There won't be any illuminations: P&S Lancashire
- Thread starter Will Ritson
- Start date
The failed attempts to flee along the M62 was a very poignant scene. In a way you can see why the government wanted people to stay at home; your chance in a house might be minimal, but it is still much more than a car on a motorway,
Plus the prospects of flight eastwards were not good, Hudderfield was gone as it had received its own extreme sun tan moment. However being born and raised in Huddersfield, working in Manchester (just off the oldham road) and a resident of Stockport (at the end of the Rigway Airport runway) this is possibly the most chilling of the P&S threads for me.
Although in February 1984 I would have been 15 and still living in a small village outside Huddersfield
Really looking forward to the next instalment of this.
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Thanks for the feedback - agreat catalyst for me to do another update.
Unknown: Really difficult to say. The Lancashire you refer to is the administrative county, which wouldn't include the likes of Oldham, Rochdale, Wigan, Barrow-in-Furness that are referenced in this thread, but will include Lancaster, Blackpool, Preston etc.
If you include the full county, between one and two million within a week perhaps. Manchester, Liverpool, Bolton, Preston and Blackpool accounting for the majority of deaths in the first hours, with Wigan, St Helens, Chorley, Oldham, Blackburn, Burnley seeing plenty of fallout as the death spreads eastwards and rains/snows upon them.
If you include the administrative county, then perhaps 250,000+, mainly in Preston, Blackpool and the east Lancs. mill towns.
Mr Chief: Always more scary when you can put yourself in the place and visualise it.
Thanks all.
Unknown: Really difficult to say. The Lancashire you refer to is the administrative county, which wouldn't include the likes of Oldham, Rochdale, Wigan, Barrow-in-Furness that are referenced in this thread, but will include Lancaster, Blackpool, Preston etc.
If you include the full county, between one and two million within a week perhaps. Manchester, Liverpool, Bolton, Preston and Blackpool accounting for the majority of deaths in the first hours, with Wigan, St Helens, Chorley, Oldham, Blackburn, Burnley seeing plenty of fallout as the death spreads eastwards and rains/snows upon them.
If you include the administrative county, then perhaps 250,000+, mainly in Preston, Blackpool and the east Lancs. mill towns.
Mr Chief: Always more scary when you can put yourself in the place and visualise it.
Thanks all.
You mention Burnley, Will, my birthplace and residence until I left UK 1972.
In the sixties I was in the CD in Burnley, and we expected quite a lot of blast damage from Manchester and Salmesbury air facility, occasionally home to Vulcans.
The area was saturated with targets, only 20 miles to Manchester, 20 to Preston and 45 to Liverpool. The Bolton and Rochdale hits would also have repercusions in Burnley I think.
Only the fact that we were in a valley could save us from the worst.
PS Will, your Morcambe scenario is my favourite, excellent work.
In the sixties I was in the CD in Burnley, and we expected quite a lot of blast damage from Manchester and Salmesbury air facility, occasionally home to Vulcans.
The area was saturated with targets, only 20 miles to Manchester, 20 to Preston and 45 to Liverpool. The Bolton and Rochdale hits would also have repercusions in Burnley I think.
Only the fact that we were in a valley could save us from the worst.
PS Will, your Morcambe scenario is my favourite, excellent work.
4. Panic
So you run down / to the safety of the town / but there's panic on the streets of Carlisle
-----
The first device to hit the Carlisle area was soon after the sirens began wailing. It detonated on target above the NATO communications station at Anthorn, on the Solway Firth. The second, several minutes afterwards, hit the Royal Ordnance depot outside the Anglo-Scottish border town of Longtown. From Annan in Dumfriesshire to Brampton in Cumbria, there was barely an intact window.
And then Carlisle.
But they had to wait.
-----
Around eight in the evening. People weren't sure. Looking at their wristwatches wasn't the first thing on their minds. Anthorn had gone. Longtown had gone. The shocked and wounded of Carlisle crept out from under their shelters. The sky was glowing red to the west and north as the fires of the two devices consumed their fuel. Hundreds in Carlisle were injured. Falling slate, flying glass. A couple of hundred houses had partially collapsed.
The Cumberland Infirmary was in chaos as over three thousand people flocked to the A&E ward.
People ran down to the safety of town. But there's panic on the streets of Carlisle
Ten past eight. A lone Soviet bomber approaches it's target - the marshalling yard two miles north west of Carlisle city centre, and the adjacent RAF Carlisle.
They get a direct hit, as a single bomb airbursts over Low Crindledyke Farm.
The ROC station on the airfield was an above ground structure. They'd had a busy couple of hours, as one could imagine. Work was now over for the day.
