02-22-2020, 06:58 PM
Think I've told this story before here, but back in the early 1980s we were walking home from school one day and heard a siren going off in the distance. No-one thought much about it, just commented on it and wondered what it was. We lived near Broadmoor which was a medical facility that held the most criminally insane people in the country at that time and they had a siren warning that would go off if anyone escaped - it sounded like an air-raid siren. All the local schools would go into lockdown if that happened, but we were allowed to walk home, so everyone was curious but not concerned.
The next day we learned that one of the nuclear attack warning systems had gone off triggering the siren. In those days it was referred to as the 4-minute warning because back then that's how long the UK had before Soviet nuclear missiles would reach the UK. And no one took a blind bit of notice. Of course there were no cell phones in those days and no internet, so the local "civil defence" had no opportunity to confuse people further.
The next day we learned that one of the nuclear attack warning systems had gone off triggering the siren. In those days it was referred to as the 4-minute warning because back then that's how long the UK had before Soviet nuclear missiles would reach the UK. And no one took a blind bit of notice. Of course there were no cell phones in those days and no internet, so the local "civil defence" had no opportunity to confuse people further.