The Theat of Nuclear Annihilation in 1980s Britain

[The Oldman]

Lord B remembers Easingwold as do I. I worked in the NHS and many of us were sent there for "How to cope in the aftermath of a nuclear strike" I always had the feeling that the so called experts who were training us were never that sure of what the aftermath would be like.

More chilling for me was sitting in a nuclear bunker "somewhere in Suffolk" over a 3 day period enacting nuclear war games and their affect on East Anglia. On day 2 my house and my kids school were wiped out as the Soviets took out the radar station at RAF Bawdsey.

I always understood that the nearest the world came to Nuclear war was the Cuban missile crisis. We were minutes away from the US launching an attack on Russia allegedly.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

Lord B remembers Easingwold as do I. I worked in the NHS and many of us were sent there for "How to cope in the aftermath of a nuclear strike" I always had the feeling that the so called experts who were training us were never that sure of what the aftermath would be like.

Indeed. But they made the point that no-one could be sure. The planning assumption was, though, that any nuclear strike on the UK would leave most of the country unaffected by the blast effects of the attack. The "plan" was to assess the damage and radiation effects, once the attack had happened and only then invoke such emergency powers as were appropriate to the situation. Millions of people would survive. The attack might even be limited to the nuclear power stations in northern France.

The scientists at Easingwold were the most interesting people. They advised that the public perception of the radiation effects of a nuclear bomb - "we're all going to die in a matter of days" - was quite unrealistic.

Most of the people that I came across at Easingwold were local authority people, who were - for the most part - somewhat surprised to learn that it was quite possible that local councils would have very few powers to take control of anything, until instructed by regional authorities to do so. My designated role in the event of a nuclear attack was in the Regional organisation (not the local authority organisation), where we would be called into operation by central government, should the need arise. I was somewhat relieved to discover that no-one was planning for me to spend my last days on earth cooped up in the bunker at County Hall, Lewes, with only my local authority colleagues to keep me company.

 

[beorhthelm]

... The attack might even be limited to the nuclear power stations in northern France.

and overlook Dungeness, Portsmouth, Gatwick and London? i understood Sussex coast, downs and weald would be a crappy place, surrounded by targets but not strategic to warrant a direct hit, miserable period of slowly dieing/severe illness in the aftermath.

 

[Flex Your Head]

Dunno if anyone saw this tonight, but the first 40 minutes sum up perfectly what I was getting at when I started the thread...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03jylxy/Strange_Days_Cold_War_Britain_Two_Tribes/

Not a big fan of Dominic Sandbrook, but he's always watchable.

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

Why? My recollection of the 80s was of the threat from the IRA rather than the threat of nuclear war. When were the incidents that gave rise to this that were more damning than the events leading up to the Bay of Pigs. I was born in 1962 but appreciate the world was on a much finer knife edge then than in the 80s. I honestly never felt at threat from nuclear armageddon!

I am about 10 years older than you and totally agree with your views. The IRA did actually do things with bombs. The nuclear threat was something that some people seemed to become obsessed with, but many others, like me, thought it was a load of old tosh.

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

They were indeed...although I think it was late 60s early 70s rather than 80s.

"its good news week, someones dropped a bomb somewhere, contaminating atmosphere, and blackening the sky'

1965 - and according to my book of british Hit Singles, they were ground crew at RAF Leighton Buzzard. Jonathan King was behind it.

 

[Mental Lental]

I think we all know which country is the most likely to instigate nuclear armageddon in the future.

And it ain't China.........

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Allbombs.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_the_United_States

2,200 warheads still actively deployed. (That we know about.)

 

[The Spanish]

I think we all know which country is the most likely to instigate nuclear armageddon in the future.

And it ain't China.........

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Allbombs.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_the_United_States

2,200 warheads still actively deployed. (That we know about.)

throwing the first punch doesnt mean you started the row.

China is hell bent on changing the status quo in asia pacific and i think you of all people should be well pleased with those figures. japan is going to be right at the heart of a new cold war, at best, over the next decade or so.

 

[HovaGirl]

Why? My recollection of the 80s was of the threat from the IRA rather than the threat of nuclear war. When were the incidents that gave rise to this that were more damning than the events leading up to the Bay of Pigs. I was born in 1962 but appreciate the world was on a much finer knife edge then than in the 80s. I honestly never felt at threat from nuclear armageddon!

Quite. I have no recollection whatsoever of being afraid of nuclear attack in the 80s. Maybe the teachers scared the kids witless at school about it, but as an adult with children, I was never afraid of it. On other hand, an IRA bomb missed my husband by 5 minutes, otherwise he'd have gone to see his maker in thousands of little bits.

 

[Mental Lental]

China is hell bent on changing the status quo in asia pacific and i think you of all people should be well pleased with those figures. japan is going to be right at the heart of a new cold war, at best, over the next decade or so.

Thank you Nostradamus. I think I'll hold off on buying that air ticket out of here for now though, see how things play out.

