Sound An Alarm (1971) - United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organization
Вставка
- Опубліковано 1 жов 2024
- 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 fieldforce. 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.
Headquarters UKWMO was located in a converted barracks building in Cowley, Oxfordshire, and was headed by a Director and Deputy Director supported by a small administrative staff. Five professional Sector Controllers and five Assistant Sector controllers were co-located at the five Royal Observer Corps area headquarters.
At each of the twenty five ROC group controls the UKWMO was represented by volunteer and specially trained members. In the event of war the senior UKWMO volunteer present would command the group as Group Controller. Assessing the nuclear burst and fallout information and data provided by the ROC was a team of ten or more Warning Officers led by a Chief Warning Officer.
The members of the warning team were recruited from mainly local secondary school science teachers, or commercial engineers and technicians with a scientific education and background. They trained weekly from printed materials provided by the Home Office scientific branch and through lectures or practical training organised by the Assistant Sector Controller who was the area UKWMO training officer.
The Director UKWMO would be located at the United Kingdom Regional Air Operations Command (UK RAOC) within Strike Command's Operations Centre nuclear bunker at RAF High Wycombe to instigate the four minute warning. The Deputy Director would be located at a standby UK RAOC, described at the time as being "elsewhere in the UK". It's since been revealed as being at Goosnargh, Lancashire, within the UKWMO Western Sector nuclear bunker. Warnings were instantly distributed around the country by the Warning Broadcast System via 250 Carrier Control Points located at major police headquarters and 17,000 WB400 (later WB1400) carrier receivers in armed forces headquarters, hospitals, post offices, ROC posts and private homes in remote rural areas where hand operated sirens replaced the power sirens in the urban towns.
Sparetime warning team members were activated, through a rehearsed Transition To War telephone calling card procedure, by wholetime Royal Observer Corps officers located at the twenty five group headquarters. All ROC telephone lines and the warning broadcast system were protected by the Post Office's Telephone Preference Scheme that kept the lines active when the general public's system would be suspended under wartime regulations.
Both wholetime and sparetime UKWMO personnel undertook specialist residential training at the Emergency Planning College, The Hawkhills, Easingwold, Yorkshire. Several major war simulation exercises were held each year 2 x WARMON (Warning and Monitoring) one day UK exercises and the two day INTEX (International exercise) along with other NATO countries.
Four times a year minor and limited exercises called POSTEX were held on a stop - start basis across three evenings of a week, Monday to Wednesday. Realistic simulation material was provided for realtime simulations of a nuclear attack.
Approximately every four or five years each group was subjected to a "no notice" and in depth assessment similar to an RAF "TACEVAL" or Tactical Evaluation, where a mixed team of UKWMO and ROC full-time staff would appear and evaluate all aspects of the group's planning and operations under realistic wartime conditions over a period of 48 hours.
A short evolution of British nuclear-war films:
Hole In The Ground (1962) - "Well this is like 1940 again, only with bigger bombs. We'll see it through, eh."
Sound An Alarm (1971) - "Nuclear war is actually pretty serious. Take care."
Threads (1984) - "WHAT THE FUCK---"
I just want to express my glee at this comment and how incredibly true it is. I think, after Threads, everyone mutually decided to delete the section of community memory that dealt with the nuclear threat, as a desperate mental self-defense mechanism to prevent mass suicide.
I only recently watched Threads on dvd. Once is more than enough to scare me
I would have also used "HA HA HA TIME TO DRINK!" to describe Threads
The war game is the most terrifying one as it was banned for 20 years
Threads had the scene where those men were trapped in that basement station. Didn't work out too well for them.
My father Anthony Short wrote and driected this and had never seen it!!
+Damian Short My compliments to your father - it is a very good film.
@Zoundzearch just a small🍿 then 😉
Hi Damian,
is your father still alive and can he perhaps remember where the siren was recorded, which can be seen at @8:28 and @12:52? Thank you!
@@ig-wasi Dunno I would love to know as well as they are Rickmers Werft HLS-273s which I thought were all German based
Wow why he ain't never seen it
Immediately after leaving the shelter they were set on by a starving mob and eaten.
But they don’t taste very nice do they precious?
You know how long you are going to be in the bunker based on the number of tea bags to be found there.
😆 hahaha yes, true!
Well, that's Nuclear war dealt with. If I'd known it was that easy, I wouldn't of spent my childhood shitting myself when they tested the sirens where I lived.
