DDs WW3 anxiety out of control

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Am I AIBU to ask you lovely mumsnetters for a explanation that I can give her that will talk her down.

I’ve gone with at the end of the day no one would win in a nuclear attack but that just isn’t cutting it.

She is 14 and has ASD I don’t want to dismiss her concerns but need some serious help in avoiding a school refusal tomorrow.

@VickyEadieofThigh i spent a memorable weekend (just Saturday & Sunday) at Greenham when i was a teenager. I learned a lot about feminism that weekend and how women can be supportive of each other. It was amazing. (I'm 56 now)

When Threads came out my anxiety went through the roof. I'm from a military family anyway, so close to the rockets and bombs anyway, and in that film it's my hometown that gets blown up. And do you remember the film When the Wind Blows? animated beautifully by Raymond Briggs but so bloody awful. (if anyone doesn't know: an elderly couple follow the government instructions in the leaflet Protect And survive - which amounted to pretty much take doors off and make something like a mattress fort - and get radiation sickness anyway)

Funnily enough was listening to Fischer-Z's Red Skies Over Paradise album in the car this morning. Which deals with this topic.

For the OP - sorry not much help. Although maybe it is. We all have this kind of fear when we're young. To be honest, for me, although the nuclear war aspect of the fear isn't the primary one for me, i still have The Fear Of The Catastophe which is about to happen. As an adult I'm much better at covering it up. Maybe it's part of growing up?

@RunningAway - yeah - I relate to your mum. When i was in the military and we had our first NBC lesson the instructor said "stand up, legs apart, put your head between your legs… and kiss your arse goodbye, because if it comes, the dead will be the lucky ones." Lovely.

My son has autism and he’s like this. In the end we packed a rucksack in case of emergency that we could grab and go. It really helped him to feel more secure as we was prepared. May be worth a go for your DD?
. (He did ask for a nuclear bunker to be built in the garden but that was pushing it a little!)

Nothing short of an underground bunker will protect you from a nuclear bomb. Boarding up the windows would be pointless. If anything you want to be at ground zero so at least you are killed instantly.

i wanted to write a bit more (i'm the poster who wrote your daughter's right to be upset about nuclear weapons)- and I didn't want to seen unsympathetic or to write something that might make your daughter more upset, if she reads your posts.

I do think being upset about nuclear weapons is reasonable way to respond-because they are horrible things and we need to get rid of them. but I don't think nuclear war is something she needs to worry about right now. (Hopefully anyway)- but I don't.

One thing to point out to her,if she is wanting to store food etc- is to point out that if you felt the situation was that bad -you would be telling her, ' we need to store food' and that you would be telling her to help with boarding up windows etc.

Point out all the things as a parent you do to keep her safe-like making hold your hand to cross roads when she was little, having vaccinations , wearing a seat belt etc and how continually you do monitor safety in the family -like locking doors at night-and ask her to emotionally have a little rest for a bit- and trust you to be the first to say board up the windows if it even might be necessary, because that's what you'd do.

Say you are keeping an eye on things and ask her to allow her self to not worry , for a bit any way-if she can see you still happily watching tv and making tea etc, then maybe she can try to not worry so much.

You could combine this with saying, that in a more long term way,that if she is upset by the thought of nuclear weapons, that it's not the case that you need to either aim to not worry about them at all or feel terrified and distressed at the thought of them. There is a middle way, where you can acknowledge nuclear weapons are nasty and frightening, but you can learn about them and find what organizations are working against them,etc. And even do things on your own ,like write letters etc- and do something, to try and help work towards a world where don't have them, anymore, which would be better.

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Actually the idea of a "go bag" isn't bad. We have them and i have to keep reminding the (adult) DCs that they should check them and replenish the things they have used (they find them convenient for spontaneous "I'm going to stay at X's tonight" scenarios)

That way, if something does happen you can grab and go. I don' t know, OP (you know your DC best) if that would help?

For those worried about it in the 80’s, it got fairly close to happening. Google Able Archer and it details a close call and another was in 1995 when a false reading of an attack in Russia (which was actually a Norwegian Rocket launch) that had Yeltsin activating his Nuclear briefcase.

The risk for me is in IT espionage or an error that leads to a missile attack by mistake, triggering a response.

It’s hard to reassure young people as they dramatise everything. I felt like that as a 14 year old in 1983 when the Cold War was at its height. I also made the mistake of watching Threads. Grim!

