nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

Cold War advice for nuclear attack

Draw the curtains, bury the dead: Cold War advice for nuclear attack, By Judith Vonberg, CNN March 16, 2017

 Story highlights

  • Don’t forget can opener and toilet paper, booklet recommends, and cover dead bodies securely
  • The guide was satirized by anti-nuclear campaigners who called the advice futile

    A stark guide to surviving a nuclear blast that was first published during the dark days of the Cold War is being reissued by the Imperial War Museum in London.

    The 1980 pamphlet opens with this warning: “Read this booklet with care. Your life and the lives of your family may depend on it.” Its republication coincides with a new exhibition exploring 100 years of the anti-war movement, the first of its kind at the museum.
    “Even the safest room in your house is not safe enough,” the “Protect and Survive” guide warns in the opening pages, before explaining how to create a fall-out room and inner refuge using bricks, boxes or bags of earth, pieces of furniture and even books and clothing…….
    As Matt Brosnan, senior curator at the Imperial War Museum, explains in the foreword to the reissued booklet, in 1980 “the possibility of a nuclear war was as high as at any time since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.”….
    the UK government produced “Protect and Survive.” Officials intended to distribute it publicly only in the event of a crisis, Brosnan told CNN, but the guide was leaked to the press, forcing the government to make it available to the public.
    “That sort of information could have a big impact on the country’s mood,” said Brosnan, suggesting this as a reason why the pamphlet wasn’t made public immediately. “The advice in it was very similar to that given in the 1950s and 1960s, but the relative strength of nuclear weapons had increased.”……http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/16/europe/cold-war-nuclear-guide/

March 17, 2017 - Posted by | UK, weapons and war

No comments yet.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

« Previous | Next »