💩💩💩☠👻😂
Even when I hear the same sirens today, now repurposed for severe storms, my mind always reverts to an attack warning. Old habits die hard
"My God, suh. Ivan's hit us so hard, we've gone black and white."
lmao
@@harrisonkey698 🤣
Threads is still the one to beat
No one ever will! The Day After is a Disney Family film by comparison.
Threads was lame 🤷♂️
hello to all ex UKWO guys, thanks for all you did. There must have been a lot of lost weekends spent training. Awesome job.
When I was around 8, I remember asking my dad where we should go if the bomb dropped. He told me to go under this huge oak on the playground at school, and he’d send someone if he couldn’t come. I asked him years later why he said that. He said he wanted it to happen to me in a second, and he couldn’t stand the idea of me trapped in the wreckage of a burning school. We were living on a first strike military target. I pretty much figure I would have evaporated into component chemicals.
Kindest thing he could have ever suggested
I think you might want to get a DNA test.
The priest at 08:46 is like "yep, some good business is coming!"
This is essentially a remakes of "The Hole in the Ground." The UKWMO probably would have saved a lot of lives just after the initial attack, but once enough damage had been done to the infrastucture plus the damage to communications from EM bursts and the breakdown in social order, they would not be able to help any more. Still worth having as an organisation.
Fucking hell, was that Father Jack on the siren 😂
Feck! Drink! Arse!
A pair of feckin' womens' knickers!!
The actors in The Day After made the same mistake: Coming out of their shelter.
Right after the attacks. They did.
I remember in the seventies we did actually have nuclear war drills at school. We thought it was really going to happen, it was terrifying, I still remember having nightmares about it.
It will happen.One day someone will push the button.The question is when.
@@vtecpreludevtec no it wont
I remember being told to go under my desk and pull our chairs around us !!
Really I was at school in same period in England and never had that experience in the midlands.
It's amazing how times have changed and public attitudes too
Cheer up. It wasn’t wasted
Definitely more edgy with a little less "Stiff upper lip" compared to "The Hole in the Ground".
Are they still drinking Tea old boy?? 🤔
@@Sobig315-k7k Tea time is impervious to nuclear conflict. Everybody knows that. ;P
@@eddievhfan1984 always wondered how many teabags they ordered for the bunker.?
Did they have a checklist for tea and biscuits as well?
A civil servant who was in charge...
I think at this point a decade later they had become more pessimistic about the outcome of a nuclear war. A decade or so after this: Threads.
Alex Mitchell you and I must be following the same UA-cam recommendation algorithms.
As a representative of Scarfolk Council, I approve this message.
For more information please re-read the above massage.
Meetings in groups of larger than one are banned
More like the movie Threads where those men were trapped in that basement beneath that building, by the time they got to them they were dead.
Ultimate irony- the leadership was buried before they started.
It has the look and feel of a earth Doctor Who episode.
Doctor: "Nuclear war is imminent. On the plus side, I'm gettin some."
Younger girl......quite good you know?
🤣
There’s barely a chance to survive a counter force exchange. Counter value? Forget about it. Gather your loved ones and head for wherever you think ground zero will be.
In case anyone wonders, the guy who was outside was looking into a "exposure dosimeter" device. The old kind (back in the 70s) had a small thread or horsehair that would be bulid up charge as exposure built in up (exposure is cumulative). The hair/thread would be move up a guage on the side of the device. You had to look into to see what it said.
A rather "funny" (not" haha" funny but "you're fired" funny) incident happened to President Jimmy Carter when he left Three Mile Island after his tour after the accident in 1979. When checked, his dosimeter showed a high exposure (around the 300 mREM) while the NRA cheif that's was with him (Harrold Denton) had a NRA supplied meter that read zero.
Carter had been given a meter from the plant and they had fallen behind in "deguassing" (resetting) the meters and they started keeping a log and just noting each time what it read and figuring how much had been added.
We were still using those same dosimeters in 1991! They measured in Roentgens while the rest of our kit was in c/Gy so we had to make a conversion to keep an accurate dose rate record for each member of the post crew.
The big disadvantage with pendosimeters is that if they were dropped or knocked then the indicator could move right or left giving a false reading
I’m watching the 2022 remake where Idris Elba and Letitia Wright parachute into Russia and destroy the launch sites while Prime Minister Lenny Henry puts the country into the safe hands of King John Boyega.
Actually surprisingly gritty for government propaganda...
Ah the good old days when we thought we could survive a nuclear way.
The best part is the lovely Citroën Ami at approx 6.40
Ragnar Ragnarson it turns up again at 16:15!
08:02 is the "oh shit it's happened" moment!
the siren got my dogs attention he's in the window looking for missiles.
