Protect and Survive: The Home Office Civil Defence Manual of Basic Training

The end of the Second World War heralded the start of a new war. It was the war in name only, fought out by the superpowers through propaganda, and using smaller nations as pawns in the military build-up that became known as the Cold War. New and chilling phrases entered the vocabulary - mutually assured destruction, nuclear proliferation, hydrogen bomb, airburst and fallout. The UK Government, like that of many other nations, considered the effects on the population at large. Plans were drawn up, secret nuclear bunkers built and a new civil defence network created to counter the threat of all-out nuclear war. Manuals were issued to those in the know and the civilian populace became used to the sounds of nuclear air-raid warning sirens being tested, of adverts informing them how to convert their house into a shelter, what to do with dead bodies, how to counteract radiation sickness, etc. The government also issued a whole series of pamphlets and educational films for the masses. Out of these has come Protect and Survive - The Civil Defence Manual, which brings together, for the first time, the Government's own pamphlets for Civil Defence volunteers and the populace at large.