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From drink-driving to foot-and-mouth disease, since its inception in 1946,
the Central Office of Information (COI) has been alerting the public to the
ever-pervasive dangers threatening their well-being. With Protect and Survive
(1975) though, the COI was charged with preparing the population against a
threat of unprecedented gravity - nuclear attack.
Protect and Survive is a series of twenty animated films designed to provide
the public with precise instructions on how to improve their chances of
surviving a nuclear attack, including recognising warning sirens; choosing the
best place for a fall-out space; improvising toilet facilities with a dining
chair and bucket; limiting fire hazards, name-tagging dead family members and
digging trenches in which to bury them. Each film starts and ends with the same
pithy electronic theme tune over an animated mushroom cloud.
Had an attack been deemed imminent by the government, the films would have
been transmitted on domestic television and the accompanying Protect and Survive
booklets posted to every home in the UK. Thankfully, no such situation arose and
the films and booklets were never distributed.
The simple step-by-step approach is common to other public information films
dealing with domestic disasters like burst water pipes. But applied in this
context, instructions to "draw the curtains" and "brush off any fall-out dust
from your clothes", seem somewhat inadequate given the scale of the threat,
while the tone oscillates unnervingly between matter-of-fact and portentous.
Preparedness might be the key to survival, but the repeated warning sirens are a
reminder of impending apocalyptic doom.
Protect and Survive echoes the WWII civil-defence film, Do It Now (1939),
also known as If War Should Come, a Ministry of Information film
instructing on home safety precautions against air raid attacks. Similar air
raid sirens wail in the background and the same practical precautionary
measures, such as sand-bagging and constructing a domestic fall-out shelter, are
advocated in both films. Protect and Survive's American counterpart came a
quarter of a century earlier - Duck and Cover (1951), aimed at a younger
audience, features the friendly and industrious cartoon character, 'Bert the
Turtle' who advises citizens on how to survive a nuclear attack. Both films have
been mythologised and widely lampooned in popular culture for being either
futile, or too fatalistic in tone.
Protect and Survive is a fascinating, if decidedly unsettling, document of a
time when the fear of annihilation was part of everyday life.
Katy McGahan
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1. Choosing a Fall-Out Room (2:17)