@@doppelsnet dont do that to him
I couldn’t understand what he said but it sounded something like ‘Well shit in a bag and punch it’
1:38 That's either d a dreadful wig or a horrible haircut.
It was 1971. Definitely a horrible haircut.
If I were in that ROC post I'd rather lick the chemical bog clean than go up to change the paper on that bomb detector.
I used to practice doing it on exercise and thought the same. Apart from falling down the ladder in your haste to get back into the post, you were supposed to 'decontaminate' yourself before entering the post proper. Cold water from a plastic jerry can and a bar of soap - it was ridiculous!
Soap on a hang mans rope... then.. knowing how it is ...
Thank you for your service.
I wonder just how much you were not told??
my grandad was retired roc but he still had the job or lighting the maroons in a national emergency and he kept them in his shed along with a gong and steel stick in case the maroons failed. we had hoped to use them on bonfire night but the ministry of defence took them away in 1973
Nuclear war and the decimalisation of our currency to deal with in the same year.
How many ounces of TNT was that strike, old chap?
Which was worse?
Is it wrong of me to expect the TARDIS to suddenly appear?
Absolutely nope.. I thought the ultimate gathering of the Dr's and assistants..
Graham Fisher there’s a Big Finish Audio of The Doctor and Ace in a story that’s like Threads meets Groundhog Day. Best and most scarily heard with headphones.
10:36 so er, there is a nuclear attack and someone decides to go out and fly a kite? Hmm...
James Abell I would lol
Sounds like a great plan to me. The future is going to be very grim.
James Abell - well there would be a hell of a wind!!
Another load of pure cobblers! A rehash of hole in the ground, made in 1962!
I see they hadn’t even upgraded much of the equipment since the last film. We had no chance of survival.
xr6lad we still used a lot of that kit in 1987 at RAF radar sites.
Chilling. Even though I actually Served in the UK Royal Observer Corps.
Indeed, and I served too on 4/15 Post.
I just figured out where they got the title of the film from: It's a play on Handel's song of the same name and to the HANDEL warning system, which was named after the composer.
Sorry it comes from the code-phrase "Tocsin Bang" used to announce a nuclear detonation detected by the AWDREY equipment. tocsin is old french for to sound a bell or alarm.
At least you can watch this without questioning if its worth surviving like in "Threads".
I think I would stay outside and take deep breaths.
Spot of nuclear war and then off out for some supper.
Uniforms right out of WW2!
Yes. They were still the same in 1980-81 when I was an observer and there was
a waiting time to even get a uniform. Everybody seemed to get a size too big and
a baggy beret. Our group headquarters leaked when the weather was bad...
Got to laugh to think that the government thought it might be a winnable survivable situation....
guy leaves bunker and says "its only been 7 days" left out is the fact that he's already revived enough radiation to kill him.
+Evelyn DEFCON FTW.
Kyle Tekaucic Very fun game never gets old best played with a mouse a pad can be annoying.
While agree with you on premise, the fact is many will survive the first and followup strikes. Perhaps not millions but certainly hundreds of thousands. Knowing what to do and when to do it is essential.
@TheRX1982, IF the Line of Succession was safe and most of the major political heads made it, then to them, that was a win.
"I'll bear it in mind." That thin, loony smile is just perfect.
LOL: Some guy looking at a transparent map says; "....we need to...to prevent people from BLUNDERING into it.." LOL
British Sports Caster: "Am sorry to interrupt your lovely mid morning tea but this afternoon's Cricket Game has been postponed at this time. So sorry.
Apparently, several nuclear explosions have occurred near the Cricket Field.
Anyway, go back to what you were doing/apologize for the interuption.."
And we do hope that the 30kton shockwave didnt topple your wicket, or spill the tea.. or god forbid.. knock over the cucumber sandwiches..
Now dont forget to pull the rain cover back over the cricket pitch after the match... dont want that radiation running the seasons play...
I saw this being shown in one of the rooms in Broadway Tower in the Cotswolds which used to be a Royal Observer Corps station.
I grew up in Broadway and visited the tower as a child. Before it became a tourist attraction. I joined the ROC at 16 (1969) which was a weird thing to do for a 16 year old girl. I lived in Cheltenham by then though so my post was at Andoversford, Gloucestershire in the middle of a field amongst the unsuspecting sheep grazing there above us.
@@FloraAshley I don't think that's weird! I was 16 in 1969 and definitely would have done that if I'd had the chance!
