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

TBH, i never really got the issue with “nuclear” war. The issue with wars is not the one of directly being killed per say, as you are just as dead being when killed by a conventional weapon, but living through the after effects. In the 1960’s and much more so these days, the VAST majority of people would die terrible lingering deaths due to the breakdown in support services (water, food, electricity, sanitation etc) rather than be actually killed directly by a explosive weapon…..

I lived in the USA as a teenager, we still had the hangover from the Vietnam war to contend with, then we came over here to this.. 😐

My parents had a weekend place very close to Criggion, which would have been pretty much the first place in the UK targeted in the event of hostilities. they’ve demolished it now, phew. Then I studied in Plymouth, and when Devonport had an emergency or was running drills hearing the sirens wailing away used to be quite disturbing.
I can remember reading Protect and Survive in the early 80s and then getting mildly obsessed by the futility of attempting to survive the upcoming nuclear holocaust.
Obviously watching Threads didn’t help one little bit.

I had no idea anyone gave nuclear armageddon any serious thought. Other than the school weirdos. Oh, hang on…

Illustrates – from the memories given – that many places would have been a target – either industrial plants, or RAF bases (we were 5 miles from one, 9 miles from another, so doubly knackered I reckon), or infrastructure…

Living in wrexham at the time, we had a teacher tell us quite often we where a prime target,3 major steelworks near by,liverpool and Birkenhead docks, the uk`s largest producer of chlorine at Runcorn, Stanlow oil refinery,a nuclear plant at capenhurst, near chester, a top secret chemical storage site at rhydymyn near mold, a large power station at connahs quay,along with Burtonwood airbase,at warrington and RAF Sealand, near queensferry.

When a fellow kid pointed out they where all quite a distance away, he cheerfully pointed out, but they may not have a very good grasp of geography, like you obviously have.

Living in Malvern, with my high school next door to the North site of RSRE/DRA/DERA(as it became) I grew up to the sound of the air raid siren.

I still remember being quite small and watching my mum freeze every time it went off.

When I was an apprentice telephone engineer back in ’72, me and some of the other apprentices were given boxes of batteries to take round Bradford and replace all the batteries in the early warning devices. At first we thought it was a wind up, nuking Bradford back then would have been an improvement, so why would the Ruskies bother?

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

+1 – also too busy watching Blakes 7. Loved Red Dawn but couldn’t give a t0ss about the Russians coming, although I did want a bow and arrow with explosive arrow tips.

The weird thing is, we’re wound up about terrorists now but back in the 70s the threat of the IRA was very real. Remember the Birmingham pub bomb? Another one of theirs should have gotten me. Yet we carried on as normal without all the current hoo-haa at airports, nor all the recent new laws.

Perhaps I was naive, but WRT the Reds. I could never see their reasons for bombing us out of existence, so i reckoned they wouldn’t. And I was right 🙂

At only 37, I too remember it pretty clearly. Am another who was told we were in line for Armagideon Time as we lived a few miles from RAF Upper Heyford.

Back to derek starships comment about the noise – lessons at primary school were regularly interrupted by F1-11s thrashing overhead.

Looks like someone at 28 Days Later went for a visit.

EDIT: Some more. Seems to be a popular spot for those lads.

Never seen threads before, so just youtubed it. Goodness me the 80s was a depressing place to be, but this must be the most depressing piece of TV I’ve ever watched. Can’t imagine how that went down in the 80s!

I was at Tech College in a 1973 as an apprentice motor mechanic, for some reason one day we watched ‘The War Game’, & another time we watched a film/documentary on chemical & biological warfare.

I’ve never been the same since.

As a child i grew up beside a radar station on the East coast of Scotland. They were known as the golf balls.

I remember overhearing my Dad say we’d be one of the first places nuked because of them. Scared me witless especially with the endless air raid sirens at primary school.

Did have loads of good memories of the arms race though and all the different planes each side had…Migs and Su’s v Tomcats, F16 etc

must be the most depressing piece of TV I’ve ever watched. Can’t imagine how that went down in the 80s!

