Nuclear war no picnic!
Socialist Press1981 1981-01-28Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 8 →
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being played with our lives by Thatcher's military build-up against the Soviet Union is the surge of interest in nuclear fall-out shelters.
Last week saw a blast of publicity for the large-scale £2,000 per head commercial shelter being planned by a Bristol consortium. But in the same week came the publication of a kind of "Which?" guide to shelters produced by the government itself.
Prices ranged from the bare minimum brick-shelter-in-thespare-room concept to the super-de-luxe underground chalet for a cool €10,000.
In line with this wave of media publicity, one Wellingborough firm, Nuclear Protection, run by Tom Butler, has circulated an extensive catalogue of fall-out shelter equipment, together with Food Guides and suggested menus for a 20-day underground picnic.
Tom Butler's complete plan for a 7-person shelter would set you back £9,000. In case you are hesitant about the equipment involved, he offers the alluring prospect of a trip round his own personal shelter as well!
The package of details includes technical specifications for the blast doors, air filters and explosion protection valves.
The daily menu he sets out is strongly reminiscent of camping • and caravan holidays in remote areas.
The only difference in this instance is that when your 20 days are up and you poke your head out of your hidey-hole, even the most developed city landscape will have become a remote area.
Far from a caravaning holiday being followed by a return to the comforts of civilisation, it would be followed in reality by the traumas of attempting survival amid the stench of death, the wreckage of the most elementary productive forces and the horrors of military rule by a capitalist class that has already taken steps to crush all political opposition in the aftermath of such a war.
If you've got £9,000 to spare and care about the future, don't waste it on a Tom Butler Shelter. Give it to the Workers Socialist League, and help us build a revolutionary leadership to mobilise action to defeat the Tories and end the war drive!
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A grisly reminder of the game of "Russian roulette"