Why there’s no modern guide to surviving a nuclear war

The risk of thermonuclear war has rarely been greater. But despite the growing threat, the general public are less prepared than they ever have been to cope with an attack. With Trump in the White house, Putin in the Kremlin, North Korea testing ballistic missiles and the perilous state of military security, nuclear war is a real possibility.

It would kill millions (perhaps billions) of people, leave many more seriously injured, coat the planet in radioactive fallout and destroy the ecosystem. The Doomsday clock, which measures how close we are to apocalypse, has been moved from five to three minutes to midnight. Time is short – but the United Kingdom is not ready.

The reason the United Kingdom is so poorly prepared can be traced back to fairly recent times. In May 1980, the government created a series of public information films, radio broadcasts and the booklet Protect and Survive, which has now been reissued by The Imperial War museum. (The museum has said this is not in response to the current political situation, but as part of the first major exhibition on the anti-war movement.)

Protect and Survive was widely mocked for its advice, which included painting windows with white emulsion to reflect the heat flash from a nuclear explosion, storing water in toilet cisterns, and guidance on how to bury and label the dead. In response, the BBC showed a bleak film called Threads which showed how useless the advice would have been for most city dwellers. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament produced a version called Protest and Survive.

The failure of Protect and Survive is the reason the United Kingdom doesn’t have public information on how to prepare for a nuclear war today.

My research reveals that the Home Office repeatedly attempted to resurrect Protect and Survive throughout the 1980s. It was hoped that a new and improved public information campaign would include the use of deep nuclear shelters, make provision for vulnerable people, and promote collective planning for a nuclear attack. The Home Office even employed an advertising agency which surreptitiously attended CND meetings to keep an eye on the opposition.