@DavidCobham
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- Опубліковано 30 вер 2024
- "The Hole in the Ground", 1962 film on UK Warning and Monitoring Organisation.
The United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organization (UKWMO) was a British civilian organization operating between 1957 and 1992 to provide the authorities with data about nuclear explosions and forecasts of likely fallout profiles across the country in the event of war.
The UKWMO was established and funded by the Home Office but in the main utilised Royal Observer Corps (ROC) premises and its uniformed personnel as the field force. The only time the combined organisations were on high alert in the Cold War was during Cuban Missile Crisis in October and November 1962. The organisation was wound up and disbanded in November 1992 following a review prompted by the government's Options for Change report.
Its emblem-of-arms was a pair of classic hunting horns crossing each other, pointed upwards, with the enscrolled motto "Sound An Alarm", a title also used for two contemporary public information films. Sparetime members of the UKWMO warning teams were awarded the Civil Defence Medal for fifteen years continuous years service, with a bar for each subsequent twelve years.
The United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation had five main functions in the event of nuclear war. These were:
1) Warning the public of any air attack.
2) Providing confirmation of nuclear strike.
3) Warning the public of the approach of radioactive fall-out.
4) Supplying the civilian and military authorities in the United Kingdom and neighbouring countries in NATO with details of nuclear bursts and with a scientific assessment of the path and intensity of fall-out.
5) Provision of a post-attack meteorological service.
Copyright: David Cobham Productions, 1962
Directed by David Cobham
#NATO #ColdWar #UK
I say. it's all so very polite and looks like jolly good fun. Kent has been vaporised but, look here old boy, let's have some chocolate.
Well, it _is_ only Kent after all. Let's save the histrionics for when somewhere important gets vaporised, what?
Lots of this generation would have served in WW2 - most would have seen stuff that would melt a snowflake today
@@lleifior2
Without TEA ? !!!??
Has all this nuclear business got in between your ears young man ?
(if the cows are all dead find a lactating woman)
lol -stiff upper lip and all that!
stiff udder tit
The UK’s civil defence was and still is a joke. Generally, all the bigwigs and top knobs would run for large, luxury shelters, and everybody else can fend for themselves.
They did have a guide book in the 80’s entitle “Protect and Survive” but it’s advice is next to worthless.
John Jackson - luxury is obviously a relative term, cold spartan and dull always spring to my mind, obviously things would’ve warmed up in the event of a strike bringing a certain something but definitely not luxury. On the up side you can visit most of these so called secret locations now to see what you were missing,
There would have been plenty of survivors and without a surviving government the UK would turn into some sort of mad max scenario
The elites are going to be in for the shock afterwards when suddenly the army commanders are taking over and then a little while later, the soldiers start murdering the commanders and eventually everybody realizes there’s no more Wimbledon. There’s no more caviar there’s no more anything out there.
@@confusedbadger6275 America fell to pieces because of a few planes, flying into a tower the UK and most of the world crumbled because people got a cold. There will be very few people left, and they will be no government of any sort. They will maybe be a few groups of military personnel running around the countryside.
Do they still stop everything at 3pm sharp for Tea?
yes still the same, Open Heart surgeons are the worst for it.
Of course! They're not barbarians!
Crisis or no nothing should interfere with Tea!
I've been on hold for 3 hours and I haven't got through to Watford train timeable telephone service yet...
And they get priority service..
Bloody typical..
I was a member of the Royal Observer Corps based in an underground location in north London. We reported regularly during every shift with our area HQ. Seeing how the little team in Papa One operated brought it all back. It really was like that. Quiet, un-flustered and 'pop the kettle on' was the order of the day.
I would LOVE to know your thoughts on Threads, The War Game, When the Wind Blows... and the like... I was 11-12 when the Irish health board sent iodine tablets to every home in the East Coast in 90s because of the fear of Sellafield being attacked... Ive been crazy into nuclear stuff since...i remember a particularly detailed description of an underground shelter being in the James Herbert final book in the Rats trilogy 'Dominion'... At the start there's a nuclear exchange... Two character's get to a government shelter... Aaaaaand evil mutant rats attack... But i would give anything to see a shelter and to listen to stories.
Kinda terrifying.
I understand the need for efficiency and abstraction but shit how do you divorce the science from the countless humans in misery.
I think in a way it's better now all these types of preparation are completely pointless. Hypersonic ICBMs mean no warning and no chance of "Duck and Cover"
I grew up going to school next door to a royal observer core bunker right next to my primary school at craigiebarns in Dundee.
Scary to look at it everyday. We all knew why it was there. The 80s was a crazy paranoid time to grow up.
I vividly remember my dad borrowing a VCR and TV from his work to watch Threads. I guess I was 10. He was watching it in the living room and I came down from my room and he initially tried to shoo me out but eventually relented and let me watch it.
It scared the living shit out of me and I remember to this day having the Bomb dream where I'm coming home from school and I see the mushroom cloud a few miles away. I'm only 20 minutes walk from home but the fear I felt in that dream is the same fear I'm beginning to fear today given the current situation with Ukraine and Russia. It only takes on Tac Nuke and we could be in the catastrophic MAD scenario.
I never thought I'd feel like this again.
We are so stupid as a species.
Luv and Peace?
@@ianedmonds9191 They had us watching Threads at school, probably because at that time there weren't many Yorkshire films around.
It scared the shit out of us too, especially because we weren't that far from Sheffield where it was set!
I'm not British so please forgive my importance when I express my feelings that , it looks a bit of like so much terrible good fun ! 😄
@@bellvnv2000 fortunately because of 9.11 and current events we know that it's just fun.
No business in a nuclear exchange
"Fallout expected...but not within the hour"...oh good! Still got time to nip out for toilet roll!!