-----
Not that anyone in Carlisle would ever know it, but the Soviet crew didn't manage to fully complete their evasion manouver after they unleashed hell on the Cumbrian city. Shortly after the detonation at Carlisle they were caught by the blastwave, eventually hitting the mud off the coast near Bowness-on-Solway. None survived.
-----
Carlisle north of the River Eden was a firestorm. South of the river the chaotic infirmary collapsed, hampering existing efforts substantially. Carlisle was the city that led to the introduction of drinking up time for munitions workers during the First World War. It was a very different conflict that finally called last orders.
-----
Lancaster. Have reason to understand you are intact and safe. Confirm. 21 Group HQ
Confirm, no local detonation
-----
I wonder to myself / could life ever be sane again
So you run down / to the safety of the town / but there's panic on the streets of Carlisle
-----
The first device to hit the Carlisle area was soon after the sirens began wailing. It detonated on target above the NATO communications station at Anthorn, on the Solway Firth. The second, several minutes afterwards, hit the Royal Ordnance depot outside the Anglo-Scottish border town of Longtown. From Annan in Dumfriesshire to Brampton in Cumbria, there was barely an intact window.
And then Carlisle.
But they had to wait.
-----
Around eight in the evening. People weren't sure. Looking at their wristwatches wasn't the first thing on their minds. Anthorn had gone. Longtown had gone. The shocked and wounded of Carlisle crept out from under their shelters. The sky was glowing red to the west and north as the fires of the two devices consumed their fuel. Hundreds in Carlisle were injured. Falling slate, flying glass. A couple of hundred houses had partially collapsed.
The Cumberland Infirmary was in chaos as over three thousand people flocked to the A&E ward.
People ran down to the safety of town. But there's panic on the streets of Carlisle
Ten past eight. A lone Soviet bomber approaches it's target - the marshalling yard two miles north west of Carlisle city centre, and the adjacent RAF Carlisle.
They get a direct hit, as a single bomb airbursts over Low Crindledyke Farm.
The ROC station on the airfield was an above ground structure. They'd had a busy couple of hours, as one could imagine. Work was now over for the day.
-----
Not that anyone in Carlisle would ever know it, but the Soviet crew didn't manage to fully complete their evasion manouver after they unleashed hell on the Cumbrian city. Shortly after the detonation at Carlisle they were caught by the blastwave, eventually hitting the mud off the coast near Bowness-on-Solway. None survived.
-----
Carlisle north of the River Eden was a firestorm. South of the river the chaotic infirmary collapsed, hampering existing efforts substantially. Carlisle was the city that led to the introduction of drinking up time for munitions workers during the First World War. It was a very different conflict that finally called last orders.
-----
Lancaster. Have reason to understand you are intact and safe. Confirm. 21 Group HQ
Confirm, no local detonation
-----
I wonder to myself / could life ever be sane again
In relation to the end of this post some may find this of interest
http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/sites/l/langley_lane/
5. Rain
If the rain comes they run and hide their heads / They might as well be dead / If the rain comes, if the rain comes
-----
The remaining ROC in the north west did their job well, and a picture was building. In the map room at Goosnargh the main concern was fallout, which was heading east and falling as rain.
FIRST FALLOUT Padiham Oh-Seven-Twenty-One
It was final score and the results were coming in. The cartographer carefully marked out "fallout black" areas on the map table; he'd previously worked for the Ordnance Survey, and his attention to detail remained despite the crisis outside. He transcribed the detail that he'd previously plotted from the numerous meter readings that he had received. It didn't look good for the mill towns in east Lancashire. He prayed that the residents had taken the shelter advice and were still under cover.
As far as he could figure places like Burnley and Nelson should be fairly intact.
No detonations in the immediate area. Possibility of blast damage from the bursts over Salmesbury and, less so, Horwich, but unlikely to be anything other than minor.
He worried about the poor condition of many houses in the mill towns. He worried about the fact that many local residents didn't have English as a first language and might not be fully prepared. He worried all the time. A part of the routine. He wrote firmly with his HB pencil, hand still shaking slightly, but that was becoming normalised. A part of the routine.
He tried not to think about his own family in Penwortham. Hopefully they had been close enough to the Preston blast, which burst over the nearby town of Bamber Bridge, that it would have been quick.
-----
On 23rd February the people were looking a little more settled underneath Lancaster police station. There were plenty of cigarettes for starters. The previous day had seen a small amount of communication with the powers-that-be in Goosnargh, and there had been a collective sigh of relief that the Lancaster area had been spared, but obviously a worry for what awaited them above ground.
Lancaster was fortunate in many ways. To the west, and generally upwind of the city the only close nuclear explosion had been Barrow-in-Furness. Beyond that a handful, it was understood, in Northern Ireland and, possibly, one further south. Maybe Dublin.
