In the 1980s, as the British fear of nuclear war intensified, the government issued a series of guidance on how to survive in the doomsday.
In 1983, in the middle of a very ordinary residential area in London, a truck driver named Ben Hayden unloaded what he bought and began to build his own radioactive dust bunker. And just as he did, the end of the world seemed closer than ever. After a relatively peaceful period of diplomatic relations between the East and the West in the 1970s, the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 once again exacerbated tensions. Western politics has turned to the right, and after the British Margaret Thatcher came to power, the American Ronald Reagan (Ronald Reagan) also took office soon. The pressure has risen to a level that has never happened since the Cuban missile crisis . Nuclear bomb confrontation seems inevitable for the anxious British public.
In 1980, when the government announced that the United States would deploy Cruise and Pershing missiles on British territory, the nuclear concerns of the British public finally reached its peak. "The plan to install short-range missiles in public places in Greenham and Morseworth, as well as the massive demonstrations triggered by this decision, has pushed it to the forefront of people's attention," said Philip Steadman, emeritus professor of urban and architectural forms of studies at University College London. The nuclear disarmament movement soon became a nightmare for the right wing, and the political atmosphere was very tense. As a result, the threat of nuclear war is increasingly prominent in public awareness.
A small consumer test
In order to help the British people prepare for potential nuclear attacks, in 1981, the British Ministry of the Interior published the Domestic Nuclear Refuge. The thin brochure costs only 50p and is intended to recommend that the public build their own radioactive sediment shelter. It provides basic guidance on how to build a shelter that can survive for two weeks after a nuclear attack to avoid radiation.
At that time, Ben Hayden was a member of the British nuclear disarmament movement CND, and he decided to test this proposal in the most practical way. Following the book's guidance, he will conduct an experiment that was ironically described as "a small consumer test" by local punk poet Alan Gilbey, setting up a radiation bunker in his own residential area and stay there for two weeks. But it was also a difficult task for Ben Hayden. “I’m serious about building this project,” he told a local reporter. "When this refuge is built, it will prove to everyone what a ridiculous farce such an arrangement is after the nuclear bomb explodes."
Ben Hayden puts everything recommended in the book in the refuge, plus these things: a large amount of canned food, a bag of clean clothes, two tanks, waste buckets, books, a sleeping bag, a pillow, a guitar and his diary. Later on Monday afternoon, he climbed into his temporary residence and began to gradually adapt to life in this narrow new world, and was in a good mood that day. On the first day, reporters tried their best to climb into his shelter for an interview; he heard local people talking about him (some people think he must be a "madman"); and local children shouted in the ventilation shaft, even shocked him because their voices would be amplified in the enclosed tubular space below.
Soon, Ben Hayden began to question his sanity. Four days later, he began to lose his concept of time, and there was no clean air in the shelter to keep a candle burning. “This place is really starting to get me unbearable,” he wrote in his diary. “I have a mild claustrophobia and I took a deep breath of bad, stale air and thought, ‘That’s what it should be much better.’ At the beginning of the second week, the toilet garbage he collected started to rot, causing the garbage bag to leak. Ten days later, his urine bucket was full, the food jar began to get moldy, and a large number of insects were produced in the shelter."My humor is almost over...I can't focus on anything now. I feel like a waste lying here."
Beautiful mud
Happily, his two weeks in the radiation bunker finally ended, and Ben Hayden appeared in the sun. But it was difficult to get out, after all, this was his first time in two weeks, but after he went out, he found himself not alone: in addition to a media delegation and three TV station staff, about 200 locals came to greet him. On the playground of a nearby elementary school, the children cheered while watching. “It was pouring rain outside, mud everywhere, it was so beautiful,” he wrote.
The two weeks spent in a temporary nuclear bunker were very difficult. However, although this caused psychological trauma to Ben Hayden, he did not fantasize about this experience, which could help him better face the nuclear strike against . He wrote: "This exercise hardly gave me a sense of how I should deal with it."
This experiment shows that the recommendations made by the government's "Domestic Nuclear Refuge" pamphlet only seem feasible on the surface. With no geopolitical crisis, time is abundant: the construction of the shelter also took a week. After all, building materials were easy to obtain at that time, and I had the money to buy these houses, and there was also a piece of land to build a house. Finally, there was no explosion to destroy the outside of the bunker, no radioactive sediment blocking the ventilation duct , and no survivors searching for food and shelter. His experience made him disdain for the government's advice. "This shelter shows that it is totally unrealistic," he told the local reporter. "I don't think it will change anything, too."
Perhaps one reason the government's advice is so "unrealistic" is that many of their guidance are simply references to other instructions formulated during World War II . During this war, the government not only issued a booklet on security during the air strikes, but also on how to protect its home during the attacks. This includes construction guidance for Anderson-style home shelters and Morrison shelters. Although these can effectively fight against the attacks of Luftwaffe , the end of the war brought new threats: atomic bomb .
The initial public information about the atomic bomb, with the spiritual atmosphere of Blitz : A 1952 booklet states, "In Nagasaki, nearly seven out of ten people survived and told their experiences in person." "The last standard bunker, which can prevent atomic bombs from exploded well." But with the experiments and improvements of the hydrogen bomb on both sides of the Cold War and its incredibly destructive power, the enormous extent of this threat really began to worry the British government.