Get me some hobnobs will ya!
This was intended to be reassuringly typical stiff upper lip stuff, but anyone that had any degree of knowledge knew even then knew that. I had one of those "carriers" in my house and in the build up to an attack it was my job to monitor it and should it have made that spine chillingly horrible warbling sound go outside with a WW 2 hand cranked air raid siren and wind it up!
Now this does seem like cobblers, bits of paper, drawing on maps, no computers or technology etc, it was primitive and no further forward than the battle of Britain but please do not deride or underestimate the dedication of those Observers and other volunteers in the many "holes in the ground" across the nation. They would have known that in an attack those holes would actually have been their final resting place. If there is anyone out there that still thinks a nuclear could be won they need to look at this and some of the other Public information films made around this time - truly frightening.
^ This is why we can't have nice things.
We are not in a much better position today. More countries have these and some countries not subject to treaties or inspections are busy building as many of these as fast as their vast manufacturing capabilities allow for. The final resting places may be a bit deeper and a bit better stocked, but the results would be the same.
@@richhagenchicago We are better than 20 years ago. Facts don't care about your feelings remember. Poverty and hunger levels are going down. Thats a fact and theres really nothing you can do about it. sorry.
@@KuroNekoExMachina Hmmm, I am looking for your facts there. You mention poverty levels, but I am not sure how that would reduce the risk of an accident or a mistake involving nuclear weapons, and looking at major conflicts in humanities past, I do not see a reduction in poverty stopping conflict. At any rate, I just checked the U.N. site, and there are still about a billion people living in poverty according to them. My opinion on that is that it seems more like wishful thinking. As for facts: 1. It is a fact that more powers now possess nuclear weapons now. I would think it obvious that everything else being equal, the more countries that possess and control these the more likely they get used. 2. It is a fact that the Brookings institute which studies and reports on such things, reports that tensions between major powers are increasing. You really don't need a think tank's study to figure that one out anyway. Was it just a week or two ago that soldiers from two nuclear powers were killing each other on their shared border. 3. It is a fact that additional powers are now enriching Uranium to a level beyond that required for nuclear power. Iran has withdrawn from its agreement and is enriching Uranium in quantity to a level that has few other uses other than weapons. They are announcing that they are doing this so I don't think you should need much more of a reference on that. 4. New weapons that would give defenders less time to detect, identify and respond are being deployed. China for one announced the deployment of the DF17 hypersonic missile which can deliver conventional or nuclear payloads quickly, Russia was accused of violating the IMF treaty and the U.S. has withdrawn and is developing its own intermediate range cruise missiles. It should be rather obvious that the less time that a nuclear armed nation has to determine whether they are under a nuclear attack, the more likely that a mistake will be made. You can look up a list of close calls for yourself and see that in many of those cases time to make a decision on whether to retaliate was a definite factor. In summary, I believe that you are very naive if you think the risk is gone or even reduced. Even getting a reasonably accurate estimate of how many weapons there actually are deployed is getting harder and harder, although it is likely much less than at the height of the cold war, the weapons are under control of more entities and likely can be delivered more reliably. Neither India, Pakistan, or China give counts of how many weapons they have deployed and they are not subject to treaties allowing for inspections or counting by outside powers. Now this is an opinion, but I believe we are at greater risk of a nuclear war than we have been at since the end of the cold war, and that risk is growing, not shrinking. It will take intelligent people on all sides getting together and putting agreed rules in place to truly reduce the risks of nuclear war either by intent or accident.
@@richhagenchicago Thats too much BS to debunk sorry. Go look for a professor to help you out.
This film is alternately known as " Keep Calm and don't get vaporized "
Keep calm and carry on burning.
Wheres the best place to be? Blind Drunk at Ground Zero of the first one to go off.
@@51WCDodge Agreed.
Steve P and pay your. Taxes
A lot of commenters seem surprised by the calmness, but there are times when it just works. I was at a Defence installation in 2006 when an equipment fault set off the nuclear attack warning. For about ten minutes we believed it was for real. Stayed calm, collected water, identified a room with no windows and waited. Fortunately, false alarm. But everyone very focused, no running around flapping.
Leave it to the British to conduct Armeggedon in such an orderly fashion
And have a system based on a clipboard on a string.
@@stephenmartin6995 Well at least that part can't get affected by an EMP.
Farquar Hoffe I say, stiff upper lip old boy.
decrisp1252 one of those atomic thingys then, well i expect its curtains for us then old boy.
Toodle pip.
Hello Mate....sorry to bother you but they just dropped the Bomb....I put the kettle on.
..."This two megaton chap." ..... Even under nuclear attack we are so polite.
My grandma old gal.. what big teeth you have
In reality we're racist morons.
Philip, my dear boy, armageddon is no excuse for forgetting one's manners.
yes yes, awful business that
And one guy said "blast!" lol
This is all so unintentionally hilarious I almost don't know what to say. It seems more like they're tracking the Luftwaffe inbound in 1940 rather than potential Armageddon. Jolly good show!
Nuclear Tally Ho. What ho nuclear weapons what what what.
"That two-megaton chap..." Nice that they aren't taking this personally!
some of the people doing this would probably have been doing the same thing during the war just no nukes
My God I hope they have upped their game since this was made lol.
"Tidal wave over head Sir".
"Jolly good open the hatch and have a gander Smithers."
"Jolly good Sir, hopefully should have sudsided a tad by now."
"That's the spirit my lad "
this doesnt exist anymore
They replaced it with........literally nothing.
@@stevef452 and anybody would be a fool to think that this would’ve actually operated if a full scale nuclear attack on the United Kingdom had taken place at that point it all becomes doggy eat dog. These people might sit in there shelters, but it would count for nothing.
