The Shadow of the Bomb...

I wonder what the three minute warning would really have sounded like?
I never thought that I’d live to be this old…
From about 1976 onwards I was convinced that I would die in what the media chillingly referred to as a nuclear holocaust- It seemed inevitable- in fact I don’t know when I stopped believing it.
By the time the 1980’s and the spikiest phase of my adolescence arrived I became interested in CND. And so did a lot of people, in fact membership rose from 3,000 in 1978 to 100,000 in 1984...a response to increasing tension following the deployment of American Pershing missiles in Western Europe, SS20s in the Soviet Bloc countries and Britain's adoption of Trident missiles in 1982. The NATO exercise Able Archer 83 added to international tension. CND attracted supporters who opposed the Government’s civil defence plans as outlined in the laughable Protect and Survive...
I couldn’t believe that the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan hadn’t triggered the destruction of the planet. Surely it was only a matter of time. Some crisis somewhere would set it all in motion on the most ordinary of days.
The country was on its arse and millions were being spent on ‘nuclear deterrents’. I attended a couple of CND rallies – mad days out in London.
I read the Protect and Survive booklets and they reminded me a bit of Blue Peter or the ‘how to’ sections in children’s magazines. You know how the things you made never turned out like they should? I somehow thought that if we ever were in the position of having to turn our living room into a bunker that it would be a shit one. We just wouldn’t have the stuff we needed. And besides, I couldn’t imagine my mother letting the old man unscrew the doors and bring sandbags in the house.
Meanwhile in Kuybyshev, USSR, the woman I love, then about 13 years old, was being prepared for the inevitable Imperialist invasion…

There's a story about life in the shadow of the bomb here...
And a musical taste of the times in the post below...