My Dad and Grandad were part timers in the Fire Service and took part in lots of Civil Defence Drills in the 50s, 60s and 70s. These were quite a big deal because the fire station they worked in was the first response unit to the BP Llandarcy Oil Refinery, one of the biggest in Europe at the time, BP Baglan Bay, a major chemical works and were the next station down the line for British Steel Company, Port Talbot, the biggest steel works in Europe, it still is, but not for much longer.
I asked my Dad recently what the Civil Defence plans were for my town. He laughed, if we were hit by conventional strikes, Briton Ferry was a big smoking holw and the emergency responses focused on there being a five to ten mile death zone centering on us. If it was a nuclear attack, the hole would be a bit larger, still smoking but radioactive to boot.
I asked him why the hell had we stayed in a place that was likely to be less survivable than ground zero, Hiroshima. He said, "No one would ever be stupid enough to to start a nuclear war, and if they were, the only people worse off than those who died before they knew the war started would be the survivors."
I guess he may have had a point. My personal future after having survived a nuclear war would have been: die slowly unless someone killed me for food, I could feed quite a few people even after a few months of starvation...
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