The Theat of Nuclear Annihilation in 1980s Britain

Flex Your Head · Oct 19, 2013

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:

Lord Bracknell · Oct 19, 2013

I remember that era well, mainly because my job in local government brought with it an appointment to the regional administration that would come into being if the government decreed that was the way the country would be run in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. There were some interesting training sessions held at what is now called The Emergency Planning College at Easingwold, in North Yorkshire, where everyone got to be very good at dealing with a theoretical nuclear attack on Nottinghamshire.

drew · Oct 19, 2013

I was just leaving sixth form in 1981 and I don't recognize the paranoia that you talk of. At that time the only fear was from the provos in Ireland!

Nibble · Oct 19, 2013

If you listen carefully on the car radio at start of Threads they read out a result for BHA. 1-0 to us of course.

catfish · Oct 19, 2013

I can remember the government banning The War Game. Their official advice in case of nuclear attack was to take a door off it's hinges, prop it against the wall and hide underneath it.
Failing that I think it was the kitchen table.

drew · Oct 19, 2013

catfish said:
I can remember the government banning The War Game. Their official advice in case of nuclear attack was to take a door off it's hinges, prop it against the wall and hide underneath it.
Failing that I think it was the kitchen table.

]

But the War Game was made in 1965 and never shown and that was not long after the bay of pigs. Surely the 60s/70s was far more on edge than the 70s/80s?

RexCathedra · Oct 19, 2013

drew said:
Surely the 60s/70s was far more on edge than the 70s/80s?

Never was as bad as the early '80's because the threat was the most real in the early '80's.

drew · Oct 19, 2013

RexCathedra said:
Never was as bad as the early '80's because the threat was the most real in the early '80's.

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!

cloud · Oct 19, 2013

I remember various neighbours having nuclear bunkers, CND badges, and half of our class going to watch When the wind blows at the cinema.

It certainly was an issue, until the wall fell in 1989

abc · Oct 19, 2013

cloud said:
I remember various neighbours having nuclear bunkers, CND badges, and half of our class going to watch When the wind blows at the cinema.

It certainly was an issue, until the wall fell in 1989

When the wind blows really seemed real and was scary because I think we felt it was more likely than not that a nuclear missile would be fired. I was at Uni then and despite the fact that most unis were very political then, CND supporters were in a minority and virtually everyone absolutely despised the Greenham Common women. Looking back I'm not sure if this was because most people understood that only multilateral disarmament would work (as history proved) or whether despite the fact that we genuinely thought the world might end, partying and getting pissed was more important.

Very clear memories of dancing to FG to H Two Tribes 'mine is the last voice you'll ever hear..' and having a merry old time. Strange really!

whitelion · Oct 19, 2013

The sixties was for me growing up with the threat of nuclear war. My dad was a lorry driver and I was sometimes taken on local trips..one such being when he told me as a ten year old of the chance of Armageddon when the Bay of Pigs crisis was going on and I told him to drive off the road to end it all. My mother was in the local Civil Defence league and her meetings in Hangleton Road near the Grenadier meant that threat was real.

In the Eighties I was working in Saudi Arabia during the Iran hostage crisis and never thought about the possibility of nuclear war...as others have said it was Northern Ireland...China...etc.

RexCathedra · Oct 19, 2013

drew said:
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!

In London, in October 1983, more than 300,000 people assembled in Hyde Park as part of the largest protest against nuclear weapons in British history.

dougdeep · Oct 19, 2013

Fear and paranoia? What a load of claptrap, most people were more worried about what was happening in Coronation Street.

life on mars 73 · Oct 19, 2013

It was precisely BECAUSE the West had all these nuclear weapons that the Iron Curtain eventually fell. The Eastern Bloc had to spend so much money on trying to keep up their defences against what they saw as an aggressive threat from the West, that they simply didn't have the spare money to satisfy basic consumer demands. The Berlin Wall fell because people in East Germany wanted a shiny VW Golf, a Sony Walkman and a holiday in Majorca too.

Cadiz Seagull · Oct 19, 2013

I don't remeber the 80's as a time when nuclear war was a possibility. Much more dangerous was the Cuban missile crisis in the early 60's. Then we were a gnat's gonad away from Armageddon but JFK called Kruschev's bluff.

And Kruschev blinked.

And we could all get on with the sixties.

Thunder Bolt · Oct 19, 2013

Cadiz Seagull said:
I don't remeber the 80's as a time when nuclear war was a possibility. Much more dangerous was the Cuban missile crisis in the early 60's. Then we were a gnat's gonad away from Armageddon but JFK called Kruschev's bluff.

And Kruschev blinked.

And we could all get on with the sixties.

That is how I recall it. There were Ban the Bomb marches following that crisis, on a regular basis. The early 80s threat was from the IRA and in 82, from the Argentinians, although that was dealt with within 6 weeks.

KZNSeagull · Oct 19, 2013

RexCathedra said:
In London, in October 1983, more than 300,000 people assembled in Hyde Park as part of the largest protest against nuclear weapons in British history.

So? That didn't mean that nuclear war was a real possibility in the 80's, just that lots of people liked to protest about it. I don't remember being worried - all I remember is Neil from the Young Ones painting himself white to deflect the blast!

Having read the stories in the press recently of missiles accidentally falling out of US planes and only not detonating due to faulty wiring and a Russian not pressing the button when his early warning system told him that missiles were on the way, when they were not, just shows how close we have come at times from mistakes and accidents.

The Antikythera Mechanism · Oct 19, 2013

The fact that the Government produced the "Protect & Survive" series of information films and pamphlets in the late 70's, early 80's, indicates the level of threat perceived in this period. I found them shockingly frightening.

One Teddy Maybank · Oct 19, 2013

drew said:
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!

Exactly the same. Think the OP's Headmaster was completely paranoid. The threat from the IRA was far more real.

Mutts Nuts · Oct 19, 2013

drew said:
I was just leaving sixth form in 1981 and I don't recognize the paranoia that you talk of. At that time the only fear was from the provos in Ireland!

Exactly how far up your own arse was your head at the time

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