Protect and Survive

Or, "Oh Shit We're All Dead". Quite possibly the scariest public information films ever made, not least because the advice in them would have been nigh on useless if the worst really had come to the worst.

These PIFs were made in the 1980s and advised the public on what to do in the run up to, and aftermath of, a nuclear attack on the UK. How to build a fallout shelter, protect yourself from radiation, lay out a body, what to do if you are caught outside during the attack, and more. As it happened, they were never actually broadcast to the masses, but they would have been shown continually on all television channels if a national State of Emergency was declared and the government believed the bomb was about to be dropped. Seven earlier PIFs called "Advice to Householders", with a similar message, were produced during the 1960s but also never broadcast. Either way, the "Protect and Survive" films were truly chilling, and they're right up there with Threads and the Only Fools and Horses episode where Del and Rodney build a nuclear bunker as a terrifying portrait of the '80s nuclear threat.

The PIFs used a very distinctive style of simple animation and still motion photography, with sound and visual effects to represent warning signals (wavy red lines on the screen) and fallout dust (white snow). A family home was always represented by a cardboard cut - through of a doll's house. Each film would begin with an animated scene of a nuclear mushroom cloud and the Protect and Survive logo of a cartoon family standing inside a circle, along with a summary of the points made in the rest of the series. There were 20 "Protect and Survive" PIFs made in total, all of them with voiceover by the late Patrick Allen and a very distinctive, creepy theme tune at the end. In order, they were:

1. Nuclear Explosions Explained
2. The Warnings
3. What to Do When the Warning Sounds
4. Stay At Home
5. Choosing a Fallout Room
6. Refuges
7. Materials to Use for Your Fallout Room and Refuge
8. Make Your Fallout Room and Refuge
9. What to Put in Your Fallout Room
10. Action After Warnings
11. Water and Food
12. Sanitation - Preparatory Steps
13. Fire Precautions
14. The Importance of Your Radio
15. Life Under Fallout Conditions
16. What to Do After an Attack
17. Sanitation Care
18. Water Consumption
19. Food Consumption
20. Casualties

They were produced by Richard Taylor Cartoons, also responsible for Charley Says (http://takingthepif.blogspot.com/2007/03/charley-says.html).

You can find more information about Protect and Survive, along with reproductions of the leaflets that accompanied the campaign, here: http://www.cybertrn.demon.co.uk/atomic/index.htm. "Action After Warnings" and "Casualties" are available to view on the first Charley Says DVD, and you can also buy a DVD of all the films online: go to Amazon or Play.com and have a look. If you'd rather watch them online, YouTube user pandemian has a large collection of clips and entire films of the series: http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=Pandemian

Scary!!! And as someone pointed out in a comment to the video, it wouldn't have done much good anyway. The government's all safely holed up underground and we're told we can leave our fallout shelter after fourteen days, whereas in reality five hundred years is more like it. Although with the world situation as it currently is, I really don't want to think about that.

Coming up soon, possibly next week after I've been to FI: More reviews of some real classics, including Tufty and the Green Cross Code Man.