+Hayley Stewart that four minute warning would not give the average person time to remove and then prop up two doors, let alone get the other essentials ready to survive behind them in the unlikely event you lasted for the first 15 minutes.

The idea was to also have your passport. It would have made identifying the dead easier. At least that is what we were told in the RAF in the early 80s

@@IAMPLEDGE People would've been instructed to carry out these tasks during a major international crisis or escalation of tensions (approximately 72 hours before an expected nuclear attack), not during the 4 minute warning. However, even this would've not be a sufficient amount of time.

I always assumed it was more to stop the roof falling on you but the cremation theory makes sense. Annoys me that the people who started it will be safe and the thought of the bastards coming out to start it all again after is vile.

If you're at or near a Ground Zero you'd be fucked, but *IF* at a distance AND properly constructed in advance (admittedly two big IFs) the door shelter would provide adequate protection from blast effects and fallout. What's depicted in "Threads" is the fact that many people would temporize and wait until it was too late to do much.

Just imagine the ones they must have now, this tech is over half a century old. pray to be right underneath it, cos the burns dont bare thinking about.

That is sad to read.

Nah, Paris, like many European capitals, has fallen victim to much worse than a nuclear weapon. And I can guarantee Paris will only have severely worsened since 2013.

Diversity is a strength don’t you know.

Paris smells like ammonia or urine. It was so intolerable in places that people with lung issues would be at serious risk.

Aberdeen definitely took a hit in about 1985. It’s been really badly rebuilt as a shopping centre

Ground blasts are used for seats of government and ground silos holding nuclear missiles, Today it's a more precise affair with lower yield nuclear weapons likely to be used. There's Still more than 150 operational R.O.B bunkers, that can hold upto 6 if required. If you've ever come across them you'd have noticed there'd covered with a steel manhole cover which is locked, under there is a hatch that's padlocked. In the last 3 weeks the 3 that are within a few miles of me have all had locks replaced. And there's been extensive underground building work going on in Eastern Scotland, the site is fenced off and guarded, those working there are living on site in portacabins. Officially it's a water drainage system or that's what people assume.. Shortly after work started signs have appeared in adjacent fields saying " no drones, military training area".. Except there's no military training going on there and never has been, it's being built in what was a crop field, the surrounding area is farm land. No doubt similar building work has been going on in other parts of the country. One can only assume it's governmental underground facilities, and safe places for the Elite..

I was a child during the 50s and 60s. We didn't worry. We just got on with our lives. What might have happened, might have happened - there was nothing the ordinary citizen could do about it. We certainly didn't have any "duck and cover" sort of nonsense, but the film "Protect and Survive" (available on You Tube) was risible.

I grew up in the 80s, close enough to Heathrow that had we been attacked we would have been vapourised

It was always in the back of your mind, I suffered insomnia at times but didn’t link it with the cold war, although it must have had an unconcious effect, most of the time you didn’t think about it to be honest.

I saw threads in august 1985 when I was 9, it absolutely destroyed me for the next few years.

Having lived through the height of the cold war tensions as a teenager I readily admit that it gave me the fear. One especially bleak thing sticks in my mind, that was when a leaflet dropped through the letterbox one morning, a leaflet advising us how to prepare our homes for the possibility of a nuclear strike. That made it very real. Even now I have a morbid fascination with nuclear war.

Yuo can

Ground-burst explosions would throw considerably more fallout into the air, which would continue to deposit itself for at least a couple of weeks.

@@snidelywhiplash Not locally.

@@Evan_Bell Correct. However, you'd be subject to deposition of fallout from targeted places for a couple hundred miles upwind.

That would not suprise me, probably been updated too

COG is very real. Russia, North Korea, China, and Irain still went to kill the West.

continuity of government is more important than your sad little life, I tell you what.

@@TheShootist many communist countries accross the former soviet block have alot of shelters for the general public. ithink Sweden does too,. Germany has protected shelters for 3% of its population, Austria for 30%, Finland for 70%, Sweden for 81%, and Switzerland for 114%. . Sweden where 70 percent of the worlds gold is bought

@@u.kairrifleshuntingtargeta9438 yes. much fuss was made in USSR about shelters. fat lot of good it did anyone.

Back then it was a case of when not if we got nuked. We're scary times

Brian Lion every time president Reagan would talk with Gorbachev, we (the US) held our breath. When things didn’t go right between the two leaders and you would read it in the newspaper, it was pretty scary.

@@brianlion9494 I remember in school when I was young weed have civial defence ddrillls

And now nine years later, that Putin pillock killed off the final nuclear reduction treaty by refusing to sign its extension yesterday. And we are being shuffled down that dark alley again. The one leading to M.A.D. Place. The one we'd all rejoiced in seeing bricked up decades ago. The one we'd all forgotten about. I hate to have to say this, but I'm feeling the initial murmurings of the same knot of hopelessness in the pit of my stomach last suffered back at the fag end of the Eighties. The feeling where your only consolation is that even the most self-involved dictator is still human deep down and therefore must have just enough common sense not to press the button...

Growing up next to a Nike missile base and having family in the military gave me a different view. Nuclear war was a definite possibility, but luckily cooler heads prevailed, especially after the Cuban missile crisis. But any illusions of "civil defense" were patently ridiculous after the 1960s....

It made sense in the early 50's. Quickly became outdated though.

It totally does, but only against a single weapon. if society has ended you may as well just go outside and look at it.

It does if your far enough away. Otherwise kiss your sweet ass goodbye.

Duck and cover the bom has heat I mean youd get badly hurt

The main point of "duck & cover" is to protect against the immediate effects of a nuclear blast - the heat pulse and flying debris from the blast wave, then get yourself to a fallout shelter ASAP after. If you're not too close to Ground Zero, you'll likely survive the initial wave of attack IF you shelter properly. If you're close to the detonation though, you're screwed no matter what.