However, unlike some countries, the UK will not build expensive public radiation bunkers as part of its civil defense plan. Instead, individuals are responsible for finding means to protect themselves and their families, which is also reflected in a detailed public information brochure on nuclear threats prepared by the Ministry of the Interior. The first is the 1957 Hydrogen Bomb, which attempts to explain this new weapon to the public. However, it does not give useful advice on how to protect yourself from it, except for some basic charts. In 1963, a subsequent version of the report, Proposals for Residents to Prevent Nuclear Attacks, proposed some practical measures to create radioactive sediment shelters, such as staying in a room in the center of the home, blocking windows with sandbags and heavy furniture, or hiding outside in a trench that “enough to provide comfortable standing space.”
However, "Provide advice to residents on preventing nuclear attacks" was quickly criticized, even in the BBC satirical program "That's the Past Week" and ridiculed by the majority-conservative budget committee, who complained that it gave the public a "completely wrong impression".In Parliament, Labour Party MP Emrys Hughes condemned the booklet for providing unrealistic suggestions and summarized the position of the Budget Committee: "This thing is fake, it is garbage, and should be thrown into the wastebasket!"
fire and impact
After this disaster, the official new proposal on nuclear strikes has been delayed. In November 1974, during the Labor government led by Harold Wilson, officials from the Home Office gathered together to discuss how to replace this unpopular, now seriously outdated 1963 guide.
After learning from the bitter experience, the Home Office worked hard to ensure the correctness of the guide – including a series of television and radio advertisements, as well as the accompanying brochures, would not attract adverse public attention. To this end, they chose to keep the program confidential until needed: in 1976 only a small batch of booklets were printed and distributed privately to those involved in contingency planning, such as the Chief Executive of the local authorities and the Chief of Police.
This new booklet called "Protection and Survival" is presented in brown and orange colors. The cover is a family - father, mother, son and daughter. It is surrounded by a protective circle in the middle, triggering people's associations with flames and radioactive dust. Indoors, however, the advice is very similar to previous decades: understand early warning signals, stay at home, build an "internal shelter", and ensure adequate water and supplies.
It was not until the spring of 1980 that the investigation of " Times " and BBC "Panorama" exposed the flaws of the British civil defense project, and "Protection and Survival" began to attract attention. The Thatcher administration, who had just taken power, also found that the public and media demands forced them to take action. They approved the reprint and release of the booklet, with some clever modifications.
In addition to the "Protection and Survival" project, a working group was established to design and test radioactive dust bunker design. Their research results were published in early 1981, called "Domestic Nuclear Refuge". The booklet with the “Protection and Survival” logo contains suggestions from early pamphlets and provides guidance on five types of radioactive dust bunkers. Two of them are undoubtedly based on the Morrison and Anderson refuges designed in World War II. In fact, the Working Group also prepared a larger and more detailed technical manual for shelter construction for merchants and engineers, containing instructions, illustrations, and more extracted directly from the 1942 guide to the construction of the Morrison shelter. The most significant change is the removal of the pipe in the early guide, a character smoking.
is stupid advice
The last minute revision of "Protection and Survival" is not enough to save it and the domestic nuclear shelter from ridicule. Soon, the opposition movement became a gift to the left-wing local authorities who believed that the idea of civil defense would not work and actively resisted the central government's attempts to make them take responsibility for managing the public after a nuclear attack. Greater London Parliament called the government's pamphlet "pretty stupid" and in the 1981-show-coming sitcom Only Fools and Horses, one episode highlighted the obvious shortcomings of the plan, allowing the Trotters, who lived in bungalows, to build a nuclear refuge on the roof of their tower Nelson Mandela's house in central London.
For scholar Philip Steadman, the booklet Domestic Nuclear Refuge provides a useful way to question government planning assumptions about nuclear attacks. “I participated in all kinds of teaching and demonstration activities and said to myself, ‘What can I do?’” he said. "I think, as an architect, I might be able to talk about shelters, so I got the "Handbook of Domestic Nuclear Refuges". I think I must have seen the Ministry of Interior's estimate of explosion losses there. I immediately realized that the calculation of the affected land area cannot be correct."
After delving into these data, Steedman found that the data given by the Ministry of Interior was very wrong.Although the domestic nuclear protection agency claims that 5% of the UK's land will be severely affected by the nuclear explosion, Steedman found that at least 60% of the population will be affected. He published his findings in New Scientist, calling the government's data "very suspicious."
However, not everyone is critical, and some people do take the government's advice seriously. Magazines such as "Protection" and "Survival Monthly" are ready to cater to their needs. The magazine was founded in January 1981 and was prefaced by the Minister of Civil Defense, Leon Brittan, to provide a one-stop service to some consumers. Early articles focused on the construction of shelter, but also covered the impact of radiation on agriculture, practical first aid measures, and even radiation protection guidelines.
At that time, people were surrounded by a large number of advertisements of pre-built radiation bunkers. Although the government encouraged mainstream media not to advertise for such products, PSM readers still had dozens of options. One ad has subverted the memory of the Blitz spirit, showing a picture of a Londoner hiding at a subway station with chilling words: "Next time, it won't be so easy to hide." For those who are unable to build or buy protective facilities, they can also choose to hide in a natural radioactive dust bunker provided by scrap metal mines in the UK.
Today, although East-West relations have once again become peaceful, the nuclear threat has been far from the minds of most people. However, nuclear weapons have not disappeared, and their existence—combined with the new risks brought by climate change, means that the doomsday clock is closer to midnight now than ever before. In an era of instant messaging, social media and fake news, the kind of government advice seen during the Cold War is unlikely to come back, but there is still hope that government communications personnel can learn from their predecessor’s mistakes.
