The Last Flight of Vulcan 594

[Weaver]

I'm halfway through that 21 page thread by now.

Gripping stuff and VERY scary! 

Do I see comments by our own Harold Weaver in there too?

Not me, the only thing I was in in the early 1960s was The Future.


Good story. People swapping tales of being kids in the 1980s set me off. I've never been particularly prone to nightmares, but every now and then I have a corker, with the full Hollywood special effects budget. I had several of those back then.

Probably told this tale already, but what the hell...

One Monday at school, our jolly-hockey-sticks biology teacher came in with a bandage on. It turned out that she'd managed to hurt herself in the process of digging a fallout shelter with her husband, in order to survive a nuclear war.

One of the lads put his hand up, "Why Miss?"

She launched into an explanation about how and why undergorund shelters were the best option, but as soon as he could, he interjected.

"No Miss, I mean, why do you want to survive?"

He then expressed the view that he'd rather be killed instantly in the attack. She was a bit taken aback by that, and asked the rest of the class if any of them felt the same way. EVERY hand went up. This wasn't a wind-up: to the best of my knowledge, we'd never discussed the issue as a class at all, which meant that about twenty fourteen year-old boys had quietly, privately, looked at a map, done the maths and decided they'd be better off being vapourized.

The colour drained from her face and she went a bit quiet after that.

My thoughts exactly.
As I got older and learnt more about official fallout shelters and those who would use them I was torn between going to a hill top and facing the blast to make it quick, or driving round with a cement truck concreting the bar-stewards in.

I didn't particularly enjoy the early eighties and have no desire to re-live them.

Me and my school mate used to joke about going to Piccadilly Gardens in the middle of Manchester and trying to identify the warhead as the ultimate plane-spot.

[rickshaw]

Downunder  we were in reality somewhat isolated from the events of the Cold War.  When I studied Nuclear Strategy as part of my Masters Degree, we had a guest seminar with Professor Des Ball.  Now, Des had a reputation originally as bit of a maverick as far as Nuclear Strategy went.  He had written for his own PhD thesis a book which was called "A Suitable Piece of Real Estate" which was about the oh, so, Top Secret US Spy Bases on Australian soil.  He wrote it from the various reports which were published overseas (primarily in the US) and that was how he got 'round the Australian Government's declarations that they were all Top Secret.   

By the time he gave us a guest Seminar, he had been sucked into the Pentagon.  That didn't stop him talking just it slowed down what he was allowed to talk about.   In answer to a question, "Is Australia a nuclear target?"  He sat for a few moments and then said, "No, not likely.  The Russians more than likely won't waste any warheads on us.  Most of theirs are reserved for the US and Western Europe."   I've always believed that to be true.  Australia is a big, big, continent and even if they did fire one at Canberra or Pine Gap, we really wouldn't notice all that much.

[zenrat]

What about the Chinese?

[rickshaw]

What about the Chinese?

Again, I feel they and the DPRK will keep their warheads for the US and the fUSSR, rather than waste them on Downunder.   They don't have that many to waste on us.   

[zenrat]

That's good to know.  Just the Kiwis to worry about then...

[Knightflyer]

That's good to know.  Just the Kiwis to worry about then...

Why am I hearing, in a Scooby-Doo villain sort of voice, a post nuclear exchange Australian Prime Minister saying ....

"And we'd have got away scott-free, if it hadn't been for those pesky Kiwis!"