Dunno, to many it was quite aspirational – I heard once that applications for traffic warden jobs went up something like 3000% overnight 😆

Made the mistake of reading Z for Zacchariah in the second year at comp which set the tone for my nuclear destruction angst. I also thought every plane flying over was about to drop the big one, didn’t help that the Vulcans flew over us when leaving RAF Finningley. It seems a cold, hard time that made the arrival of punk then industrial/electronic music so appealing. The IRA blowing stuff up max it all seem a bit more vivid too.

What a bunch of namby pambies, I lived on a military base with probably the highest concentration of senior Army and RAF officers and we, the kids, did not give it a second thought.

What a bunch of namby pambies, I lived on a military base with probably the highest concentration of senior Army and RAF officers and we, the kids, did not give it a second thought.

That’s your training / indoctrination doing it’s job, can’t have the personnel on site getting cold feet about MAD!

I read On The Beach in my mid teens in the 70s kin scary book to be honest

By the 80s we had them by the balls, there was no realistic threat, the Cuban Missile Crisis on the other hand would have been properly scary stuff. You lots are just romanticizing your youth – or were indoctrinated by lefty teachers!

My parents bought me a combined mini TV / Radio the xmas before 1982, the year the Falklands broke out, and I used to listen in secret to Radio Luxembourg under the covers at night from abroad lol, as I thought it was soo cool listening to something from abroad. However, I remember to this day listening to an extended news discussion on there, which more or less stated that the Russions were backing up Argentina, and US was going to back us up, which would lead to WW3.
I was sh****ng myself for days and weeks after that. I really do think it changed me, which is a terribly sad thing to say. Felt a real sense of hopelessness for a long time after that. Seemed to coincide with my semi goth period, listening to the cure lol

That was one of the best of the series so far, I really enjoyed that.

A very familiar feeling from my younger days. I think I remember that 50p booklet about surviving Armageddon.

My Dad always says one of the most terrifying things about the Cuban debacle was only finding out afterwards how close it had really been. The 80s were different in that the situation was usually more out in the open, whether that made it worse or better is up for debate.

I do remember as an 8 – 10 year old thinking about what would happen if the sirens went off. I also remember a very vivid nightmare about it happening. Everyone ran for their lives in my dream, then stopped out in the street as there was nothing else to do…….

On the Beach was written in 1957 so it was hardly current in the 80s.

The film is probably the only thing I have ever seen on the telly which traumatised me. Utterly terrorised me.

That was before the 1980s ramping up and brinkmanship.

They still have them you know.

I was playing soldiers back in the eighties – several NATO excercises left me a bit worried about the red horde coming west, turns out 50-60% of their armour wouldn’t have made it past Poland! let alone west Germany.

The nbc stuff we trained to ‘survive’ through was pretty nasty though. On the plus side, I learned how to take a shit while remaining free from contamination!

Yeah remember it well can’t say I was scared but very much aware, what puzzled me was watching videos of how destructive the bombs were within a few seconds but being told you can survive by hiding under the stairs. Well not if the video of houses being ripped apart within milliseconds to mere rubble is to believed no you’re ****.

I was a kid in the ’80’s but never really thought a 3rd world war was ever likely as I thought the whole point of having nuclear weapons was as a deterrent due to mutually assured destruction, so thought that no side would be silly enough to actually use nuclear weapons.

Made the mistake of reading Z for Zacchariah in the second year at comp which set the tone for my nuclear destruction angst

That was a set text at our school.

My gran used to babysit for an American family. The dad was an F1-11 pilot based at Upper Heyford. Never occurred to me that, had the shit hit the fan, he could have been delivering nukes.

Both sides were geared up to respond immediately to a nuclear attack, which almost led us to war in 1983 during the Able Archer exercises. No-one bothered to tell the Soviets about them and they assumed we were about to launch a pre-emptive strike. In 1995 a Russian radar station failed to read a report about a Norwegian sounding rocket launch and instead picked up an incoming missile. We were very nearly nuked in response.

There are still thousands of these horrible things in existence. Russia and the USA have both designed newer, more efficient ICBMs and still simulate nuclear detonations with supercomputers since the 1998 test ban. There’s still a lot of money being spent on planning Armageddon, but it’s just no longer understood by the general public that it’s still a dangerous world out there.

