PSA – for those over 40 who remember the 80's shadow of nuclear war

When I was in my early teens, every jet engine noise that I heard at night was an incoming ICBM from the east. Scary times.

21:00, BBC tonight.
Strange Days: Cold War Britain
Season 1 Episode 3of 3
Two Tribes Dominic Sandbrook examines how the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan provoked a bitter dispute as British athletes were pressured by the government to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics. He also looks at how Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan’s crusade against communism led many to fear a nuclear war, reflected in songs such as Two Tribes by Frankie Goes to Hollywood and BBC drama Threads, which depicted an attack on Britain. Last in the series

I watched threads a couple of weeks ago on youtube, still pretty grim, in fairness Sheffield has improved in recent years.. 🙂

Watched episode 2 last night, was pretty good. My parents were CND activists so I remember the era very well as we were endlessly discussing the nuclear issues at the time.

Sheffield has improved in recent years..

Oh aye, they stuck a few coloured panels on Park Hill and took down the Roxy nightclub sign…

Teenage Fail!

(ICBM’s are not powered by jet engines, they arrive as a parabolic trajector from sub orbital heights at supersonic velocities, and generally are air burst devices. By the time you “hear one coming” you’re already dead……

Of course, you could have been hearing an incoming “nap of the earth” jet bomber about to deliver a free fall delayed detonation tactical nuke to some critical control and command facility. So i’ll let you off!

😉

Only realized how close it came to Agamemnon when I visited the Cold War Museum at RAF Cosford. An excellent museum and well worth a visit. Do Cannock Chase in the morning and the museum in the afternoon for a good day out.

Those of you old enough will remember the very useful leaflet we all received about how to construct a bomb shelter in your front room using a table and whatever else you could lay your hands on. After the 50 megaton bomb had gone off we would just all crawl out from under the table dust ourselves down and carry on!!

Don’t people find Sandbrook’s version of history almost completely unpalatable?

I find his presenting style generally unpleasant, and the way in which he projects Thatcherism and “the populist right” into absolutely everything ever, for example, if you watched his TV series “The 70’s” you could be forgiven for thinking that Thatcher was elected in 1969, not 1979, such was her influence over everything…including proclaiming that Scargill was a Thatcherite…

I’m also uncomfortable that someone who is such a blatant plagiariser of others work has become so successful – http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704132204576136184280902022 for some insight.

Threads scared the bejesus out of me, the Radio Times with the traffic warden with the machine gun really freaked me out.

It was a really freaky time to be a teenager

The leaflet was protect and survive

Threads. Superb. In a desolate and devastating way. If you haven’t seen it you have to watch it.

I only watched it in the last ten years. Kind of glad I didn’t watch it when they were giving out the ‘how to build a nuclear shelter’ leaflets. I already had an overactive imagination as a child and ‘Where the Wind Blows’ was bad enough.

Commonly held myth that one – Protect and survive was never distributed to households, you had to buy it from the HMSO (for fifty new pence) – there was never a widespread distribution of any civil defence leaflets, though a small number of ‘nuclear free’ councils did their own, lesser, leaflets.

had a member of UKWMO in the family so I’ve spent a lifetime reading up on this stuff – the advice in P&S was actually surprisingly robust, and would have saved a great many lives in a limited conflict.

For the geeky, Duncan Campbells War Plan UK remains a great read.

We were shown Threads at school. I was 14 and already paranoid about being nuked. Living 3 miles (ATCF) from a major industrial zone, Trafford Park, didn’t help.

Yeh, I thought I was Agamemnon-bound when a missile flew over our house in ’86. Luckily it was a Homer – turned round and went back, or we’d have been desTroyed

Warplan Uk looks a good shout- ta.

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now,
There isn’t grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town-
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.

And get that man with double chin
Who’ll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women’s tears:

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It’s not their fault that they are mad,
They’ve tasted Hell.

It’s not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It’s not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren’t look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

They installed a 4 minute warning siren at our school in 1983-ish.

They also made us watch The Day After, and the Public Service broadcasts about what to do in case of a nuke strike on London, and what we’d expect at 30km radius.

Designed to make kids more paranoid and instill fear and see the Russians as the enemy.

10 years later, I was on a plane to “the enemy”, who clearly wasn’t. Funny we’re using ICBMs now for useful purposes, powered by each other’s engines.

I fit the profile but I really didn’t notice at the time. Like most people.

