always there. It hung over all of life, and spoiled it, to an extent.

It's not great to be thinking about the possibility again, after all these years.

My house has a hand siren and what appears to be a radio transmitter in the cellar. Rural area but must have been designated a base of some sort .

@CoffeeBoy Thanks. Yes, this very much the style of LA pamphlets I've seen such as "Hull and the bomb" - the LA's who produced these generally did so for a.) Ideological reasons (pro nuclear disarmament etc) and/or b.) Resented being told to spend money by central gov on civil defence preparedness and exercises etc.

@Gonegrey31 Could you post some pictures?

@CoffeeBoy Also I note that this was produced by the City Council - contingency planning would have been lead in the area by the County council - maybe some political tensions between the two!

@Gonegrey31 Does it look like this?

I’d rather not but local historian has details. Not uncommon apparently.

I was terrified of the possibility of nuclear war (teenager). When The Wind Blows was bad enough and we read Z For Zachariah in English at school. I couldn’t watch Threads!
I channeled my fear into joining CND, so I felt I was doing a tiny bit to help.

Stanislav Petrov? Yes. Brrrrrr...

They were hard times, but undoubtedly people today have it so much harder! 🙄

It was indeed scary as a child - I was born 1971 and watched Threads and Where the wind blows, I think at school. About 12/13. Terrifying, I was 15. I remember that leaflet too.
I was 11 when the Falklands war kicked off, away from home (London) on a school trip to Belgium. Everyone was crying, it was awful.
Then came along the AIDS campaign 'Don't die of ignorance' - no wonder we took so many drugs in the late 80s

Yes they were a very left wing Labour council who I imagine would have been marching with the CND, etc.

And I think the county council were Conservative (that’s the split for as long as I can remember) so yes there would have been some friction between the county and city co7ncils.

Late 40s and I remember moments of worry about nuclear war, but my abiding current affairs memories from the era are unemployment and the miners' strike. I remember there was a daily map on the BBC News showing job gains and job losses throughout the country. The worry of there being no jobs left by the time I grew up worried me more than being bombed out of existence.

I'm in my 70s and was a teenager at the time of the Cuban Missile confrontation between Kruschev and JFK. We talked about it at school but not in lessons. I didn't lose sleep. My generation had parents who had lived as adults in WW2 and mine weren't the panicking types, but they were keeping an eye on the news headlines, no doubt.
One of the things I think I heard about the Cold War was that Russian military aeroplanes buzzed (is that the right word) Britain's coastline often. Have I remembered that correctly? Was it on a daily basis? A menacing, bullying tactic.

I was a child in the 80s and I had never even heard of the cold war/nuclear threat stuff until I was in my 20s. It was just not on my radar and we never learned about it at school.

I was a teenager in the 1980s. The Cold War was very real, and it was fucking scary. The fact that the Russians wanted to kill us, the division of Europe into Eastern & Western blocs & the division of Germany symbolised by the Berlin Wall were all we knew.
I went to a Catholic secondary school and one of my friends was the daughter of Polish immigrants. When the workers in the Gdańsk shipyards rose up against the communist government and formed the independent trade union Solidarity, she came into school one day wearing its ‘Solidarnosc’ badge featuring the Polish flag, we all wanted one, and they became highly coveted items.
We lived in Derbyshire and the Lefty muppets who ran the county council at the time splashed the logo ‘Derbyshire supports nuclear free zones’ across everything they could, despite the fact that the nuclear reactors which power the U.K’s submarines were, and still are, designed, built & maintained in Derby…

I am 45 and remember reading a library book when I was about 7 - so around 1984 -about how to prepare your house in case of a nuclear attack - there was only one fully internal room in our house and I had planned where we would wait out a nuclear attack for 2 weeks until the radioactive dust settled - how to use a dustbin with a lid as a temporary loo and reinforce the surrounding rooms with sand bags! It shows that in the 1980s children's reading materials were not supervised!
When I was 11 my best friend whose father was leader of the local council explained nuclear weapons to me - that there was a town in Russia with a nuclear weapon pointed at our market town..
I remember being allowed to watch very inappropriate tv as well - such as threads when I couldn't have been older than 8 or 9 ..

@upinaballoon

One of the things I think I heard about the Cold War was that Russian military aeroplanes buzzed (is that the right word) Britain's coastline often. Have I remembered that correctly? Was it on a daily basis? A menacing, bullying tactic.

I was involved on the UK military monitoring side of this at one time during the Cold War

The reality was it wasn't daily and what usually went on was Soviet Long Range aircraft would head from bases on the Kola peninsula, around the top of Norway and then head south west to practise things like anti-submarine operations out over the Atlantic between the UK and Iceland. They'd then either head back for for the USSR or occasionally they'd carry on south west to Cuba. The important thing is they'd usually be a hundred miles plus, plus, from the UK coastline.

The actual sovereign limit of UK airspace is only twelve miles off shore so what they were doing was completely legit, and TBF it was no more menacing or bullying than a lot of stuff the RAF, USAF and other air forces got up to.

I watched threads when it came out, my parents weren't too bothered what we watched as long as it wasn't on ITV 😂 i was 10 or 11 I think, also read on the beach - again lax parenting around books.

I remember having drills in infants when we had to hide under desks (not sure what that would have done)

And we read Z for Zachariah in year 7 English but by then we were all reading James Herbert and early Richard laymon books

God yes! And just as I was starting to flex my sexual muscles in my early 20s 😠

Thank you.

I remember feeling very sad that I might not grow up and have a family of my own because of the threat of nuclear attack. Not frightened as such - quite pragmatic then as I still am now. I look back at young me quite fondly.