Uncertain times ……… when nasty bits of history don’t go away

I suppose every generation at some point comes to terms that with uncertain times, threats become real and the unthinkable becomes a prospect to be prepared for.

Poland, 2026

This is a Polish guide which today slipped through the letterbox of our kid who lives in Warsaw.

The title is "Poradnik bezpieczeństwa", subtitled "Przeczytal;przecwicz! zachowaj!" which translates as "Safety Guide Read it! Practice it! Keep it!"

And given that Poland neighbours Ukraine which continues to defend itself from Russian aggression the message is clear.

For my generation it was the Cold War and the very real threat that the superpowers would plunge the world into a nuclear war.

It was a very real threat that never really subsided from the 1950s onwards and had a second visitation in the 1980s.

I can remember the Civil Defence Drills, the short public information messages on the telly showing how RAF bombers could be in the air in under 4 minutes and the sheer horror of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  

All of which resurfaced in the 1980s when with growing tensions between the USA and the Soviet Union a new set of nuclear warheads were developed on a new set of delivery systems.

Britain, 1957

That second Cold War resulted in the little booklet "Protect and Survive" which was delivered to every household across the country and was accompanied by television adverts.

Britain, 1940

So grim were the outcomes of a nuclear exchange of weapons and so helpless it seemed were the prospects of survival when you lived in a city that most of didn’t even open the booklet.

That said the preparations made during the run up to the Second World War did save heaps of lives.

My parents and grandparents will have worked their way round those preperations and regulations, carrying gasmasks, observing the blackout and in the case of dad leaving his job as a coach driver and to take up eseential war work in the north east. 

As far as I know Dad never joined the Home Guard, but others in the family will have done.

In time I will get to know what is inside the Polish document.

But history suggests it will make grim reading.

Pictures; Poradnik bezpieczeństwa, Polish Ministry of Defence, a civil defence poster produced in 1957 by the Central Office of Information (INF 2/122)Civil Defence is Common Sense, National Archives, https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/fifties-britain/civil-defence-common-sense/ Rifle Training for War, a textbook for Local Defence Volunteers by Captain Ernest H. Robinson, 1940