Curator's Choice: Protect and Survive

Clip from © Crown. IWM (COI 1088). PROTECT AND SURVIVE (1975-80)

Film Curator Michelle Kirby highlights one of the most controversial nuclear-related films of IWM’s Cold War collection, showing the long shadow cast by the atomic bomb

“If anyone dies while you are kept in your fallout room, move the body to another room in the house.”

There are many eyebrow-raising moments in the series of nuclear defence films known as Protect and Survive. But perhaps none are as blunt as ‘Casualties’, the final of the films, describing how to deal with the bodies of dead loved ones, should they be killed amidst a nuclear attack. Even the dulcet tones of Patrick Allen’s voiceover and the catchy electronic music of Roger Limb couldn’t disguise that this was sobering stuff.

Campaign purpose and origins 

The Protect and Survive campaign was created in the 1970s by the Central Office of Information to advise British citizens how to prepare for a potential nuclear attack. Advice included removing net curtains, filling a home with sandbags, white-washing windows and crafting a make-shift toilet. 

The series of twenty short films were accompanied by radio broadcasts, press announcements and an information booklet, all to be released if nuclear attack was expected within days. Never intended for peacetime scrutiny, it was leaked and subsequently published for general circulation in 1980 amid rising Cold War tensions. 

The threat of nuclear war featured in popular culture

The campaign left an indelible cultural legacy, notably in Mick Jackson’s BAFTA award winning drama Threads and Raymond Briggs’ graphic novel When the Wind Blows. It featured in popular music, memorably in Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Two Tribes. Today, ‘Protect and Survive’ remains iconic, still sparking debate on the survivability of nuclear war.  

IWM's YouTube Channel. Why Protect and Survive became so controversial

Why Protect and Survive became so Controversial takes an in depth look at the public information campaign.

Discover how it sat within a long tradition of surprisingly similar official nuclear defence and civil defence advice. 

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