She went to school today. Her biggest concern is how she will get to me and we will get to each other. Her concern is not about her siblings just me and her!

I have told her that if something ever was to happen and we were separated she should come home and wait for me and if I wasn’t there I would do everything I could to get to her and she shouldn’t worry about finding me as I would find her.

This calmed her down a bit.

She then mentioned that my fil keeps shot guns and we should probably make our way over to his house after that. But one thing at a time.

well done to her for going to school.

some kind of crisis plan is common sense for everyone, not just because of nuclear war (if it happens you don't want to survive) but for the real, everyday stuff. So many on here are too cool to carry cash, for instance, and then are quite screwed when bank systems go down as they frequently do.

it doesn't hurt to make sure there is a landline with a corded phone, cash stashed, more than one bank account with different banking groups, spare batteries, matches, some tinned food, a gas stove and some cartridges, things like that. Even London types can get power cuts.

if you lived in an earthquake zone you'd have all this anyway.

I think it will just be a matter of time and understanding.
It’s scary. I can relate so very much. It scares me too but I can’t look into these things too much or I also tend to get obsessed and worry far too much to the point where it actually affects my daily life.
I expect she’s done allot of research and fact finding online and will talk to anybody who will listen about it all (and actually it is a scarily interesting topic) but maybe she’s been looking up the parts that sound scary and lean towards a WW3 happening.
Maybe you could look up with her the reasons why it would not happen and maybe just reassure her that IF In the VERY TEENY circumstance anything were to break out it would be public news immediately and at that point you would be with her straight away no matter what was going on and where you both were.
I’ve just skimmed through for your messages in green and not the rest as I don’t have long (sorry!) and seen that that’s a fear of hers. Maybe you could sit and do the plan of how you’d get to her together so she feels reassured that it would be possible.
I also think it’d be a great idea to let her do a supply stock! (I still do that now to some degree after huge WW2 fears!) it sets my mind at ease knowing I’m prepared.
I also was terrified about the world ending, about terrorism after 9/11 and about tsunamis even as an adult! Also as a child, earthquakes and death were huge and I had to have special word routines I’d say at night before I could rest just incase my nana or me died. I’m better with these things now but I still build things like survival kits now just so I feel prepared and safe!
Does she have any other keen interests that you could divert her with at the moment or is this too big for her to allow other things in? If she does then maybe you could focus an afternoon of some quality time on something positive that she likes
Good luck getting her to school tomorrow, I hope it all goes well. I think the most important things are understanding and patience. You sound like a fabulous mum!

I’ve just seen your last update, so glad she went to school!
It sounds like you’re helping to keep things under control. Plan sounds good and reassuring for her. Maybe you could agree on a full plan just incase. It would make her feel more in control of her fears and actually there’s no harm in having a just incase plan anyway.

Gosh this really resonates. Ds is obsessing about it today, and I remember being utterly terrified after seeing a CND demonstration at about the same age.

I'd say, let them talk about it. I didn't and I bet my parents never actually realised how traumatised I was.

I would get a folder/ring binder and encourage and help her to make a proper family emergency plan for not just nuclear war but various types of emergency situation, which is a pretty sensible thing to have anyway. Encourage her to include the whole family so its actually a workable plan (not surprised her instinct is to forget her siblings, that's a bit of an asd thing!)

I started emergency planning and some basic preparedness a while back with my asd daughter to initially alleviate brexit anxiety and it's worked well. You can print out some basic info to include on various scenarios - eg met office website has info on floods, power companies on power cuts etc. Making a list of possible disasters (fire, floods, power cuts, being snowed in, nuclear war, epidemic, alien invasion/zombie apocolypse(!) ) and how likely they are to actually occur helps to put things in perspective a bit. Power cuts is now firmly at the top of our list since there's been 3 this winter already and we're well prepared for those.
You can include plans for things like how you would find out if there was an emergency, how you'd contact the rest of the family, where you'd meet, how you'd get home, whether you'd stay at home once you all got there or then move onto another relative or friend's house and when etc. (Going to FIL's house might be an option, or inviting him to yours depending on locations)
I don't think it's unreasonable for her to think a few days worth of food supplies is necessary but I'd encourage her to justify why it might be necessary, include it in the plan for relevant scenarios and have a family supply rather than just things for her under her bed.
It's good to set a limit on planning if you think she might go all doomsday prepper, for example you could assume that if a disaster lasts more than 3 days then it's likely that disaster relief or the army etc would provide aid so that your plan should cover the family for 3 days max.