Well great! my fears of nuclear war are completely put to rest, as long as there's a guy running down the middle of the road blowing a whistle everything will be fine!
Well back then they could not text out an alert to your cell phone. I am not sure we would get much warning if the trigger was a mistake or accident though, and it would be likely most people would not be in the right places for that. Weapons are likely more accurate and if the planning and response centers are known to an enemy, they would likely be specifically targeted as well.
Back then, that man running down the road blowing his whistle might have seen action in WW2. A soldier could not afford to lose their nerve, even in the face of certain death. The stiff upper lip and the automated nature of the response were their means of facing such danger. No individual can know how they'll react to imminent danger; but the training and information during the Cold War was intended to keep the populace calm and to help ensure that more lives could be saved.
40 years ago today I quit from the ROC - sat down the "hole" a few times.
I love how polite and calm everyone is for instance when one man informs another of a big explosion on the way he says ‘Thank you’ and the other man says ‘Not at all’.
How very British of them. Stay calm and carry on.
Is it tea time yet?
"G'day, guh'neh! The last missile strike took out the barracks where our families were sheltering - shame that is. Anyway, pip-pip, cheerio, fruit loops, frosted flakes, etcetera, etcetera!"
must be able to remain calm.. whilst the whole world is falling down around you ..
one panics ..
everyone else goes to pot ..
Well they didn't do that in Threads drama.
Home in time for tea and medals, Hurrah!
Who's using the family braincell this week, Lt George.
with lashings of strawberry jam and fresh bread !
Tally ho! Pip pip, and Bernard’s irradiated!
😂😂😂
"Threads" is a more accurate movie on what would happen.
I agree. That damned movie broke my heart. And I'm a big Trump supporter and to the right of Ronald Reagan.
@@p70581 how do you feel that reagan was preety anti gun?
Kaiser...morons like him don’t go by policies. So long as some bigot says Make America Great again he’d vote for for them. Just like fucking Hitler. You’d think we’d have learnt by now wouldn’t you,.
@@jamisbillson4872 You're an idiot if you think that trump is actually hitler, wanting illegal aliens out of the country is not racist no matter how you leftwingers like too wine and moan about it. And don't tell me about ''concentration camps'' that stuff has been debunked two years ago
@@WillyShep1966 who decides who's illegal
"Is it reading anything yet?"
"Not a thing mate.. the only fallout we got here is from the seagulls!"
In the early 1970s I worked at the council offices of a medium sized south coast town. The man who would be in charge of life and death for 1000s of people made a list of the things he would need in the case of atomic war. It was stuff like "string, pencils (as many as possible), a compass, whistle....." I knew then, we were doomed if it really happened.
Threads showed civil defence nuclear war couldn't work.
@@garyturner5739 It's funny how confirmation bias works.
If you believe that civil defense works, you watch this or "Sound an Alarm" and see how it might function. If you believe it won't work, you watch "Threads" and think it proves what would happen .
The truth, of course, is going to be somewhere in between.
@@garyturner5739 A bit too dramatic in terms of the actual outcome, good drama though.
OPERATION: BROWNPANTS
OPERATION..COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME.
Andrew Wade operation chipotle
Rawther, old bean. Spiffing mess we've made, what?
Of course, later on the BBC brought us the nuclear war docu-dramas "The War Game" and "Threads", which has approximately the same shock value as strangers bursting into your bedroom at around three in the morning with powerful flashlights who then proceed to wordlessly beat you with garden spades.
But thank you for sharing this! Truly fascinating. As a somewhat morbid kid in the 80s I'd be fascinated by these Observer Corps Fallout bunkers dotted around the countryside, and driving past Fylingdales early warning centre on the summer trip up to Whitby.
"Cricket called off then?"
All of us kids in the 80s were morbid. I lived in North Florida surrounded by Air Force and Navy bases during the 70s and 80s. We would've been pickled with fallout. A friend of mine and I in 1983 were so certain the balloon was going to go up.
As a teen, "The Day After" gave me nightmares. But it's sugar-coated Disney in comparison to "Threads".
@@johnmccnj saw The Day After yesterday, first time i've seen it. I'm ex ROC but this is the first time i've seen Hole in the Ground!.
Lol true the war game terrified me
No,cricket will be played during the nuclear winter.
Thanks for sharing this great bit of cold war ephemera. It strikes me this is all like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic but it was a fascinating glimpse into something very few remember today.
Hey! A lot of us are still here...we KNEW it was useless at the time(1960's ; Pittsburgh area; Pennsylvania..).
I'm a vapourised shadow of my former self, after watching "civil servants" trying to save our azzes. Was part of the Harrier force in RAF Germany in the early 80's, and we knew very well, that once our aircraft took off to fly against the Warsaw Pact tank columns, we would be nuked. Great "fun", but all bluddy pointless if everyone dies!
where did you expect you would end up landing after such an event?
@Chubby T probably somewhere south of the equator if the EMPs from the various blasts didn't knock them out of the sky first
@Chubby T Yep--That's why the French strategic bombers only had sufficient range to reach their targets in the Soviet Union--I think it was President Charles de Gaulle who said about this: "If they ever have to carry out that mission, there will be no France to return to." They, like we, rely on deterrence, making nuclear war so horrifying (with not even a Pyrrhic victory being possible) that no one would be crazy enough to try it. Unfortunately, there are a few countries and leaders who may be that crazy...
When they talk on a red phone you know it's serious business
LOL
Nice to see what would happen underground as i burned to death as a young child.
My Dad was a Red Cross instructor and was given the role of immediate first aid provider by the Government in the case of Nuclear war. I used to read the stuff he was given. Lovely bloke but he had a chronic debilitating lung problem ie he only had one, that meant he couldn't walk up a flight of stairs without really struggling and dusty atmospheres would cause him real problems. Apparently he was to be the only source of health care for thousands after a Nuclear strike.
