Produced by the Home Office and the Scottish Home Department in 1960, "Radioactive Fallout // The Overall Situation" and "Fallout in the Affected Area" give a chilling idea of what might happen if the United Kingdom were struck by nuclear weapons. A simple mushroom shown on the ground quickly becomes a mushroom cloud, and so the story unfolds -- with fallout moving quickly across a large swath of England. Nuclear fallout, or simply fallout, is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast or a nuclear reaction conducted in an unshielded facility, so called because it "falls out" of the sky after the explosion and shock wave have passed.
The film gives advice concerning how buildings and people can be protected from fallout, including the use of sandbags, basements and fallout shelters.
The film apparently contains images of the British nuclear test series at British Nuclear tests at Maralinga, that occurred between 1956 and 1963 at the Maralinga site, part of the Woomera Prohibited Area in South Australia and about 800 kilometres north-west of Adelaide. A total of seven nuclear tests were performed, with approximate yields ranging from 1 to 27 kilotonnes of TNT (4.2 to 113.0 TJ). Two major test series were conducted at the Maralinga site: Operation Buffalo and Operation Antler. The site was also used for hundreds of minor trials, many of which were intended to investigate the effects of fire or non-nuclear explosions on atomic weapons. The site was contaminated with radioactive materials and an initial cleanup was attempted in 1967.
The Civil Defence Corps (CDC) was a civilian volunteer organisation established in Great Britain in 1949 to mobilise and take local control of the affected area in the aftermath of a major national emergency, principally envisaged as being a Cold War nuclear attack. By March 1956, the Civil Defence Corps had 330,000 personnel. It was stood down in Great Britain in 1968, although two Civil Defence Corps still operate within the British Isles, namely the Isle of Man Civil Defence Corps and Civil Defence Ireland (Republic of Ireland). Many other countries maintain a national Civil Defence Corps, usually having a wide brief for assisting in large scale civil emergencies such as flood, earthquake, invasion, or civil disorder.
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