I’ve lived in fear of nuclear war all my life – this is how I’m prepping

The world has gone to bed each night lately wondering whether World War Three will break out by the time we wake up.

The fighting over Iran’s nuclear ambitions made people feel awfully unsafe, particularly with all the bloodcurdling rhetoric from leaders in Israel, Iran, and the US. Then when President Donald Trump announced strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, global fears escalated. 

I know that worry well because I first felt it as a child. I’ve been living under a (mushroom) cloud ever since.  

Now, after a lifetime of prepping, I’m doing so again – but this time I’m not putting aside bottles of water, wind up radios and loo roll. I’m mentally prepping – for the fact I might die. 

And after 40 years of living in fear, I finally feel a sense of peace. 

As an 11-year-old in 1984, I settled down one September evening to watch a BBC film called Threads about a nuclear attack on Sheffield. I can’t remember what I was expecting to see but I’ll never forget it: 112 minutes of the most graphic, grim, and horrifying television imaginable.

In the agonisingly tense first half of the film, it shows the build-up to nuclear war in the background of the lives of ordinary families. Then the bombs drop and the film shows the mushroom clouds, the firestorm, and what these monstrous demons do to Sheffield, its people, and its pets.

Threads then follows the bleak horror of the nuclear winter and beyond, showing the brutality of what’s left of life over more than a decade after the attack.

Watching this film was quite an experience for a boy of 11. It blew my mind with all the grace and clemency of a nuclear bomb.

I went to bed terrified that night and the boy who emerged the next morning was changed forever.

That next day, I tried to unscrew the living room door to build a nuclear shelter in our cellar. I then marched to the library to try and find information about gas masks, bunkers, and any medicine that might help with radiation sickness.

In the days after, I remembered that we had friends who lived in an isolated house in Cornwall and I asked my parents to ask them whether we could go and stay there when it looked like the bomb might drop.

When we were moving house and it came down to a choice between two options, I begged my parents to put every other factor aside and choose the one that had a bunker in its back garden. We didn’t move to that house, but for a lot of my teenage years I had that bunker mentality in mind.

I was mistrustful, angry and terrified. Wherever I was, I looked out for places to duck and cover.

I’d become a nuclear paranoiac overnight and the metaphorical mushroom cloud that Threads cast over my life would hang in the sky for decades.

Ever since, I’ve been convinced that the outbreak of nuclear war was nigh. I even joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and marched for the cause.

And if I heard about any global tensions on the news, I’d remember how Threads showed the characters ignoring reports about growing global tensions at first. ‘You won’t catch me looking the other way,’ I’d think.

The nuclear war in Threads broke out because of international tensions over a conflict in Iran. So if you’d asked me as a kid how I would feel if there was a real-life flare-up over a nuclear arms programme in Iran in 2025, I’d have said two things.

One, I can’t believe the world hasn’t nuked itself to pieces by 2025, and two, this is where World War Three is about to start.

But actually, over the past few weeks I’ve probably been less worried than a lot of people. Having spent so much of my life fretting about nuclear war, I’ve ended up finding a sense of peace.

I’ve already done all my trembling about the bomb and I’ve concluded that if there were a nuclear war, the best outcome for me would also be the most likely one: Instant death.

Having come to terms with how dramatically Threads changed my life, I’ve also resolved to try and not be swayed again by propaganda. 

So when the Government warned this week that Britain needs to prepare for the possibility of being attacked on its own soil, and when Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, warned recently that without a major increase in defence spending, British people ‘better learn to speak Russian’, I declined the invitation to return to the dread of my teenage years.

I’ve concluded that if there were a nuclear war, the best outcome for me would also be the most likely one: Instant death.

I now know that worrying gets me nowhere. I’ve accepted that this may end in my death and so freaking about what could happen next is pointless. 

You won’t catch me prepping. I won’t be taking doors off their hinges for shelter. I won’t fantasise about that bunker. 

I’ve lived with this fear for too long. 

I feel compassion for people who are still worried about the bomb, but I want them to take it from me: After over 40 years of nuclear war anxiety, fretting about it won’t make it go away – and neither will marching about it.

We can’t uninvent nuclear weapons, we have to purge mankind of the consciousness that made us want them in the first place, and that’s a deeper, longer battle that can only be fought in each of our hearts.

For now, we have to find a way to live with the threat they pose to us – and seek the peace that comes with accepting that they may destroy us.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

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