We're so close to WW3 it's exciting ☺
4:32 Bloodhound SAM and Lightning firing Firestreak missile do their thing.
My uncle was ex-RAF and a member of the Royal Observer Corps, he took my brother and me down into the bunker he would use. It was just a short walk from where we lived, and we must have passed the spot hundreds of times without realizing what it was. I remember the place gave me the creeps with its cold grey concrete walls floor and ceiling. I was only little at the time and glad to get out. When I was old enough to fully understand what that place was for, I was even more terrified.
А став еще более взрослым вы понимаете что тот "бункер" не спас бы ни от одного наземного ядерного удара. В моем городе есть бункер на глубине 500м. И даже такая глубина не защитит от водородной бомбы 1мгт с наземным взрывом.
@@kotnapromke Depends how far away from detonation and the local topography 😮REALITY 🇬🇧🤠
@@ianmangham4570 При наземном взрыве идет ударная волна в грунте со сдвигом 4-5 метра в течении 0.05сек. Это около 1000g. Ни один человек не выдержит такое ускорение. Даже если стены бункера останутся целыми. Именно поэтому в важных бункерах оборудование находится на специальных амортизаторах. Но человек не сможет привязать себя резинками к полу и стенам. Такой сдвиг внутри земли ударит его смертельно.
@@kotnapromke Unga bunga?
I reckon the bunker scene as depicted in the movie "Threads" would be a far more accurate and real life scenario. It was an absolutely useless waste of time. Far better off just going home to your loved ones.
iirc that wasn't a bunker it was just a basement, the miltary bunker is something we only see a glimpse off but its guarded by soldiers
Far better off just going home to your loved ones...............or family!
There's about 30 years between when this film was made and the production of Threads.
@@ianmcclellan7695 22 years.
@@mauzki- no that was just the food warehouse
It may seem useless, but remember that in these days, an overwhelming majority of nuclear attacks would come from bombers and not ICBMs. There would be multiple times more time to prepare and a very high chance of eliminating bombers before they arrive, reducing the amount of bombs dropped and making a nuclear first strike less destructive.
And yet Britain did not have a true second strike capability yet. The SSBNs wouldn't become operational until 1968, I believe. I guess the idea would be to launch the V-bombers ASAP, upon warning, and see what they could blow up in Russia.
@@adamwsaxe During the time of bombers the V-Force would’ve have more than enough time to get every strategic bomber in the air. Moscow would be in ruins. The bloodhounds and Lightning’s would have stopped a good amount of Soviet bombers but not even close to all of them
''The phones dead'' So are the people you wanted to phone.
"Blast!"; Yes, that and the radiation.
I was a member of the Royal Observer Corps (ROC), 35 post, 16 group, but this film was made before I was born. I expect at least some of the people, if not all of the people in the film are actors. Even so there would never have been any advantage in rushing a job, or giving a garbled message or whatever, though I think there would have been more of an edge of tension in the message delivery than portrayed here.
Not everyone seems to understand the purpose of the work being undertaken. The warning was not undertaken by the ROC and generally the posts and air attacks would be expected a couple of weeks beforehand (which is why everywhere was manned in the film). What the ROC work would have achieved was to provide the information necessary to plot where the plumes of radioactive fallout would be heaviest and those areas that would escape it. Even today suppose even a large rogue nuclear strike was made on the UK or European NATO countries does anyone know how the fallout would be plotted? Supposing London was a large crater would anyone know which direction it would be best for the people in the surrounding regions to move to or not move at all?
The real stupidity and foolishness was not the ROC and linked United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation (UKWMO) but that it was stood down and abandoned and not updated. Still in the current crisis I suppose there are some minor politicians wondering if it might not have been better to keep the ROC and UKWMO and just for them, a bunker for them to spend the next 2 years in.
I agree wholeheartedly with you. In the mid to late 1980s I watched world events and civil defence developments from the relative safety of New Zealand. I was appalled that the end of the Soviet Union was met with a rush to cash in on the so-called "peace dividend". The abolition of the UKWMO, and the reduction in civil defence - and defence in general - was a mistake. It takes time to build infrastructure, even if there is the political will to do so (which there isn't nowadays). Personally I was also upset at the abolition of the Civil Defence Corps in 1968.
In all likelihood your weather service has good modeling methodology to plot and advise decision makers on the data.
'
"Looks like were all dead old boy....cup of Tea?".....
"don't mind if i do old thing"
Well, that cheered me up. The narrator was talking about nuclear war as if he was describing how bread is made. So very reassuring.
Typical British understatement from the narrator..."Oh Well Chaps; Better Luck Next Time.."
Chin up!
What next time?
Unintended humour here.
right jolly good show. carry on!
When you know people wearing tweed jackets are taking care of these things, all your worries disappear.
When you know it's your secondary school physics teacher ???!!!!!!!
Spend their lives giving weekends and 75% of their annual leave up?!, to Protect our futures?????!!!
Then........
Spending every Monday to Friday teaching the ones whom will balls it all up....????!!!
So what's wrong with tweed jackets smartarse?
Ah yes, back when we believed in experts.
In 62 most of those blokes would seen service in WWII, and would have been well aware of calamity. I doubt the same could be said for whoever is doing the job today in their North Face puffa jackets ? Of course that assumes there are actually folk doing the job today, its entirely possible the whole shebang has been scrapped to save money. :)
The guy in the beret reminds me of the Benny Hill character Fred Scuttle, "theres been a tidal wave, don't worry, the bunker is going to flood and we'll all drown, you go out into the plutonium enriched atmosphere and fix the phone lines". What a complete and utter load of cobblers this film is!
