The ongoing conflict in Ukraine threatens to be the biggest risk to peace between the West and Russia since the end of the Cold War era.

In the late 1940s, Eastern European countries became satellites of the Soviet Union, including East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Romania. The United States and the West responded by creating NATO in 1949.

In 1961, the Soviets built the Berlin Wall, a symbol of the Cold War. During the 1950s through the late 1980s, the threat of nuclear war between the West and the Soviet Union hung over Europe and the rest of the world. The Cuban Missile Crisis of the 1960s was when many experts believe the world came closest to falling into nuclear conflict.

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The arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War, only increased geopolitical tensions and the fear of the general public. This would not end until 1991 when the power and influence of the Soviet Union waned and its communist regime imploded.

For anyone born in the last 30 years, it’s hard to truly understand the fears that surrounded people experiencing nuclear war even in the 1980s. There were public information broadcasts about what to do in the event of an attack; even children growing up in that decade were aware of the serious talk surrounding the possibility of nuclear war.

In Manchester, a relic from this Cold War era still exists as part of The Guardian Telephone Exchange. Also known as ‘Scheme 567’, it consists of a hidden network of tunnels and a bunker buried some 35 meters under the streets and buildings of Manchester.

In the 1980s, a US government Strategic Defense Initiative called the “Star Wars program” was proposed as a civil defense system by which enemy missiles could be intercepted before they reached their target. A television advertisement broadcast in the US at the time featured an animation made up of children’s drawings of nuclear missiles exploding against a protective rainbow that arched over a smiling family of sticks.

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However, the proposed defense system only served to increase tensions between the US and the Soviet Union. In Britain, members of the CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) held disruptive protests at British military bases.

The UK government also produced its own brochure aimed at the general public in May 1980 called ‘Protect and Survive’, which contained information on ‘how to make your home and family as safe as possible under nuclear attack’. Defense strategies were proposed for how the UK and its major cities might respond in the event of an attack.

A paper entitled ‘Target North West’ produced by the Richardson Institute for Peace and Conflict Research established at Lancaster University in 1959, was the first independent academic institute to carry out research on how a nuclear attack would affect the North West England and what would happen next.

A copy of the report available at the Wilson Centre, an online digital archive that publishes now-declassified documents, contains fascinating information about how large cities might respond in the event of a nuclear attack. Greater Manchester and Merseyside were both seen as likely targets due to their “urban-industrial importance”.

Despite the obvious devastation that a nuclear attack would inflict on any country, the researchers, in consultation with a regional government emergency planning officer at the time, outlined a plan for civil defense to ensure “our survival and recovery at some semblance of normalcy after the attack. The report goes on to describe that after a nuclear conflict, plans were put in place to replace the central government with a government system made up of 12 regions.

Merseyside, Lancashire, Cumbria, Manchester and Cheshire would compromise one of the regions. The Regional Headquarters of Government would be built within the Regional Armed Forces Headquarters at Fulwood Barracks, Preston, which would have overall control.

For Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire, the former concrete bunker of the air defense radar station at Hack Green near Nantwich was reportedly undergoing “secret and extensive renovation” as another operating base. The report states: “The county chief executive will normally be the county controller, working alongside county military and police commanders and supported, in facilitating the transition to unrepresentative government, by a committee of three councilors comprising exercise all the powers of the council will be theoretically vested”.