Echoes from history

Nuclear War and Nuclear Fear in the 1970s and 1980s Journal of Contemporary History January 2011 46: 136-149,doi:10.1177/0022009410383298 This article looks primarily at a series of interviews carried out by John Hines of the BDM Corporation between 1990 and 1994 for the Pentagon, the full text of which is available online . The article is about the set of documents created by Hines called " Soviet Intentions, 1965–1985 " and looks at Soviet intentions, policies and fears over the use of nuclear weapons over that 20 year period. In this remarkable set of interviews of senior Soviet figures gives a very different insight into the Soviet machine which is completely different to Western interpretations of Soviet nuclear intent over this period. Much of the self-serving Western propaganda of that period frequently portrayed the Soviet Union as the aggressors and numerous films described this block as having a political agenda of world domination. These interviews p...

The Waking Point (1951) is a Civil Defence film aimed at increasing recruitment to the now long-abandoned Civil Defence Corps. I think this film is really about covering three main themes; recruiting to Civil Defence; explaining Civil Defence and trying to legitimise it. Unfortunately the film tends to demonstrate all too clearly the limitations of civil defence in the nuclear era. Unintentionally I think it explains that civil defence would break down almost immediately in the face of nuclear attack. Within the film just about all the serious deficiencies of civil defence that's been discussed in the nuclear era are all too apparent. The narrative of the story is set around an "every man" character in Joe Mercer ( John Slater , 1916-1975) who comes to realise that civil defence is universal after a mishap with his son getting trapped in a sandpit. At the end of the film he realises there is "still time" to train in civil defence after he dreams about ...