Hmm well, it just showed how people had very little knowledge of what a nuclear attack would actually do. Anyone within 10 miles of a 1 megaton bomb would be dead, and they are working on the proviso that the attack would be limited, just insane really. This film is obviously designed to try and re assure " Joe Public" that everything will be ok.
The film was made in 1962. The expectation was mainly air attack, so it was considered survivable. When I was in the ROC in the 80s and 90s the threat had changed to missiles. We worked on the basis of 50% of the population surviving the initial strike, who would need guidance as to where might be safe. Surely it would have been immoral not to do something to try to save 28 million people?
Yes, just pure ignorance of nuclear weapons effects most of the Military personel involved in nuclear tests are either dead or dying of cancer. Just utter madness.
@@deanstuart8012 Even without a bomb going off most wouldn't survive one day without a cell phone .might aswell get pissed instead.
What do you expect them to do? Information regarding nuclear attacks would have been urgently needed and wouldn’t have been available any other way. What would you have done? Stuck you head between your legs and kissed your arse goodbye? Sounds like that’s all you would have been useful for.
Only 17 years after WW2 ended..no doubt the sirens brought back a few memories to those aged 25 or older...
Hearing those sirens gave me chills. Used to hear it in the 1980s. Guess they were testing that they worked
Might make some people nostalgic. I grew up with sirens tested every first working day of the month. The sound of my childhood and young adulthood.
Haha you gotta love this stuff....’protect the British public’ ....who are on the surface being fried while these guys arse about in their shelter
Borderline & Blissful BPD But there’s a “Chief sector warnings officer”. Can’t go wrong with that.
Can I pop round the bunker and pick up some stamps during the attack though, if they are post office people?
Well if "Papa Alpha's" bunker was anything to go by they're toast too.
Stiff upper lip old chap, never mind eh!
Taking down ME 209's or Doodlebugs....okay. But it's another song with supersonic balistic rockets......
Liz Truss brought me here...
There are only two things that can prevent dying of radiation in the event of a nuclear war: a lead-lined bunker built deep into the earth far away from possible targets, and a tweed jacket. There's no need to get excessive about these things, though, and you should only need brown leather elbow patches if very close to Ground Zero. In which case, you might also have to bring a whistle.
How about a lead-lined tweed jacket?
And a packed lunch
I can't even imagine government, let alone the current larger society, being able to put something like this together today.
Well if Russia and China truly have upgraded their nukes, would it really matter?
everything was disestablished or radically reduced in scale after the fall of Communism - a big mistake if you ask me.
Also public apathy
There would be no need to. They have long since realized how futile something like this would be. Far better to wait until everything is done and then try and prioritize your resources, because this sort of placebo civil defense apparatus would be absolutely ineffectual in a major exchange.
The producers of Threads were well aware of this and many other similar films, films intended to ease peoples fears etc. Threads made direct points that all efforts to monitor and collect data, control of the population, etc. were all pretty much pointless.
They certainly did become pointless in the ICBM age. This is bombers only, having to cross a fairly deep section of NATO territory.
Both films served their purposes well. Would be remiss to suggest the UK govt should have no preparations at all for a nuclear attack.
It wasn't pointless when this film was made, it became pointless as the Arms Race went on.
@@ianmcclellan7695 That’s only because, at the time, the USSR only had around 27-30 R-7 ICBMs with nuclear warheads (the rest were, and still are, used for space launches), and they would’ve all been aimed at the United States. Britain would’ve been targeted by bombers, and these can be intercepted or misdirected (the latter being the wisdom behind the CONELRAD system, the forebear for the modern-day Emergency Alert System).
Although Threads shows how an effort like this ultimately fails, it was fair and honest enough to show the organizing group accomplishing some good. The Sheffield group secured vital equipment and food stores, and probably saved some lives at least in the short term. Outstanding movie on many levels.
Nuclear war is so much more fun when done with a British accent and a cup of tea.
But this documentary is too white by BBC standards😃
6:45 "Sort your beret out Lofty!" Looks like a f&@king Cornish pasty 😂
What's he think he's in
"17/21st tank regiment" !!!!?????
D or G boys..
S & XB on me beret.. now that's was some Cap badge..
"I say old chap London has been irradited in to a thermic mist, shall I put the kettle on"? OR "The country has just entered the worst crisis in its history, Ben Stokes has been dropped for the next Test."
I take it you're a yank that thinks all Brits talk like this and drinks tea.
Wrong yank, you're not fat and obnoxious are ya, hunting for doughnuts in case Canada invades and takes them all... WOT WOT
@@Hertfordshire247 I take it you don't have a sense of humour.
Dam..!!!!!! play at Wimbledon has just been *temporally *called off????...
Don't forget to have some chocolate is well; did you miss that part in the film lol
@@Matt-Durham Yeaahh. I am about fucking fry pal. I'm having me some chocolate buttons.
22:33....."I'm sorry, I can't get through". So she tells another woman to take over, because she has more experience... At what, pushing a button and saying "hello eastern sector, come in" into a microphone?.... Lol.
Worked though lol
She gave a small knob a tweak. She's good with a knob.
No wonder??!!!!
when the women were back working in the post office and a armed robber went crashing through the door screaming and waving the shooter all over the manor...
The lass behind the counter didnt even blink an eye lid.. just picked up the emergency telephone and "squeak"'hello police, we've got a rather silly little boy with a little toy here?!!,,,,, over"...
Then just goes back to reading the magazines...
@@pigpenpete That is a very britsh thing to say 😂😂
Britain's bunker infrastructure was primarily built in the A bomb era. Even the centralised higher level bunkers were not designed to protect against H- bombs. Given that CND seemed to know the primary locations of the major facilities I sure the Russians knew them like the back of their hand and that many of the most important bunker people would in fact among the victims of the first wave of attacks .