This is what I was listening to may of upped the paranoia, it is still brilliant

Government and queen are your only enemies
Donít be fooled by their plastic smiles
War’s no fairytale,
guns and bombs aren’t **** toys
They don’t wanna know your views of war
They never stop to think about you
War’s no fairytale,
guns and bombs aren’t **** toys
They want you kept in the darkness of the realities of war
War’s no fairytale,
guns and bombs aren’t **** toys
Meat flung yards apart from bodies
Are typical sights of war
War’s no fairytale,
guns and bombs aren’t **** toys

I remember watching When the wind blows and being completely depressed. Shortly after there was a bit of Glasnost and it was all over.

I have the book – harrowing way of getting the subject across.

I lived in Australia for most of the 80’s

I still remember plenty of cold war paranoia though. I remember seeing Threads on the TV and reading “On the Beach” which has to be one of the bleakest books ever written

So I did worry as a teenager about nuclear annihilation

I’ve still got my ‘in event of nuclear war’ brown paper bag somewhere. The instructions were to cut out holes for eyes and mouth, place over head, put head between legs and kiss arse goodbye. I took it quite seriously as an eight year old.

If the same situation arose today, I wonder if we’d take it seriously or just dismiss it as the political brinksmanship that it really was? We were a great deal more naive and trusting in authority in those days.

*SPOILER*
yeah, remember seeing Threads as a lad and everyone going on about it at school afterwards.

probably looks dated now but it was very powerful how it was filmed. I still remember the feeling I got and how real it seemed (and how it actually would be) when the guys in sheff are standing there on the hill and see the bomb impacted a couple of miles away, having time to say in disbelief ‘they’ve done it’, and knowing you’d be helpless and gonna cop it yourself in a short while….. 😯

Blake’s Seven was better.

Blake’s Seven was better.

+1

Threads didn’t have Avon…

I saw Threads as a young teenager and it scared me silly. I was also convinced that when the Falkands conflict began, the Russians were going to wade in.

Scary times. I had nightmares about Mutual Assured Destruction for years.

Thanks for the heads up OP. I’ll watch this (and the nightmares will begin again 😀 )

Teachers at our school seemed to be obsessed with making us watching scare film after scare film, describing the death etc etc.

I remember having countless weird nightmares of the warning silence and seeing missiles coming screaming in from above me.

Thanks chaps.

Born in 1965 so I really do remember it. We lived close to the largest shunting yard in Europe so were told we were in line for a personalised Russian Bomb . we all read Warlord comic which had a thinly disguised Russian invasion story. The three minute warning siren was either accidently tested or went off once when I was at junior school every one just carried on with their day which looking back is really odd. We did makes some jokes about the kid who missed school that day but he claimed to have been sick.

I think I and my friends just saw the cold war as part of the background noise of our lives and the way things were rather than anything to deal with .

I saw Threads as a young teenager and it scared me silly. I was also convinced that when the Falkands conflict began, the Russians were going to wade in.

I thought the Argentines would use the Falklands to attack mainland Scotland.

5th – I also thought the Falklands were off the coast of Scotland!

Our teachers also told us that Huddersfield would be targetted as Huddersfield was a natural bowl-shape and a bomb would effectively wipe out the whole area perfectly.

Now- If I was there now I’d say listen you **** ****, who the **** would waste a nuclear weapon on a washed up old **** mill town? What would we build? Knitted curtains to wave at the Russians? **** idiots.

Threads didnt have Servelan 😀

we were also told our area would be a major target, near Hanslope park, and our school was right near one of the few oxide works so apparently that would have to be taken out.

what the previous episode brought home to me is how there seems to be this never ending need for America, (with us tagging along) to invent the next boogeyman. if its not the russian bear, its gonna be Saddam, then its Osama and international tourists terrorists…

Oi! I’m only 36 and I remember the 80s shadow of nuclear war. Am I not allowed to..? Humphh… 😐

😉

Watching Red Dawn didn’t help either. I was convinced that the Russians would be parachuting in if their grain harvest failed. 😯

Threads was – and still is – utterly terrifying.

It also gave rise to one of the best Radio Times covers of all time.

My dad was a British Army MO, and as a kid I once read through a whole bunch of ‘In the event of…’ type documents he kept in his study. I was pretty much on a permanent state of alert after that. 😯

We live near Menwith Hill (USA early warning / listening base).

Fortunately it didn’t dawn on me at the time that it was a prime target for the initial strike….

Threads didnt have Servelan

I remember the local police station cranking up the air raid warning klaxon thingy on top of the police station as a test. Still a haunting sound. The police station is now a pub. The klaxon long gone.

Would have been over pretty quickly as we lived pretty near to a BAE/Hawker factory cranking out Harriers, which supposedly had a Rusky nuke dedicated to it’s destruction.

I don’t know about you, but these days do seem a bit less certain as it may well be a group of individuals and not a state that sets the bomb off, so no MAD.