Let me first take you back in time. I don't remember the year, or even exactly where I was. I was too young for remembering too much. I was probably about 11 or 12 which means it was mid 1980s.
My family had been driving down through France as part of our trip to our holiday location in the South of France. I was tired and wanted to sleep but everyone else was hungry. They went to find a shop to buy food and left me in the car to sleep.
I remember waking with a jolt when the nuclear war warning siren went off. It was so loud. I looked down the street and didn't see anyone, not even a car. I felt scared and just stayed in the car looking around to see what was going on.
A few minutes later, my family returned to the car and they were laughing and happy. I realised there was nothing to worry about. Apparently the French tested the siren in a particular day in the summer. It was just a test.
The point being, I was actually scared of nuclear war when I was a kid. It seemed like a real possibility. We were all reminded it would be MAD. Mutually assured destruction. However, it seemed all to real to me as a kid that the NATO and the Soviet Union were pushing each other to the edge.
In the UK, there were secret facilities and bunkers during the cold war everywhere. The UK had a plan, of sorts. Below is a photo I took recently on the border of what is now a low key military site but at the height of the cold war would have been part of the major defences.
The UK government gave out loads of information during the cold war as to how to survive a nuclear war. I read this article earlier this week which shows the stupidity of what we were told we would need to do.
Building stupid shelters in broken houses. What the hell am I meant to eat? Where would we get water? Surely the radiation is going to kill us even if we could miraculously find food. Or someone else will kill us trying to get our food for ourselves. There would be no society and no life to live.
In summary, if there was a full out nuclear war between world super-powers, even if I did survive, I am not sure what I would be surviving for. This is the one and only event I kind of feel - I wish the big one would just kill me out right. Survival seems worse than dying.
Although we seem to be edging closer - hopefully it is a scenario that none of us ever witness.
Image(1) source: Pexels
Image(2) source: My own