South were the detonations around Preston, and the single blast at Blackpool Airport. And then the rest.
From Forton in Lancashire to Southwaite in Cumbria - two villages previously known for their motorway service stations - there was the single greatest strip of "undamaged" territory in England. Whilst physically undamaged, the mental state of this region was debateable. The west-east axis was similar. Aside from a small burning pocket at Barrow-in-Furness, from St Bees in the west to Barnard Castle in the east, no blast damage. A region of almost one million people. Hungry. Scared. Alive.
This fact was soon clear to the residents of Goosnargh, not least the cartographer, who immediately recognised the significance of a huge area of his map with no blast circles.
At the southern end of this territory sat the greater Lancaster urban area. Home to over 100,000 people, and the largest "intact" community in the region. Possibly the largest intact community on the Irish Sea for that matter. The assets of the community were both stark and, at this stage, less obvious. A university. A power station. A working port facility with capacity for both freight and passengers. A potentially healthy workforce. Farmland. Transport infrastructure.
It was a fact already recognised in Lancaster itself.
-----
Not everyone in Lancaster had got through the first hours unscathed. In the future the council would have time to reflect, and it was estimated that there had been over four hundred suicides and assisted suicides on the evening of 21st February and over the next fortnight.
There were also other deaths. The heart attacks when the bombs went off. The lack of essential medicine for some patients. Lack of food. Exposure to fall-out, especially in the first seventy two hours.
-----
The man had been a bobby for seven years when the bombs came. He'd been fortunate enough to have had a job up at the old barracks on the day, so plenty of places to hide. He'd first venured outside on Thursday morning. His atire wasn't exactly Lancashire Constabulary's usual get-up. Denim overalls over his sweaty and stained white shirt. Rubber boots. Several socks and a pair of gaiters to his knees, just above the bottom of his mac. And what a bloody mac. With his black scarf around his face, snagging on his stubble, and a beret to cover his cropped hair, he looked like a sinister Frank Spencer. The sergeant made him wear his tie.
He picked up his rifle and he knew that it worked. He'd found that out yesterday when he'd shot a hungry and scared alsatian. It was a lovely dog, he thought. It had been a police dog once, and you could tell by the way that it ran at you. It was just two feet away when he shot it.
The sergeant was letting them out for a couple of hours at a time to patrol the streets around the infirmary. An army cordon on Ashton Road secured the hospital from all but the most essential patients. Triage was simple.
You walked here? Go home, you'll be safer there. Get rid of them. Simple. Out of sight. Out of mind.
There were few injuries in Lancaster. Just scared and shocked patients who were better off at home. A twelve seater ambulance came in. Quietly. It had a party on board that had been brought up from the old county HQ at Westleigh. They needed decontaminating for sure. Without a doubt the ambulance driver would need something too. In the first instance a whisky would be helpful. The journey down the M6 and back wasn't much fun.
-----
Before the war people often referred to the building as the Mushroom. Those stationed there didn't dare do that now.
Forton Services was one of the most secure places in the north west of England three days after the bombs. Straddling across the M6 five miles south of Lancaster it acted as a checkpoint and decontamination base as the great and good were pulled up from Preston. It also acted a refugee station as the less fortunate also arrived from Preston. Northbound was for the fortunate. Southbound for those less so, who huddled together for warmth and comfort. It didn't stop them getting a dose though, and walking past Inskip certainly hadn't helped.
Two thousand people had arrived from Preston in the first seventy two hours. It was smaller than expected, but the "couriers" that were running errands up and down the motorway said that there were plenty more lying on the tarmac to the south.
The blessing in disguise was that the bridges over the Ribble and motorway junction by the Tickled Trout Hotel had collapsed, preventing people coming north, without diverting perilously close to the ground zero of the Preston bomb.
-----
The student was alone. She didn't want to come to Lancaster, with it's out-of-town campus. She hadn't really mixed in the five months that she'd been there. Hadn't fitted in at all. She didn't do the drinking. Not until now anyway. It took away the pain. She thought about her family back home.
Gone for sure. Probably top of the list. Dad working in the docks, no doubt he'd have been amongst the first to go.
She tried to rationalise everything, but couldn't. She hadn't gone down into the shelter that had been opened up over the past few days. Instead she decided to sit in her room at Bailrigg. Eleven stories up. She'd looked out of the window a few times and considered jumping. A few others had already. She'd have to smash the window to get out. She didn't have the will for it.
She'd heard Barrow go. Indeed she'd crawled out from under her bed and looked at the cloud twenty miles away to the west, thinking she'd be next. She thought it looked beautiful in a stange way.