That’s pretty depressing
But true.
So how could they expect the public to survive with make shift shelters when they couldn't survive with underground bunkers.
@@garyturner5739 They didn't. A lot of civil defence was about the illusion of control. You did not want John public rioting at the thought of his imminent death. Much better he quietly builds a shelter that gives a false sense of hope. Although a homemade bunker might be useful if you were a fair distance from a target. The problem you have then is systems of food production and distribution will have broken down and you probably die of hunger. Maybe better to just die in blast.
Interesting trivia. First target in an attack wasn't London, or faslane or anything like that.... But little old Whitby.
“They are all civil servants.” Great, we’re all definitely going to die!
Ha, the irony is that most of the personnel were unpaid volunteers expected to do this in the event of a nuclear war - I was one! (but we got travel expenses, at least!). Smaller numbers of full-time staff were civil servants.
@@TheCatBilbo I was one myself. Spent six years on post and then crew until Stand Down in 91. Visited the restored post at Cuckfield in Sussex last year - I'm sure the entry shaft had shrunk over time.
No worrie's.....it's 2018.....
@Silently Sceptical £1.24 per hour attendance allowance plus Band C travel allowance of about £5. I made more per week from the ROC as a 16 year old than I did on my paper round.
We used to get paid by cheque every three months,so I had to open my first current account while still at school.
@@deanstuart8012 I was No.4 Group Colchester and then No.23 Group Durham until stand down (all post-based). Happy times and the little we got certainly helped when I was 18!
Typical British stoicism.
“Due to fallout conditions, do see clear to wear your rubbers when traveling outside and when adding milk to your tea, be sure it comes from only non-irradiated cows. Cheers.”
They are remarkably calm considering the world is ending.
Following the Chernobyl acident , the remark about milk wasn't a joke. The montoring of certain farms went on for years.
" ah.... It's a big one" .... It's a nuclear weapon mate😂
He's not referring to the bomb. He's referring to the crap he's just had on hearing the news about the bomb.
I love the clip board pulled up with a piece of string. Very low tech but it works!
Great film - just goes to show how much we now take computers for granted - the sheer number of staff needed just to move data around is staggering by today’s standards.
Computers could get knocked out by EMP, so it's still good to have the paper and pencils handy.
facts 💯
@@bwc1976but is it possible to provide protection for them
How comforting to know that we're all going to die in a very ordered and almost nonchalant manner. We also appear to have time for a last cuppa. This documentary was so much like the one's I saw, during my childhood in Southern England during the 1940's, that the mantra," KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON" continuously played in my head during the entire programme. Ah, the English manner of dealing with any crisis, must make the rest of the World, somewhat bemused at us. We were a different breed in those day's and a stiff upper lip was the norm. I think things might be a little different in this modern World, judging by the panicky reactions to the pandemic when it first resulted in lockdown and the rush to stock up on toilet rolls etc.
What CND never understood was that not having a nuclear deterrent makes having Soviet Russia dropping nukes on the UK more likely.
Well, since we are in N.A.T.O. that seems unlikely...and if we didn't have them, we wouldn't be a threat to Russia or anybody else. Since Russia has plenty of natural resources, there is very little reason for them to attack or invade the U.K. other than defence of their own lands - i.e. they stop us from attacking them first. The war in Ukraine at the moment tells me something...it's good that the western powers are aiding Ukraine so they can defend against the Russian invaders but we as a sovereign state have no business being anywhere near Russian borders with our Naval ships. We need to realise exactly how defenceless we are against something like an underwater Nuclear explosion like the Russians were talking about recently, there's not a lot we could do about that. I'm completely certain that Russia would loose a conventional war, the west is obviously ahead technically speaking and their army looks to be poorly trained and lacking morale...but Nuclear Weapons...they have more and it wouldn't take many to bring the sun down on us...so what's the point of having them if they don't make us safer? Even if there's no war, the amount of accidents, mistakes and poor communications have nearly annihilated us all several times over the last 50 or 60 years. If we all got rid of them, we would all be safer.
Although a lot of the rank and file of the CND would have been well-meaning, I'm sure many of its leadership were Soviet agents or at least in league with them
Have been in a few ROC observation posts. They are still to be found all over England. Quite small inside.
Brave volunteers, thankfully not needed. Lets hope it stays that way.
what were they like, other than small lmao
@@harrisonkey698 A weighted hatch, then down a ladder to a small hall way, two doors, one to a lavatory, the other to a room, with desk & two bunks, for 4 people. 12 feet by 18 maybe. This site lists all discovered in UK, that are still in existence. 1500 were built.
www.subbrit.org.uk/categories/nuclear-monitoring-posts/ I last visited christow. 15 years ago.
Are they none in Scotland, Wales or the North of Ireland?
@@johnmeechan4976: yes, but only a few are open to the public, and most (I know one locally to me) are privately owned
I can see where Monty python got their inspiration. So funny.
Years ago my wife who worked for Inland revenue and later VAT attended a civil defence lecture about what to do in case of a nuclear attack. after listening to what amounted to be a load of bollox...about how to react and so forth with the civil population. she said I want to be at ground zero so I have no idea of what has just transpired ....I don't want to be around saying 'What the fuck was that bright light'
just make sure the vat & tax forms are submitted before the end of the financial year..
9:30 the two are five feet away from each other so they must use advanced communications. richard, you see, holds one end of the string and marguerite clips the penciled note to it and richard simply yanks the string ... brilliant. on the bomb blast note "bugger all, there's london done-in".
I remember in the early 80s they tested a siren near our school around the time they were also testing the emergency broadcast system.
