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This book reminds me of searching for something important like sticky tape, matches, glue, measuring tape, etc (you know, the stuff you can never find) in that drawer in the kitchen but instead, always finding this booklet getting in the way! Why didn’t we hang it up under the stairs or somewhere, using those punched holes provided in the book? Probably coudn’t find any string!
*No date on the book but it was published in 1965 and 1971
Update: July 2020
Read full article about the booklet over on my column for Totally Dublin here
John G
5 Dec 2011My mother took this incredibly seriously and kept a cupboard especially for tinned items. That was too much tempation for a strapping teenager like me so I used to regularly raid it and scoff away to my heart’s content. She could never understand why her stocks were diminishing at such a rate until she found empty tins under my bed. I know, it’s disgusting. Oh that we would have had the time to sandbag all our houses like the picture.
jaykay
6 Dec 2011Hah! I remember that one, all right! In our house it was actually relegated to the garage, covered in cobwebs, beside all Dad’s garden stuff plus our bikes and the household briquettes and coal (remember those thick paper sacks, 1/2 cwt. if I recall rightly). Which just about showed what my parents thought of it.
Eleanor
12 Apr 2012Myself and hubby just talking about the booklet sent to households way back then so I googled and got this site. Thanks so much. We laughing now but not laughing then. We terrified. I was eight and my husband fourteen. We were so innocent then too. We don’t remember any home prep so maybe our parents were too thick to know or so intelligent to know sandbags, under the stairs or in a ditch (if caught outside) was not going to matter!!!
dubdoug
12 Apr 2012Eleanor, there you go. The power of the web. Brings you back to being a terrified 8 year old again in seconds 🙂
Bryan O'Herlihy
27 Dec 2014Dudes. What are the chances? We did a work over on our house and I’ve found a copy in mint condition, Great book.
Pauline Magee
16 Mar 2017I remember this and also being terrified even though I was only 9. Next door had stairs and we did not..guess where I intended to go! Still scary.
Aidan
5 Jul 2017Scarier still now with Kim on the go…
Kevin
23 Nov 2017Anyone remember the civil defence exercise which was conducted each year on a national basis, usual conducted on a Sunday morning where volunteers collected simulated nuclear fallout reading and reported them back to central command.