I have examined Man's wonderful inventions. And I tell you that in the
arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes
Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the
slaughter of plague, pestilence, and famine. The peasant I tempt today
eats and drinks what was eaten and drunk by the peasants of ten thousand
years ago; and the house he lives in has not altered as much in a
thousand centuries as the fashion of a lady's bonnet in a score of
weeks. But when he goes out to slay, he carries a marvel of mechanism
that lets loose at the touch of his finger all the hidden molecular
energies, and leaves the javelin, the arrow, the blowpipe of his fathers
far behind. In the arts of peace Man is a bungler. I have seen his
cotton factories and the like, with machinery that a greedy dog could
have invented if it had wanted money instead of food. I know his clumsy
typewriters and bungling locomotives and tedious bicycles: they are toys
compared to the Maxim gun, the submarine torpedo boat. There is nothing
in Man's industrial machinery but his greed and sloth: his heart is in
his weapons.
The Devil speaking in Don Juan in Hell, Act III of Man and
Superman, by George Bernard Shaw, 1902.
This site is
dedicated to the memory of the many thousands of civilians, both men and
women, who gave of their time and skills, mostly as volunteers, to
prepare for something that never actually happened, namely WWIII. They
were the members of the civil defence services; the Civil
Defence Corps, Auxiliary Fire Service, National Hospital Service Reserve, United
Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation, Royal
Observer Corps and the WVS/WRVS.
The Cold War, was never declared, but it was a war that lasted, by
fairly common agreement, from 1947 until 1991. During that time there
was a standoff between the capitalist West consisting of the USA and its
allies, and the Communist East, made up of the USSR and its allies. It
is said that in a cold war no bullets or other weapons are fired, but in
this case there were numerous conflicts that formed part of the whole,
and resulted in many deaths, some estimate as high as 7 million. During
that time many thousands of civilians in the UK prepared for the event
that all of them hoped would never happen, namely that the 'Cold War'
would become 'HOT'. They gave of their time willingly that, if the worst
should have happened, then many more people might have been given the
chance to survive. There were times when we came perilously close.
Several events could have boiled over, including the Korean
War, a number in Berlin and of course the Cuban
Missile Crisis. Then there was also the 'Dr
Strangelove' scenario, that a rogue commander could have
triggered a nuclear war, and that is not so far fetched as one might
assume, it was voiced by Krushchev on at least one occasion as a
possibility. There was even an occasion on which US General
Lucius D. Clay thought it might be a good idea to confront the
Soviets, in October 1961, with tanks at 'Checkpoint
Charlie' a crossing point in the Berlin Wall. Another
incident resulted from the NATO Able
Archer exercise in 1983, when the USSR were convinced that the
west was preparing for an attack. On
several occasions NORAD gave false reports of missile attacks
(e.g. Nov. 3, 1979; Nov. 9, 1979; June 3, 1980). On several of these
occasions the west got within a few days or even hours of moving to a
war footing. The highest alert level occurred during the Cuban
Missile Crisis when the US military went to DEFCON2 (this is only
one step from the highest alert level). At this time the British were on
a 45 minute alert, with nuclear armed bombers at the end of their
runways, The Civil Defence Corps was on alert ready to be
mobilised in 24 hours. No other event has raised alerts to this level,
even the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre only rated DEFCON3.
All World War II civil defence in the UK was stood down in May 1945.
However, by 1948 the government realised that in the event of a future
war we would have no systems or personnel equipped to deal with the
immediate effects of attack, accordingly they passed the Civil
Defence Act 1948. The following year the Civil
Defence Corps, the Auxiliary Fire Service
and National Hospital Service Reserve were
formed. The detailed role of the Royal Observer
Corps (which had been reformed in 1947) was also somewhat
modified. The Industrial Civil Defence Service
was formed in 1951 when large companies were invited to form their own
civil defence units. It had a similar organisation to the Civil Defence
Corps, but was separate from it. The requirement was that a business
employed two hundred or more people These units were organised in a
similar way to the Civil Defence Corps, with Headquarters, Warden,
Rescue, First Aid and Fire Guard Sections. The Fire Guard Section manned
fire points and smaller fire appliances. Each unit had its own control
post, and groups of units could form a group control post. Group control
posts and ceontrol posts in larger factories had the status of warden
posts in their own right, whereas smaller units answered to their local
Civil Defence Corps warden post. Companies that took part in the scheme
included regions of British Railways, British Leyland, Norvic and
Colmans. All of these organisations were largely manned by volunteers.
Unfortunately for the serious student of the cold war, many of the sites
which were an integral part of the passive defence of the UK have now
disappeared. Only a few original Civil Defence Corps local headquarters
remain, none in operational state. Out of the 1,563 Royal Observer Corps
posts (including a non-standard one in Windsor Castle), there are only a
handful which are still accessible by the public. Of the higher level
controls, there are only a couple. In less than thirty years, since the
end of the Cold War, these sites are disappearing so fast that it is
possible that within a generation there will be none left, except for
the few that are maintained by enthusiastic volunteers. This is
surprising since the cold war lasted so long. Please be aware that all
Royal Observer Posts and other Cold War sites, are private property,
entry without authorisation is both foolish and trespass. The contents
of preserved posts are removed when they are not open, and the
unauthorised removal of any of the contents of any post is theft,
persons who have stolen such items have been arrested, charged and
imprisoned. It is my aim to preserve as much information as possible,
and to provide links to as many sites as I can. In so doing I want to
pay tribute to the hundreds of thousands of volunteers of our UK civil
defence organisations, in recognition of the immense amount of time and
the sacrifices they gave to train for the terrible event that didn't
happen. This is an on-going project and I hope to add to it on a regular
basis as I discover more original material. I also pay tribute to the
volunteers, restorers and re-enactors who continue to tell the story.
There are
those, of course, who will lampoon the efforts of those whose
roles were aimed at protecting the lives and liberties of others. They
will criticise the efforts of such volunteers, but remember that most of
the critics didn't live through the height of the cold war, and they
certainly didn't have the training. I am fortunate enough, and proud, to
have served in the Civil Defence Corps from May 1964 until its stand
down in March 1968, and to count among my friends many others who also
served in the various civil defence organisations. I sincerely believe
that if the worst had happened trained personnel from all of the civil
defence organisations, the voluntary, military and civil together, would
have made a difference. Whilst it is probably the case that few would
have survived, some would have. Some estimates suggest that if the
population followed the advice of Protect and
Survive, together with the trained personnel, maybe 25% of the
population might survive. It is true that things we take for granted
such as the NHS, power and the like would no longer be functioning, but
people can be resourceful, maybe less so now than maybe fifty years ago.
One of the key issues concerning people's understanding of civil
defence, is that much of what was known about nuclear weapons and their
effects was kept secret. This has fed the conspiracy theorists and
others so that much of what you can read online is, to put it frankly,
absolute garbage. There are even those who will tell you that nuclear
weapons do not exist, or if they do the don't work, using
pseudo-scientific claptrap to back-up their foolish ideas. It is the
object of this site to correct some of the rubbish you will find
elsewhere. Any errors are mine, but I would like to thank the many
people who have helped, and continue to help me on almost a daily basis.
"The
War Game (1964)"
During the cold war a number of
dramatisations of nuclear war and its effects were made. In the UK the
most well-known are Raymond Briggs' "When
the Wind Blows" (originally published in 1982), Peter Watkins'
"The War Game" (1964), and Barry Hines' "Threads" (1985); this is in
addition to many government made films and other publications many of
which may be found on this site.