They forgot to tell the kids about the siren test... Emergency broadcast test + siren test # not telling kids = chaos in many class rooms.
It's hard looking back and thinking that in that moment we pretty much thought we had four minutes left to live.
Although looking back, it's easy to see just how much all the drills were just to keep you busy and make you think you had a chance.
I mean, a council house with cushions and pillows stocked up against an internal wall is easy a counter for a small sun like explosion going off a few miles away...
No nuclear weapon in the 70s would ever come within a mile of the council Estates in Nottingham .. it just having shity pillows that make you hardy
I remember the siren tests of the late 70s early 80s. There was one on the library at the bottom of our road. Used to scare the shit out of me.
I remember watching the war game in 86 and it terrified me
I bet they had lashings off ginger beer to drink in that bunker !
I heard "Zarathustra" and expected that they'd find a Monolith...
I feel for that woman with her parents having died in Southampton
But she seems to have taken it pretty well!
@@alexmuenster2102as you have to in such a situation. I find a lot of the movies (invariably American) where the emergency management people abandon their posts to go in search of the children and/or wives or husbands, frankly appalling. Duty to the public comes first
I like how they're being so pollite and calm when the world is ending 🤣
the absolute truth of what's needed.. when the world is falling down around you..
calm and civil mindset..
especially in special force's..
Very interesting. (I actually Served in the Royal Observer Corps (ROC) at Oxford 41 Post, Leigh, Nr. Cricklade, Wiltshire until it disbanded).
Thankfully, it never got THIS bad; but training in full kit across 12 miles, often in dreadful weather, got pretty hairy.
Harry Enfield and Monty Python must've had a field day. this stuff is comedy gold.
Thank you for this upload.
You're welcome. Thanks for watching!
"It's only going to be a small one, old bean. About a hundred kilotons". The Beirut explosion was about 1.2kt and yield effect grows exponentially the larger the weapon. I love it with the women all outside in their pinafores, getting the gardening done, and that any broadcast transmissions would be able to be carried out, or even received overground.
The blast effects of a nuclear weapon do not scale linearly with the yield.
@@Schwarzvogel1 Depends on it's vector. Subsurface, surface and airbursts are all different, and weather also affects yield effect
Understood old boy.
Rare to hear a non-ironic (pre "2001") usage of "Also sprach Zarathustra".
Kubrick was a cold war obsessed person and most likely decided to put that music on "2001" after watching this documentary.
Many hands making light work. And then there were computers. Also good to see Henry Crun in charge of the red telephone. Where was Min? PS reminds me of an old Vulture comment on Day of the Triffids- decent chaps having a beastly time.
26:06: "Ah shit, here we go again."
The naivety of these early films in dealing with the results of nuclear exchange was nothing more than a hopeful attempt to allay the public's fear. Even a relatively small partial exchange would cripple a society.
Declan 6914 don't worry the BBC produced "The War Game" about the same time that put things more accurately. It was so accurate the government banned the broadcast until the mid to late 1980s.
Decl: Crippled isn't defeated or destroyed. Life would go on.
@@KB4QAA A nuclear exchange is nothing like conventional warfare. Any survivors would have an appalling existence afterwards. Everyone loses.
It's insanely radioactive outside now.. Be a good chap and go out there to retrieve that blasted paper thingy will you? Jolly sporting of him don't you think chaps?
"It's your job"
"No, my back is killing me"
"Send that 16 year old kid who came here on work experience"
"High five"
I don’t think the fallout had landed, that’s why he looked at the mushroom cloud. The other guy got at least four roentgens didn’t have a respirator and dragged all the dust into the observation bunker to contaminate everyone else, sloppy.
@@harper277 surprisingly we weren't issued with NBC suits nor respirators. And we only started getting air filtration systems on a few posts in the very late 80s. Otherwise we had to open the hatch for 15 minutes every 8 hours for an "air change". I do wish that I was joking.
Dean Stuart OMG I didn’t realise this role was in effect a suicide mission. Did those in the observer corps realise this?
@@deanstuart8012 You were not expected to last much longer.
4:01 when you see a group of Jehovah's witnesses coming down your street
Just tell them ( through the closed hatch) if you dont mind just waiting right there.. for just a couple of minutes.. then yep you tell me about what's going happen at our final hour, then we'll just kinda see what happens in about 10 minutes time.. see if your version is actually true then ...I guess..
All this seems to hinge on the idea that telephone lines (many of which would be above ground) won't be disrupted or even knocked out altogether. Plus of course London will a glowing crater.
lewisner no, trunk phone lines would have been buried. Local lines might been subsurface or on telegraph poles.
There was a fallback series of ‘Backbone’ Microwave communications really towers. Many of them are still in place.
@@neildahlgaard-sigsworth3819 what’s it matter? The information would’ve been useless a full scale nuclear attack would’ve completely brought everything to a standstill.
2:47 Oh my! That’s was a Lightning, a fighter made by English Electric. A suberb design for its time, and unfortunately not very well known today.
As hilarious as it seems, we were more prepared then than we are now, we'll probably be to busy trying to photo the bomb bursts on our phones and being offended.
Would attacks really come in stages as depicted here? I thought that once it begins, the plan was to lob every missile you had ASAP. The enemy will likely have a good idea of your setup and will be aiming to knock them out before they launch. Use them or lose them.
At the time this was made, nuclear strikes would have mostly been carried out by aircraft. Due to limitations in numbers of aircraft and the logistics of flying so many at one time, it is probably not possible to do everything in one attack.
@@FuturisticFusilier yeah true. But I would have imagined US and allies intel would have had a good idea where the Russian aircraft was and sent our own weapons that way plus have our air force patrolling the skies ready to knock out what was already airborne.