Its more dangerous. At least we understood our ‘enemy’ before, and they understood us and it was more about willy waving than any serious desire or will to invade each other, but now when you bring in religious fundamentalism into the mix all of a sudden the other side is not so bothered or deterred by the through of mutually assured destruction.

I heard….
There was a stock of steam locomotives kept in reserve for the post war period as they would be unaffected by EMP and could run on, er, coal. Apparently they were binned when it was pointed out that after calculating the probable amount of targets in the uk, there wasn’t much point in planning anything as virtually everybody would be dead,post 12 months.

Apparently, we’re all safe now as the strategic arsenals are de-targeted .

At first we thought it was a wind up, nuking Bradford back then would have been an improvement, so why would the Ruskies bother?

Menwith Hill was a target and near enough to wave goodbye to most people in Bradford, I presume.
I recall in the early mid 80’s being shown a film in the 6th form at school, can’t recall which film, but left me in no doubt the future looked grim.

I remember it all so clearly. Probably inspired by my dad’s army stories, I was convinced the Russians would arrive in the night in tanks. I worked out that my bedroom faced east, so they would come through my windows. I was convinced for a long time that every distant nighttime engine was them arriving. I was on the house frontline so to speak so gad to stay alert to warn my family when they got here. I even wanted to dig a ditch in the garden. Funny how you become convinced of things.

Threads is a stunning and deeply disturbing film, I agree.

At least we understood our ‘enemy’ before, and they understood us

I think subsequent events have proved we understood nearly nothing about the Russians. I don’t think anyone in government has a the slightest clue still.

Dad was in the RAF, and we lived on or near air bases, at least it would’ve been quick, and I have been spared surviving.

The steam engine thing, whilst a nice story, couldn’t have happened as BR demolished all the water replenishment tanks and steam engines don’t go far without water.
If any of you like interesting things about stuff underground the take a look at Subterranea Britannica.

Grew up in Aldershot through most of the 80’s and remember more the hassle from constant bomb alerts caused by the IRA than anything Warsaw Pact related.
Mind you, I also spend some time growing up in apartheid South Africa in the 70’s as well.

*comes in from the cold, shakes snow off his fur hat, replaces it with a tin-foil one, takes a swig from a vodka bottle and sits down*

Hello comrades! Ever wondered what it was like for us on the other side of the Iron Curtain, eh?

Saw Threads a few months ago and I think it is a terrific film, left me feeling seriously grim for a few days, brought back all the memories of my childhood. It was just as scary for us as it was for you. We had mandatory civil defence classes in school, learned about NBC weapons, classrooms had posters on the walls which explained how rudimentary shelters worked, the contents of NBC first-aid kit, the effects of a nuclear bomb going off etc. I even remember playing a spot of ping-pong wearing a gas mask in a pioneer camp (purely because I could, not because KGB made us to) 🙂

*takes another sip of vodka, gets all teary-eyed, starts playing his balalaika and drifts off to sleep soon after*

Threads was deeply grim, I watched it on my own when I was about 13 and reading this brings it all back.

I heard somewhere (think it was one of Tornado pilots shot down in the first Gulf War) that the RAF used to fly training runs from Germany heading east, deploy their dummy warhead then in a war scenario there was no plan for returning as was assumed MAD would have been in full flow.

Probably inspired by my dad’s army stories, I was convinced the Russians would arrive in the night in tanks. I worked out that my bedroom faced east, so they would come through my windows. I was convinced for a long time that every distant nighttime engine was them arriving. I was on the house frontline so to speak so gad to stay alert to warn my family when they got here. I even wanted to dig a ditch in the garden. Funny how you become convinced of things.

not to stoke the old paranoia’s

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Russian-Soviet-Military-Topographic-Maps-NORFOLK-county-UK-1-100-000-1964-/321255695862?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4acc54e5f6

http://images.jomidav.com/sovietmaps/Manchester.jpg

is your town on the list?
http://images.jomidav.com/sovietmaps/UKCityPlans.pdf

I have a set of the Manchester ones and the detail is fascinating, someone has driven the major routes noting the ability to carry armour, open ground is also marked with suitability for armour and OP locations look to have been surveyed, even roads that weren’t built yet are marked (M66)

and they are probably still doing it 😉
http://images.jomidav.com/sovietmaps/Sheetlines77.pdf