Also maybe she'd like to get involved with campaigning against nuclear weapons? I remember being pretty terrified of nuclear war as a child/teen and going to demos at Greenham Common which helped feel like I was doing something to help make it all stop.

On the plus side you can reassure her she won’t fight in such a war if it were to result in an invasion or something (unlikely) as with her condition she couldn’t serve in the forces

I absolutely empathise as I went through the same thing at her age. Images of the mushroom cloud used to send me off the scale. I’m guessing this would’ve been around 1980-82. My parents had to monitor the TV very closely, or I would literally begin to shake like a jelly.

At my school they ran an exercise during this period. To experience what it would’ve been like to be evacuated during WW2, they told us we were being evacuated there and then as a train carrying nuclear waste had overturned in our nearby station. I had a complete and utter meltdown at not being able to get to my mother. Then they said it was a hoax to get us to experience the WW2 emotions.

Well today she went to school but tonight she is in bed ‘ill’ saying things like you don’t have to go to work tomorrow do you mummy we’ll just stay at home together’

Re: fil’s shotguns I think her purpose is to take him out with a quick one to the head, hide in their garage for two years eating the contents of their three completely overstocked freezers and mils life time supply of fruit shoots.

I had a long chat a couple of years ago with a worried granddaughter about threats etc., I told her how in the 60s we went to school convinced we wouldn't be going home, Cuban Missile crisis and how when we lived in a military environment in the 70s/80s we habitually checked under the car for bombs. I'm not sure if it helps youngsters knowing that their fears are not unique but she seemed happier. There's a tendancy for us all to think we are the first people to live through things.

Well to be fair of Iran attempted a war Trump, trigger happy bastard that he is, would decimate the whole country before you’d even have the chance to get worked about it. At that point no one would care enough to get involved (barring a few terrorists but they seem to be a perpetual fact of life in Britain). Even if they do, the likes of Iraq aren’t much of a concern. Iran doesn’t have anything that compares with the USA’s (not to mention her allies) military might. It wouldn’t even be a war. It would be an attack and a counter attack. You say she’s going through a WWII phase, maybe discuss the difference between the military power balance during that period and the power balance today. In order to have a war you need to have a fair fight.

It seems to be a developmental stage to fear something external that's outside your influence. In the 80s as well as the cold war and the threat of nuclear bombs, we had acid rain, Chernobyl, and Aids. No wonder so many people embraced the rave culture after a few years of that stuff constantly in the news. I remember lots of teenagers joining CND and amnesty international, feeling like we must do something while simultaneously believing it was futile, the USA and Russia could wipe us out at any moment due to pig - headedness or a misunderstanding. Films like war games capitalised on our fear. Pupils would get whipped up at school but we didn't have social media, just rumours.

In your daughter's case I would suggest listening to hee concerns so that she doesn't feel like you're dismissing them out of hand, but closing it down by saying that you are monitoring things and aren't worried yourself. It's a difficult one. I've seen very young children (nursery to age 5/6) get extremely worried about the environment recently. I think as adults, we need to be clear that children are expected or can do x/y/z to help the situation, but the adults around them are keeping them safe.

From what you've said I would get her to the GP, as this sounds like a mental health crisis to be honest.

In the meantime, I think there's a speech by Barack Obama when he talks about how this is actually the safest time in history to be alive; that should help.

I had just started secondary school when I watched a documentary about doomsday prepping, preceeded by watching 28 Days Later at a sleepover. I was very distressed about my parents not taking it seriously, I had this bubbling terror about the possibility, however small, of a global crisis that would mean we'd be without adequate food, shelter or safety. I worried incessantly about it until my parents feigned taking it seriously and put a box of tins and bottled water in the shed and bought a very heavy torch to keep by the back door as a weapon. In hindsight, I was projecting a lot of stress and worry about going from a very small class of 10 pupils in primary school to a secondary school in a town half an hour away with 30 students to a class and 2 classes per year, onto some non-event that was never going to happen.

Next door's children are also concerned about this whole WW3 lark, no amount of telling them it won't happen will change their minds. The eldest is 12 and saw a "countdown to WW3" and is adamant its real because she "saw it on Google".