@@elessartelcontar9415 That was my thinking. Either you use them all at once or lose them in the initial exchange.
there are documentaries on UA-cam ON "nuclear strategies ( wargame role-playing)
that will answer your question.
In the USA we had frequent drills at school during the 60s. I remember hearing my physical education teacher telling one of his coworkers that if the real thing happened we should, “bend over, put our head between our legs, and kiss our ass goodbye.”
😂
Lol! Sounds about right
I wonder if Stanley Kubrick got his idea for 2001's opening credits from watching this....? Synchronizing the timing of the titles with Also Sprach Zarathustra...
Interesting use of "Also Thus Spake Zarathustra"... at this time "Dr. Strangelove" was in development... it came out in 1964... one wonders if Stanley Kubrick saw this film, and whether it helped him choose this music for 2001...
Well, one thing is clear. If there ever was a nuclear war, we’d all have been royally screwed.
Not all only us peasants the royal family and government in nice deep shelters
The lady out in her garden picking veg after the bomb has dropped ,running indoors after the 3 tiny maroons are fired for fallout, made me laugh 😂
I'm not sharing a bunker with prince Andrew
Of course none of this stuff would be nessecery due to better understood out come but I think people were more academically competent and self reliant in those days. They were far more organised and efficient. We relie far to much on our technology these days
Air raid sirens are so spooky. Can't improve on perfection.
I don't care what anyone says, It just wouldn't have the same effect if they played Yakety Sax
This is naively optimistic - in a real nuclear strike, a lot of these units would be wiped out almost immediately...
Not really. What makes you think the enemy would want to nuke every square inch of the countryside? They'd only need to get the cities.
@@Galactipod Ports, cities, military bases, government buildings, naval dockyards, ....London alone had an estimated EIGHT warheads targeted at it, all between one and two megatons each.
If you think of the size of the UK mainland then the density of targets, there really wouldn't have been much left, particularly when the fall out started dropping.
@@Galactipod because they built sufficient bombs to do that
And the United Kingdom landmass is extraordinary small
Advice was ''the deadliest danger is 'Fallout' so stay indoors" so how would staying indoors be possible if you lived on the 17th floor of a block of flats?
"And only come out when the all clear is given on Radio one lol
Get the more experienced person to push the button and talk into the microphone. That should fix the 'fallout' problem.
This is what an exercise in futility looks like
I served on 4/51 roc post in wickham bishops. Beautiful view over Blackwater estuary-- and Bradwell nuclear stn could be seen on bright days.
"I say, Group Captain, it appears that Manchester, Bristol, and Norwich just became 20 mile wide molten glass craters..." "Hmmm...Thank you Nigel, ... ( frowns thoughtfully, puffs on pipe...) Yes, rum show, that..( erases portions of a large plexiglas map with a dab of lighter fluid on a hanky, adds some large circles drawn in red grease pencil..) ..Carry on..." ( Looking absent-mindedly in direction of young RAF servicewoman pushing a tea cart....)
During my 27 years in the RAF, for some of that time, I was a Shelter Marshal in a nuclear bunker in Germany. Believe me, all exercises we took for real. When I was in a bunker in the UK or Germany, when those bomber or fighter plane engines started up, you never knew if you would hear the jets going down the runways or not. Prayer was the order of the day!
After retiring from the RAF, I also, was a member of the Royal Observer Corps for several years and we also took every alert for real. Although the ROC is disbanded, the small monitoring stations (Holes in the ground throughout the UK) are still in place but most are waterlogged now. They did serve their purpose during the Cold War but in these days of only 2-3 minutes warning of an incoming strike, what's the purpose of them?
Whatever plans the civilians think our government has in that type of emergency, think again! If you want an adequate defence then allow your government to increase taxation to pay for it. Of course, you could all just sit there with your head in the sand and think that it's never going to happen, especially to you!
12:56 What a maroon. This is laughable bollocks. I was waiting for Benny Hill and John Cleese.
Mike Wochele you might think so yet military trained and trained so we would hope this would not happen thank goodness it has not. Yet
To all those wondering about the narrator's calmness: the nation's survival isn't really at stake in anything other than a Manchester-Arsenal match.
Very sobering when you couple this to a near-miss post-apocalypse during the Cuba Missile Crisis in 1962. Throw in Threads, Dawn's Early Light, On The Beach, and Dr Strangelove for good measure. I dare anybody to watch all these Nuclear Holocaust themes and remain nonplussed. The threat of nuclear - and biological - warfare remains as strong today as it did back in those archaic days. Then again, what would it mean to the people in John Wyndham's 'The Chrysalids' or those characters in 'A Canticle for Leibowitz'? Are we all the product of an ancient nuclear war that ravaged the planet? If so, should we feel guilty about the souls who suffered and where would we be without such a terrible global event?
not sure i wanna read a paragraph from a guy with feet as his profile picture. Cheers tho lad x
You did not mention dead men’s letters
I enjoyed this little bit of nostalgia. How very, very British. Anyone for tiffin?
I wonder when they realised all of this was futile, given the amount of nukes that would fall
Many years before this, but Brits are good at lying to their population. Alll the roc bunkers had a sign inside, next to the entrance ladder, that said "Don't bother." And a Webley with four rounds in it.
No, I'm not being serious. If someone believed, really believed, that getting a signal to GHQ reporting a Badger flying back east was going to be in any way shape fashion or form useful then I worry for what they are up to nowadays.
I think the image of Rees Mog reclining on the front bench sums it all up rather nicely.
What I'd love to know is, where are all those alert alarms? Do they pop out of the ground? Also, how many pints of beer can you drink in 30 minutes rather than building a totally useless inner refuge? I'd rather die drunk, thanks.