What's Next

[xoxoxoBruce]

Fire, plague, famine, pestilence, war?
Or maybe something different like a supervolcano or giant asteroid.

Maybe it's time to start the wheels in motion to protect you and yours.

[Griff]

Cozy!

[Clodfobble]

The corrugated steel culvert is what they used in "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt."

[fargon]

Some time back in the '60s we received a book in the mail from Civil Defense, about how to build a backyard fallout shelter. The next thing you know there are bomb shelters in every vacant lot in the neighborhood. My Dad thru our book in the trash.

[Griff]

There's a scene I read in The Road where the guy is walking across a yard and it doesn't sound right. He ends up digging up a well stocked bomb shelter and he and the kid eat themselves sick.

[Carruthers]

Those were the days; the days when life was so much simpler and all we had to worry about was the possibility of nuclear armageddon within fifteen minutes of the button being pushed.

The UK government produced 'Protect and Survive', a booklet which was sent to every household. It didn't inspire confidence.

At the time I was a volunteer member of an organisation which would have been part of the warning chain in the event of a nuclear attack and, had any of us been left to do it, report on the size and location of a nuclear burst and the subsequent arrival of fallout.

We had a total of 873 reinforced concrete underground posts scattered around the country reporting to twenty-five regional control centres.

Firstly, each post was a warning point. A voice 'Attack Warning Red' message would come from a receiver in the post and also in several thousand other locations around the country which would be the trigger to sound sirens.

Assuming there were any of us left twenty minutes later we'd move on to the reporting function.

Each post was equipped with a number of instruments to assist in the plotting of a nuclear burst:

1. The Bomb Power Indicator.

This was effectively a barometer which measured the over pressure from a blast.

2. Ground Zero Indicator.

This was a simple pin hole camera which had four cassettes of photographic paper, one for each cardinal point.

Images burned on the paper were measured in terms of degrees.

3. Fixed Survey Meter.

Recorded and measured ionising radiation.


The posts were grouped into clusters of three, or sometimes four, and when information collected from the above instruments was fed to Group Control detonations could be plotted and their size determined.

Wind speed and direction would be applied and the likely extent of radiation could be predicted.

This information was fed back to the posts and the imminent arrival of fallout would be signalled to the locality by the firing of maroons.

It's rather a long time ago since I was in but I'm confident that the above is an accurate precis. BTW, it's all in the public domain now.

It was an interesting few years!

Protect and Survive.

[sexobon]

Hey bud... I was your counterpart in the US military. There are extensively trained specialists who do that (and more) full time; however, they're assigned to Division level and higher to keep them gainfully employed. In smaller units (brigade, battalion, company), it becomes an additional duty to one's primary military occupation. That duty falls first to volunteers and then to appointees as necessary. I volunteered as a "unit" specialist.

Unit specialists go through an abbreviated version of the full-time occupational course. It's conducted on a local military installation rather than at the proponent school. Still, a lot of stuff is covered;

Equipment & supply inventory, storage, inspection and first echelon maintenance (e.g. disassembly-reassembly of gas masks and decontamination apparatus to replace worn/expired parts).

Set-up and monitoring of early warning detectors.

Attack yield estimates.

Flash report and follow-up report formats.

Contaminated casualty evacuation procedures.

Nuclear, biological, and chemical dissemination (fallout/contagion/drift) predictions.

Monitoring continuing exposure in contaminated areas using chemical & biological tests, dosimeters and radiac meters.

Set-up and supervision of a unit decontamination line.

NATO marking of contaminated areas.

Monitoring for residual effects of exposure, outside of contaminated areas.
.
.
One tends to not forget these performance measures, having been drilled into our psyches as being of the utmost importance.

[BigV]

What's next?

How about an earthquake proof bed?

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by sexobon

Hey bud... I was your counterpart in the US military. There are extensively trained specialists who do that (and more) full time; however, they're assigned to Division level and higher to keep them gainfully employed. In smaller units (brigade, battalion, company), it becomes an additional duty to one's primary military occupation. That duty falls first to volunteers and then to appointees as necessary. I volunteered as a "unit" specialist.

Ah! A kindred spirit! You seem to have operated at a capability level far above that which I and my colleagues inhabited. I'm sure the pay was several grades better as well.

No doubt the expertise, equipment and procedures you outline are similar in the Army, RAF and RN, but our efforts were modest in comparison.

I'm sure the warning function would have worked well but I suspect that the subsequent reporting task would have been a different matter.

Our equipment was rugged and simple to operate but that didn't stop the manual being a mighty tome. In extremis we could always have eaten it.

That reminds me, I've got a couple of books on Able Archer 83 waiting to be read. They'll take my mind off the current biological brouhaha.

UKWMO

[xoxoxoBruce]

Unlike our CD sirens I picture the UKWMO using classy French Horns.

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Unlike our CD sirens I picture the UKWMO using classy French Horns.

Nothing so grand unfortunately!



I've seen one of these turn up on the Antiques Road Trip, Flog It!, or something similar.

I don't know if they were sold off or whether the 'owner' acquired it by other means.

Powered sirens were in use at many locations and there was one on the top of the local authority building in the town centre nearby.

I happened to be walking past when they gave it a brief test some years ago.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end but nobody else took any notice.

Link

[xoxoxoBruce]

Syren? You Brits sure murder the English language.

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Syren? You Brits sure murder the English language.

That's a new one on me!

syren

sy·​ren | \ ˈsīrə̇n \
Definition of syren

chiefly British spelling of siren

The design of those sirens dates from WW2 and I'm willing to place a small wager that some of them were actually manufactured then.

Probably the labels stapled to the storage crate employ this archaic spelling and everyone is still waiting for the memo to change it.

Anyway, here's a cheery take on nuclear armageddon.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Tom has alway been a hero.

[BigV]

When we go!