@@RachelBGreen well I’m glad to “meet” you. My friends thought I was rather odd for joining the Corps and definitely different. But I was completely captivated by the space program too and wrote to NASA who sent me Manila envelopes full of information on the Apollo missions. My bedroom wall featured a lovely big map of the moon and I built a model of the Saturn 5 rocket with the command module. I enjoyed my time in the RoC, the 48 hour simulation exercises and the lovely people I met who may have been considerably older but became my friends.
@@FloraAshleyUp till 1972 you join the ROC from the age of 15.
I met one ROC Observer who joined in 1971 aged 15, and in the Royal Observer Corps, when they were stood down in 1991.
He then joined the Royal Naval Auxiliary Service, and they were stood down in 1993.
He then looked for another reservist organisation to join taking his age into consideration, there was no organisations he was eligible to join.
Sad end to a British volunteer.
I’d like to think of this happened today, someone would open the door and say “this is bollocks”.
Good heavens man, where is your resolve, your great English pluck? The very idea that Johnny foreigner would try such nonsense on this sceptred isle. What one would do is stick one's head out of the window and shout, "I say, old chap, this is bollocks" before knocking back a bottle of whisky, stripping off and running into the street, billy bollocks, cock ahoy and asking that sexy blonde piece at number 24 if they fancy a final shag before the off. He says no, decks you and you stagger back to the arms of your loving wife who spends her last minutes on earth giving you the silent treatment.
Lmao! The 4 minute warning and they're just all going about their day! Shaking hands like "Good Luck"
They’re giving away more secret information to a complete stranger than a James Bond Villain.
Was in the ROC for 6 years, you don't know the half of it.......
What's the 3/4 of it then? Genuinely, I am interested to know.
I was inside an old ROC post the other day. Cramped.
@@MajorT0m yep, no "mod cons" down there!
My father Anthony Short wrote and driected this and had never seen it!!
That's nice!
That's wonderful. The British films on this subject are usually the best -- very straight forward -- informative -- probably because your country knows what it is like to be under an air attack. Has he made other documentaries?
Jane Sellman ATTACK WARNING RED ATTACK WARNING RED
I'm sorry, I'm not getting under my desk until I finish my coffee. But thanks for the heads up.
Jane Sellman That's the most funniest comment I ever heard...
We now know what Mr. Mash did when he wasn't working at Grace Brothers.
well there we are! all's well that ends well! :)
Thanks for the upload :D
8:28 Hörmann F71 in England Rare footage
8:22 Carter siren
All a bit of a joke isn’t it. The way they are trying to convince everyone they would have things under control.
Bit like those daily Covid 19 briefings
Attack warning red (x2)
That's it? Add seek immediate (f***ing) shelter!
That is how you activate the siren. It does not carry voice messages.
UKWMO puts out film in which they give advice on fallout to RAF bases.
Soviet Armed Forces: Okay, they're actively joining the fight. Target them with a Groundburst.
Remake of "A hole in the ground"?
An updated version I think, some of the details are different and maybe they wanted to increase awareness for a new generation.
Larry Martin
If we could show them what society would look like in 2019 they'd probably have preferred nuclear destruction in 1971.
Ah, the halcyon days of 2019, or 1 B.C. as we now call it.
Oh .... you mean they didnt????..
I was born in Hyson Green inerciy ghetto Nottingham... until I just read your comment........ I thought I was child of the nuclear aftermath... shit you mean... this is the world.. before... thermonuclear war...
Crumbs
@@grahamfisher5436 B.C. = Before Coronavirus
Well thanks for how bad you made the world then
See "Threads" that movie will scare the shit out of you all !!!
What does the guy at the end stop the other man from stepping on as they exit the shelter? It looks like flower petals or something.
TurgeonFan77132 They are meant to be dead birds.
Protect and survive.
Nobody's mentioned anything about their poor, dead, carbonised, & irradiated families up top!
Don't be silly . . . . nuclear bombs didn't kill them - it was The Covid.
Who cares about Birmingham! As long as Aston is fine
Nuke Warfare..normal for those of us who have grown up with classic science fiction stories and STAR TREK/STAR WARS.
KIRK: "WAR, Mr. Spock!"
SPOCK: "Indeed. Apparently these beings fought the nuclear war/full-scale your Earth only fought the limited exchange; fascinating.."
KIRK: (Flipping open his communicator)"BONES! Beam Down Immediately & bring all your med personal trained in after nuke war..."
And call in Starfleet Emergency Rescue ASAP!
Come on now jolly ole chap. Lets get on with it now. Tea is getting cold. We'll dispense with the dead after tea.
It’s been said many a time, the Sir vivors will envy the once living !
Love that they used a whimsical French pornography soundtrack for the closing credits.
all these movies from 50s, 60s, 70s, seem positively ... quaint.
