nuclear-news

Entrepreneurs turn their hand to armageddon  the cover story of the Observer Magazine of 4 July 1982 (‘This man thinks you should buy a fall-out shelter’) says that Switzerland has large nuclear shelters under virtually every new building and claims that the Swiss are ‘leaders in domestic shelter technology’. Perhaps this is finally something to add to Harry Lime’s list of Swiss achievements, to go with brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace and the cuckoo clock.

The piece is like something torn from a surrealist catalogue. You can almost hear Ted Rogers from 3-2-1 reading out the star prize credentials to the winners: ‘The Crabtree Subterrain shelters are prefabricated galvanised corrugated steel cylinders with unusually long access ways, enabling burial up to a depth of 20ft. All the shelters in the range hold five to seven people in varying degrees of comfort, and prices range from £1,000 for the 7ft model to £9,660 for the 20ft model, plus installation.’ That ‘varying degrees of comfort’ is given the lie by the pictures of the shelters, whose interior aesthetics are all ship’s cabin meets office stationery cupboard.

‘Renewed anxiety about the prospect of nuclear war at the start of 1980 sparked off a boom in the shelter-building industry,’ the article continues, ‘but public response has been considerably less enthusiastic.’ Presumably it was less enthusiastic still after the harrowing TV series Threads aired two years later, which left viewers wondering, who’d want to survive?

Just as in Dr Strangelove, there are always people willing to monetise nuclear armageddon. ‘A growing band of entrepreneurs have eagerly turned their hands to designing shelters. However, enterprise is no substitute for expertise, and many are structures of questionable effectiveness.’ Good luck trying to get your money back after the apocalypse.