Protect and Survive: The Booklet That Never Came

Protect and Survive: the story of Britain's Cold War nuclear attack booklet and public information films, and why they never reached British homes. In 1976 the Home Office finished a campaign it hoped never to use: twenty short animated films, a set of radio recordings, and a 32-page booklet telling every household how to turn one room into a fall-out shelter. It was meant to appear only in the last days before a war, with a calm voice on the television leading and the booklet following through the letterbox. Instead, Britain met it in peacetime. After newspaper reports and a leaked broadcast in 1980, the booklet went on sale for fifty pence, and the country read it alone at the kitchen table. By then the wardens and the Civil Defence Corps were gone. The last emergency post in the plan was the family's own front room. This documentary follows the campaign from its wartime ancestors to the films, the fall-out room, the row over its release, the councils that refused to take part, and what survives today in archives, museums and two Cold War bunkers. Emergency Post Britain documents the hidden history of Britain's civil defence, 1930–1980: the air raid sirens, ARP wardens, wartime shelters, Cold War bunkers, and Royal Observer Corps posts that brought national defence down to street level. Subscribe for careful history of how Britain prepared for the worst. And tell us in the comments: did a copy of Protect and Survive ever come into your home, and do you remember where it was kept? This film is a history documentary, not survival advice. Images are illustrative reconstructions, not archive photographs. A history documentary on cold war history and British history from a channel that also makes world war 2 documentary films about civil defence history. This episode covers Protect and Survive, nuclear war Britain, public information films, fallout shelter UK plans, Threads 1984, Cold War Britain and the Protect and Survive booklet. 0:00 The Myth of the Delivered Booklet 1:08 The Strategy of Silence 2:47 Tracing the Lineage of Civil Defense 5:46 The Shift Toward Mass Communication 11:36 The Fallout Room and Inner Refuge 18:04 The Public Encounter with Protect and Survive #ColdWarHistory #BritishHistory #HiddenHistory