Attack Warning Red!: How Britain Prepared for Nuclear War

Brought to you by Penguin. There have been many histories of the Cold War but Attack Warning Red is the first book to tell the domestic story of day-to-day life on the nuclear home front. The dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 changed the nature of war forever. The awesome power of the atomic blast and its deadly fallout meant that nowhere was safe: every town, village, street and home in Britain fell under the nuclear shadow, and the threat of annihilation coloured every aspect of ordinary life for the next forty years. As the media reported on the inevitability of approaching conflict with the Soviet Union, the British people were told to prepare for the coming apocalypse. Families were taught how to construct makeshift shelters in their homes and stockpile food and medicines; vicars and pub landlords were instructed to sound hand-wound sirens to deliver the Four Minute Warning. Schools and hospitals prepared for the worst, and thousands volunteered for civil defence organisations to be trained in nuclear first aid. And while the British people were expected to look after themselves, bunkers were prepared for government officials and experts needed to ensure that life continued after the catastrophe. Looming nuclear war and the planning for it affected people's everyday lives: it informed their childhoods, structured their work, and inhabited their dreams and nightmares. Today, more than thirty years after the end of the Cold War, we read this story - with its Dad's Army comedy, endearing amateurism and futile measures for a war that was not survivable - with a sense of relief that the worst did not happen; but it is also a timely - and frightening - reminder that the nuclear threat will always be with us. ©2023 Julie McDowall (P)2023 Penguin Audio

About the Author :
Julie McDowall is a freelance journalist and book critic specialising in the nuclear threat. Her writing has appeared in The Times, Economist, Spectator, Guardian, TLS, Prospect and Independent, and she is also the host of the Atomic Hobo podcast in which she reveals findings in the nuclear archives and reports on her travels to nuclear bunkers and other Cold War sites. Julie McDowall is a freelance journalist and book critic specialising in the nuclear threat. Her writing has appeared in The Times, Economist, Spectator, Guardian, TLS, Prospect and Independent, and she is also the host of the Atomic Hobo podcast in which she reveals findings in the nuclear archives and reports on her travels to nuclear bunkers and other Cold War sites.

Review :
Timely ... McDowall's excellent book is a chilling reminder of the horrific reality of nuclear war Cracking So entertaining Very good ... A sobering book, but a gripping one Julie McDowall's thoroughly gripping study ... makes for genuinely startling and sometimes darkly funny reading... [it's] brilliantly chilling and sparkily engaging Attack Warning Red! is a timely reminder of the mind-blanking horror of nuclear warfare, as it menaces Europe once more An atomic Dad's Army, McDowall's history of the UK's nuclear civil defence is full of hilarious gems Most interesting Simultaneously horrifying, weirdly nostalgic and darkly hilarious Impossible to believe, just as hard to put down. Urgent. Terrifying