When we think of doomsday prepping, our imagination is likely to conjure images of eccentric characters in American documentaries, or, more recently, the stockpiling of food and supplies undertaken by many around the globe while we were cast into the initial throes of the COVID-19 pandemic. But here, in the Householders’ Handbook for Nuclear Warfare, […]
This collection of first-aid books was likely compiled and put together in the pictured hessian bag for distribution by a local Civil Defence Organisation, after WWII ended. These Civil Defence Organisations are considered something of a precursor to today’s State Emergency Services. There were intended to establish a local base of willing volunteers to serve […]
‘If Soviet Russia has the hydrogen bomb… then the West must turn again to its defences.’ Published in the Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners Advocate in 1953, this foreboding warning came in response to the Soviet Union’s explosion of their first thermonuclear weapon—a hydrogen bomb. Soviet Chairman Georgy Malenkov considered this the end of the […]
‘At present nuclear attack on Australia is unlikely,’ reads the final page of this booklet, ‘Should our strategical circumstances change and it become advisable for you to prepare to meet the dangers of fallout, you will be informed.’ Locals of the Greater Newcastle area would have had mixed emotions when these pamphlets began arriving for […]
One glimpse at the map illustrated on this pamphlet would suggest that if a hydrogen bomb were to be dropped on Newcastle, the effects would extend beyond Maitland, Cessnock and Lake Macquarie, making the chances of survival slim. Luckily for the citizens of the Greater Newcastle area, the Cold War era local civil defence organisations […]
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