Wednesday, 2 September 2020
Hooptedoodle #376 - Erm - Do You Have Anything a Little Stronger?
A friend passed me these scans of some Civil Defence-type posters issued by the UK Women's Voluntary Society in 1951, to help the population survive a nuclear attack.
A quick read through suggests that everyone, even the WVS, knew that we were well screwed if there was such an attack. Statements like "you will be told..." - right - by whom? It's not that this wasn't well-intentioned, it's just that its earnest uselessness is a classic example of something whose name escapes me at the moment. Perhaps the WVS could assume responsibility for our current Covid-19 planning?
I'm really glad we never had to rely on these instructions. Bless em all.
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I well remember the nuclear attack drills in (American) schools in the 1960's. I never saw anything as detailed as these, though! That was probably for the best, as I recall having occasional nightmare about nuclear war as a kid.
ReplyDeleteLiving in a very rural area meant an assumption that we would not be a priority target, so TBH it wasn't some I thought about. In the 1980s however, I happened to get chatting to someone who was in the Civil Defence Volunteers (or whatever they were called). He told me of an exercise they had done where the smallest yield device had targeted a nearby RAF early warning station. He calmly laid out the results of the exercise, from initial blast, shockwaves through to fallout. After that there didn't seem much point worrying as it was clear that if you were fortunate (?) to survive the initial blast, then the subsequent effects within the radius of the blast would do for you pretty quickly, and that was based on the lowest possible yield device. A quick realisation that there are very few parts of the UK without a target nearby coupled with youthful pessimism convinced me:
ReplyDelete1) there was no point worrying as if it happened there were minimal chances for survival, the prospects if you did survive were not very appealing so there was little point in removing doors or stockpiling food.
2) there was little prospect of getting a warning; assuming the powers that be actually got an advanced indication we were under attack I couldn't see them telling the general public. If there was a four minute warning, how many minutes would be left to tell everyone? Would you want the inevitable panic or is it better to pick up the pieces afterwards?
As to the WVS organising a response to Covid-19 they couldn't do much worse than our current cabal of idiots and at least we would be spared the U-turns (which of course aren't) and frequent announcements of how brilliant/world-beating/fantastic the response has been (despite the body count however you compile the figures). And of course this is before the dreaded B-word which it appears is headed for the hardest of all exits......
I've adopted pretty much the same attitude I had towards nuclear annihilation; However much I don't want it, there's not much I can do to stop it (aside from taking part in our flawed electoral system)......
Neil
Ah yes, the good old days of impending nuclear armageddon. We could actually see the end of the runway at the RAF base as the Vulcans flew over the house to land, Blue Steel clearly visible underneath. Not quite the closest I've ever been to live nuclear weapons but close enough. Protect and Survive was even more detailed, including the advice to keep a stock of sturdy plastic bags to put the bodies in. Lovely.
ReplyDeleteThank you, gentlemen! There is some very dark humour in the instructions, if you look hard enough. Since the obvious strategy would be for a pre-emptive strike against the enemy's installations, before any formal declaration of war, it is likely that the 4-minute warning, if it worked at all, would be the first that most of the populace knew of the attack. I wonder how many bloody windows you can whitewash in 4 minutes? This idea that there would be warnings and announcements is a long shot as well - would there be electricity? Would there be any recognisable infrastructure, such as radio, for example?
ReplyDeleteMy Uncle Duggie was a police officer in Liverpool, and I know that he had standing instructions about which sealed envelope to open in the event of a calamity. I still have visions of Duggie, in the official Land-Rover, with a megaphone, going around warning people: "We think the fallout is headed this way - can you please go indoors, and stay there for a couple of hundred years? - thank you"
My better half was the Assistant County Science Officer on the IoW. Her job was to climb into a bunker beneath St Boniface Down in Ventnor and measure the mushroom cloud over Portsmouth Naval Base. I would have been sitting in a hole in Germany waiting for 3 Shock Army to roll over me...
ReplyDeleteI bet the Russians never guessed we would measure the mushroom clouds - they stood no chance, really, did they?
DeleteWonderful! When I was at school about 1972 we had an after school film club and I'm pretty sure one film was called The War Game funny enough, (just Googled it, yep made in 1965), it terrified the life out of me for weeks afterwards, I was convinced Nuclear attack was coming. Remember that one?
ReplyDeleteYes - I know it - Peter Watkins film from 1965, as you say. He did it in a documentary style, which makes it all the more horrifying. He used a similar documentary style for his excellent b/w movie about Culloden, which, once you've got the hang of the quirky style of presentation, must be one of the best war films ever made.
DeleteThe film which really scared me to death - and I can't even watch excerpts of it now, was the British TV movie "Threads" in the 1980s - that's a real life changer!
I guess we are getting back towards Cold War chances of survival again - we have some real loonies running things - people without imagination.