What would the UK have done if we'd been attacked by a nuclear weapon? The answer is nothing that useful. In this fantastic book you can find out all about the optimism/idiocy of successive governments who treated atomic bombs as if they would be like normal bombs. Well written, interesting and actually pretty scary (I now have a google maps list of atomic bomb test sights on my phone which is a bit macabre) this was one of my books of the year.

An account of the cold war fears that embraced us all, and our wholly inadequate attempts to plan for them. Inadequate because there was nothing, just nothing, we could do but hope nuclear war never came to pass. This is not a bleak book unless you really want it to be. It's just informative and surprising, and fairly easy going from the perspective of the apparently safe 21st C.

An account of the cold war fears that embraced us all, and our wholly inadequate attempts to plan for them. Inadequate because there was nothing, just nothing, we could do but hope nuclear war never came to pass. This is not a bleak book unless you really want it to be. It's just informative and surprising, and fairly easy going from the perspective of the apparently safe 21st C.

Really interesting just shows how nuclear war was portrayed to us by our government by spreading the belief it was survivable

The author panders to all the CND types of the past who ridiculed any attempts to put survival systems and processes in place. Her description of actual preventative measures borders on the hysterical. I can imagine how she would have taken the same tone towards the rearmament campaign in the 30’s or any actions today against foreign aggression.