Have to feel for those who’d have to stand outside manning those hand operated sirens (most were Secomak type 447 syrens) rather than heading for shelter or ground zero, depending on whether they fancied surviving or not!
Just has bad was having to run down the road blowing a whistle,as the warning.
You know there's a Hörmann HLS F71 in the video, right?
@@freedomgundam95I do, yes, but there’s also a poor chap winding up a hand siren which I was referring to.
When it does happen I'll be at faselane!! I want vapourised.. fuck radiation sickness etc
Who were they compiling this data for? It’s not like there would be a Government left to care!
I lived through this time in the UK and never new the Warning and Monitoring Organisation even existed.
Nor did I until I signed up into the Royal Observer Corps!
If I were England, I would restart them ASAP!
I agree
There is nothing left of England.
@@kellyedey549 There certainly is I have some rhubarb growing in my garden .
After a nuclear war, you cannot have a single human survivor. At some point, it will all happen again.
After having watched this I think one thing is clear, if there was a nuclear war in the 70’s, the U.K would have been absolutely screwed 😂☠️
Depends on the number, yield and type of strike(s).
Even today, there would be no winners
Yep we all fucked
All very stiff upper lip old boy.
We need more of this.
The nurse was a cutie pie 🥰 I would of kiss her myself
the radio would have been more effective way of warning people than the siren which is useless to those not outdoors
Nice MK2 Cortina 👍
This movie was just a scenario if it was real it would’ve been in real time
1:35 Hello Nurse!
Carry on Don't Drop That Bomb
8:39 of course someone's already dead, 15 seconds after the alarm.
I know this is off topic but what made me ask this is the beginning of the video (It's gray)
If we can convert movies to color (Like we did for the film from 1940s It's a Wonderful Life?) How come we didn't convert many movies?
The grey start and end of this film was for dramatic effect. Colourising is possible, but was a slow and expensive process (frame by frame on the negatives by hand) back in the day so it was rarely done.
Some people did, with Laurel and Hardy Movies, a lot of purists just didn't like it, just never took off
Erm..... yerrrr rainbow technicolor nuclear aftermath.... erm.. I think even erm... gray was erm.. overdoing it in the colour range
This was real stuff back in the day
Love the box that beeps every second. I bet whomever had do sit next to that still hears the beeping...the beeping... THE BEEPING!
Yes it's still in my head
@@bigsskin4639 BEEP
Homer Simpson invented the beeping everything is good alarm.
Wow that Marina held together after the paper hit it and no piano.
It was a Ford Cortina mark2
@@cnevill2 that's why it didn't disintegrate.
All a warning would do is create a mass panic and a run on toilet rolls. Our betters would be safely underground so their descendants could emerge do it all over again.
Bog rolls, hand sanitizer and pasta was Corona's big one!
"Attack warning, is it real?"
Quite reassuring really.
paper telex tapes - how analog
A Citroen Ami! Blimey, I haven't seen one of those since...
Epic Empire boss music intensifys.
Lovely looking car though also most comments or about that
10:26 That's a boss Breitling. Looks like a Navitimer.
Yep, that’s the one. I have this film on DVD and the word ‘Navitimer’ can be clearly seen under the hand stack.
One of the lookouts in the monitoring post was in Are You Being Served I'm pretty sure.
Where are all these hits coming from? What brought you here?
😂 Good spot! It's the guy in the stores, Larry Martyn I think his name was.
@@mrk.dilkington that's him! He played Private Walker in the radio version of Dads Army after James Beck died and an episode of Minder as well.
@@Legend813a I think that I was looking up UK cold war bunkers. Fascinating video by the way, thanks.
4 minutes is all we get in Britain i wonderhow much vodka i could neck in 4 minutes
Scotch for me but I like your style😊
Nuclear War drills at school? In the 1970s...?? We never had anything of the kind in Lincolnshire...
Did I just see Reg Varney from On the Buses?! Lol
No. I think it was Mr Mash from Are You Being Served )Larry Martyn). Assuming it’s the guy I recognized.
I was a in the ROC during the cold war. Looking back it was great to meet those old boys who served in ww2, one old chap used to fly Lancs. I eventually realised we were still behaving like it would be a conventional war...despite the Nukes and our. M.A.D. strategy.....
Utter waste of resources. By 1971 even a medium sized attack would have led to lethal fallout everywhere in the UK. UKWMO's main functions were to give retired service personnel something to do and to lie to the public that anything could be done about civil defence
we could probably do all that on a phone these days lol!
Calum send me here
Ironic that most of the actors are dead now