 

[pastafarian]

Dunno if anyone saw this tonight, but the first 40 minutes sum up perfectly what I was getting at when I started the thread...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03jylxy/Strange_Days_Cold_War_Britain_Two_Tribes/

Not a big fan of Dominic Sandbrook, but he's always watchable.

very watchable and interesting series.

doubt very much you will get many agreeing on here as it portrays the lefties in poor light and Maggie as the victor.

anyway cracking documentary series and worth watching

 

[pastafarian]

Quite. I have no recollection whatsoever of being afraid of nuclear attack in the 80s.

were you mostly drunk in the 80`s?

 

[The Spanish]

Thank you Nostradamus. I think I'll hold off on buying that air ticket out of here for now though, see how things play out.

Seeing as you are laying the blame for tension at the us's door that's understandable. The country that freed Asia from Japanese imperialism is now acting like a true ally to japan in the face if Chinese expansionism and it's their fault? No wonder the yanks wonder why they bother sometimes. But anti Americanism is rife on here. Still let's see what life is like under a China dominated world I would suspect it won't be a barrel of laughs and the telly imports will be harder to understand for starters

 

[beorhthelm]

I think we all know which country is the most likely to instigate nuclear armageddon in the future.

And it ain't China.........

Pakistan? or Iran, but that threat has been delayed a bit.

 

[The Spanish]

Pakistan? or Iran, but that threat has been delayed a bit.

pakistan is the better bet but only in the context of a wider sino-indian conflict or proxy war. the above is a bit like seeing bosnia as the key initiator of world war one, rather than germany.

interesting article here

http://www.ibtimes.com/china-engage-six-inevitable-wars-involving-us-japan-india-more-according-pro-government-chinese

 

[The Antikythera Mechanism]

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/02/nato-war-game-nuclear-disaster

Have a read of this. We came very close to nuclear war in 1983

 

[Trufflehound]

Like many other people on this thread old enough to remember, of course we were aware of the threat of nuclear annihilation, but we didn't walk around in constant fear in the 1980s. If anything we spent time making jokes about it, discussing who we would try to shag if the 4-minute warning went off. Expecially when gung-ho Reagan got elected and appeared to up the ante (but probably didn't in reality).

As has been stated many times, the IRA were a more serious and real threat at the time. And I was a student in South Wales during the miners strike. People had other things on their mind back then.

Besides, as was kind of made clear in last night's programme, there was no threat at all from the mid-80s on. It evaporated once Gorbachev came on the scene.

were you mostly drunk in the 80`s?

I was 17 when the 80s began, 27 when they ended. So yes, yes I probably was.

 

[User removed 4]

Pakistan? or Iran, but that threat has been delayed a bit.

My money's on Israel.

 

[Return of the Rev]

Does anyone else remember the genuine fear and paranoia in the first half of the 1980's that nuclear war was imminent?

It got so bad that at school (Tideway), the headmaster called a special assembly for all pupils to explain that, despite the government's 'Protect & Survive' booklets which had just been slipped through our letter boxes, nuclear war wasn't going to destroy the UK and that we really should start thinking about those impending exams.

Such was the nihilism and pessimism at the time that I clearly remember friends at school casually talking about what they intended to do when we heard the inevitable 4 minute warning. Where they would go to attempt to survive, or what they would do in those final few minutes of anarchy.
Discussion was rife as to whether it was better to survive and live on somehow, or die in the first salvo of nuclear warheads.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_and_Survive

It's quite chilling to think about it now, but many of us genuinely thought we wouldn't make it to the year 2000.

Scary times:



Horrific times:



CND was prominent, and this film was finally allowed to be shown:



Quite disturbing that the threat of nuclear war played such a part of my teenage years. Anyone else?

It did unleash a whole slew of fantastic music though, none quite so wonderful as these 103 seconds of fragile protest:

Had plenty of nightmares around the time involving post nuclear attack,not a good bit of the 80's tbh

 

[Flex Your Head]

Like many other people on this thread old enough to remember, of course we were aware of the threat of nuclear annihilation, but we didn't walk around in constant fear in the 1980s. If anything we spent time making jokes about it, discussing who we would try to shag if the 4-minute warning went off. Expecially when gung-ho Reagan got elected and appeared to up the ante (but probably didn't in reality).

As has been stated many times, the IRA were a more serious and real threat at the time. And I was a student in South Wales during the miners strike. People had other things on their mind back then.

Yep, I refer back to my post #32 – it wasn’t a constant state of terror at all, but at times it did feel more a question of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’.

The programme last night quoted the figure that 40% of the British public believed that “nuclear was inevitable within ten years”, yet some of the posters on this thread are angrily indignant at the suggestion that people felt this way. It’s really quite bizarre.

The IRA was a daily concern and a real threat. I remember the briefings we had from the police and company security when working in a record shop in Brighton during the Tory conference, just down the road. Every bin, every pillar box was a potential hiding place for a bomb. But despite the horrors of a car bomb in a busy shopping street, and their other atrocities, it was a different type of fear. It was evil and deadly, but wouldn’t result in mushroom clouds over Britain.