+BuggritHall Yes, considering many of the people that have been in Labour governments were communist comrades themselves. No doubt they would have sold secrets.

I can think of at least one Labour ponce who may not have been a commie, but he's certainly a 100% war criminal, whom, given half a chance would've cherished the thought of pressing the button, as war was the ONLY way he knew how

Much like the United States. Draw a line south west from El Paso Texas north east to Abilene Texas then to Ft. Worth then north east again to Joplin Missouri then due north of that right up to Canada. Place your bombs 50 miles either side of that and you eliminate 66% of the united states minute man missiles and 7 SAC bases. You also contaminate the food growing regions of the USA.

There was some belief in Soviet military thinking that they should not target some of the leadership though as it helps to have someone left to surrender. The alternative is the leadership dies, the submariners open the letters of the resort and retaliate.

@@toddbridges2411 do you really think that the Soviets would have seen the Labour party as true comrades in arms? Even the actual communist party in the UK would have been disbanded had the Soviets ever invaded.

2001

Wrong

@@louisbeerreviews8964 No, it is you that is wrong. Not only do I know what it was built for, but I even had a close relative in the RAF that served there.

We don’t have tax dollars.

Daddy Daddy get me out of here!! I'm underground!!!!!! David Bowie!!!

*charm

I would hope that there's no "re-activating" to be done. Meaning that the powers that be want us to think that every nuclear bunker has been decommissioned and sold. Taking my reasoning from the state of many of the post-war tunnels to be seen on the myriad fascinating Urbex videos. The number of working lifts and power and lighting circuits in the supposedly abandoned in the 90s bunkers would suggest that they're just sleeping. By extension, those that we're meant not to know of or to have forgotten about are gently resting down there, used for filing dusty white papers or for storing NBC suits by the hundred thousand. I hope!

Hugh Tierney Tierney It's as much of an urban legend as the strategic steam engine reserve.

It's true. Beside the entrance to Box tunnel is a short branch line which goes into Box Hill. Read The Secret State or War Plan UK. Two excellent books that both uncover the history and intended Cold War usage for the Corsham complex.

@@chrishenniker5944 Utter bolox. Do some research.

@@thewomble1509 Thanks for that. Those books sound like they'd definately be worth a read.

@@hughtierneytierney3585 They are. No worries my friend.👍

It's a good question, but I would imagine that even the most hellish, Threads-type nuclear war would probably only kill about 65% of the population on X-Day. There would still be millions of starving, sick people to manage in the weeks and months afterwards. I would also imagine that a lot of these plans are based on situations where only a couple of missiles hit, rather than Armageddon.

​@@jonboyjon1976One of the details in "Threads" that took me aback was the megatonnage of weapons used against Britain. As I understand the physics, the marginal economic cost of additional blast is virtually nil today. One might reasonably wonder why an attacked would not simply want to leave Britain a level, glassy plain. Yet, at least what we know of Western nuclear weapons is that as they have become presumptively more accurate, their yields have been reduced! For the sake of real victims of a nuclear attack on the UK (I honestly wonder if Northern Ireland is even targeted now that Belfast isn't a ship-building Goliath on the order of China or South Korea), let us hope that our adversaries employ a similar rule.

@@UtilityCurve I believe that Russia and China target not only Northern Ireland, but Ireland itself as it might be used as a safe haven for British/NATO forces, especially its harbours. But again, not every nuclear scenario is straight to Armageddon. Some have the use of a single warhead as a "demonstration"

Not me

***** No bunkers built since 1992, who told you that?

Sound Media I know where one is located near me

Andrew Hall I know where one is too.

Now there's injection/ unt-nuke injection stoping been vaporised , blowing by the winds as well radio active , bunkers are just like burying people alive

Such is the arrogance of those that rule.

Truthfully, while administering what might be left of the UK after an attack was part of the purpose of securing the government, the logic of deterrence demanded that government survive to massively retaliate, else there would be no reason for an adversary NOT to attack. Dark as the thought may be, these elaborate schemes and edifices were first and foremost the means by which the UK could be avenged. The logic of deterrence only operates to keep the peace if all parties are rational and absolutely convinced that the other parties would prefer to possibly exterminate humanity (certainly topple civilization, at least to Dark Age conditions) than allow survivors if those survivors would speak a different language. (Though the impetus to start a thermonuclear conflict would spring from the same dislike of foreign accents.) It is quite a comment on the human condition. Almost certainly, tribalism and xenophobia were essential to the survival of the first members of the genus Homo, but talk about diminishing returns once those increasingly hairless apes figured out how to split and fuse nuclei. One hopes that there is little uranium on Mars. An interesting thought problem: Is stepping through the atomic door inevitably prior to becoming a space-faring species? Unfortunately, it seems to me that it is, as the photovoltaic effect (the computers aboard alien spacecraft are not going to be steam-powered) presumes some knowledge of atomic theory and eventually those alien scientists WILL want to know what is powering their local star.

@@hankbankster9700 I think a very small percentage of mankind would survive but their lives would be shorter due to radiation. I like what someone said years ago, "the next war will be fought with nuclear weapons, the one after that will be fought with stones and clubs".

Mad - literally mad we’re not talking about collective farming we’re talking about a dead planet

There's one in Essex that's a museum and you can visit it

@@ajc94 Someone on the Essex Council was using their capitalist spirit! I approve! Will check into it!

yea if they wanted it he wouldnt have the keys for long..lol

+Professor6871 Pretty much, yeah. Saves the survivors the trouble of having to bury the millions of dead.