Magnificent and towering
Superimposed in front of the Lakeland fells, and reflecting upon the Morecambe Bay tide. Like a glorious sunset. She smiled as the tear smeared her cheek.
The hours passed. The days. The rain came and went. There was a snow shower. It was Friday before she realised that she hadn't eaten since the bombs. Only a bottle of Smirnoff and sleep for company, and even then the sleep was rudely interupted with increasing frequency by nightmares. Or was it her waking hours punctured by hallucinations? She wasn't sure. She didn't care.
Outside wouldn't be fun she thought. Inside wasn't fun either.
She wished she'd been with family when the inevitable had come. Wished she'd been with her mum and dad and brother when it happened.
On Saturday evening she cried herself to sleep.
She never woke up. The paracetamol saw to that.
Her family, back home and cowering under the stairs in Portsmouth, worried about her too.
-----
Can you hear me, can you hear me?
If the rain comes they run and hide their heads / They might as well be dead / If the rain comes, if the rain comes
-----
The remaining ROC in the north west did their job well, and a picture was building. In the map room at Goosnargh the main concern was fallout, which was heading east and falling as rain.
FIRST FALLOUT Padiham Oh-Seven-Twenty-One
It was final score and the results were coming in. The cartographer carefully marked out "fallout black" areas on the map table; he'd previously worked for the Ordnance Survey, and his attention to detail remained despite the crisis outside. He transcribed the detail that he'd previously plotted from the numerous meter readings that he had received. It didn't look good for the mill towns in east Lancashire. He prayed that the residents had taken the shelter advice and were still under cover.
As far as he could figure places like Burnley and Nelson should be fairly intact.
No detonations in the immediate area. Possibility of blast damage from the bursts over Salmesbury and, less so, Horwich, but unlikely to be anything other than minor.
He worried about the poor condition of many houses in the mill towns. He worried about the fact that many local residents didn't have English as a first language and might not be fully prepared. He worried all the time. A part of the routine. He wrote firmly with his HB pencil, hand still shaking slightly, but that was becoming normalised. A part of the routine.
He tried not to think about his own family in Penwortham. Hopefully they had been close enough to the Preston blast, which burst over the nearby town of Bamber Bridge, that it would have been quick.
-----
On 23rd February the people were looking a little more settled underneath Lancaster police station. There were plenty of cigarettes for starters. The previous day had seen a small amount of communication with the powers-that-be in Goosnargh, and there had been a collective sigh of relief that the Lancaster area had been spared, but obviously a worry for what awaited them above ground.
Lancaster was fortunate in many ways. To the west, and generally upwind of the city the only close nuclear explosion had been Barrow-in-Furness. Beyond that a handful, it was understood, in Northern Ireland and, possibly, one further south. Maybe Dublin.
South were the detonations around Preston, and the single blast at Blackpool Airport. And then the rest.
From Forton in Lancashire to Southwaite in Cumbria - two villages previously known for their motorway service stations - there was the single greatest strip of "undamaged" territory in England. Whilst physically undamaged, the mental state of this region was debateable. The west-east axis was similar. Aside from a small burning pocket at Barrow-in-Furness, from St Bees in the west to Barnard Castle in the east, no blast damage. A region of almost one million people. Hungry. Scared. Alive.
This fact was soon clear to the residents of Goosnargh, not least the cartographer, who immediately recognised the significance of a huge area of his map with no blast circles.
At the southern end of this territory sat the greater Lancaster urban area. Home to over 100,000 people, and the largest "intact" community in the region. Possibly the largest intact community on the Irish Sea for that matter. The assets of the community were both stark and, at this stage, less obvious. A university. A power station. A working port facility with capacity for both freight and passengers. A potentially healthy workforce. Farmland. Transport infrastructure.
It was a fact already recognised in Lancaster itself.
-----
Not everyone in Lancaster had got through the first hours unscathed. In the future the council would have time to reflect, and it was estimated that there had been over four hundred suicides and assisted suicides on the evening of 21st February and over the next fortnight.
There were also other deaths. The heart attacks when the bombs went off. The lack of essential medicine for some patients. Lack of food. Exposure to fall-out, especially in the first seventy two hours.
-----
The man had been a bobby for seven years when the bombs came. He'd been fortunate enough to have had a job up at the old barracks on the day, so plenty of places to hide. He'd first venured outside on Thursday morning. His atire wasn't exactly Lancashire Constabulary's usual get-up. Denim overalls over his sweaty and stained white shirt. Rubber boots. Several socks and a pair of gaiters to his knees, just above the bottom of his mac. And what a bloody mac. With his black scarf around his face, snagging on his stubble, and a beret to cover his cropped hair, he looked like a sinister Frank Spencer. The sergeant made him wear his tie.
He picked up his rifle and he knew that it worked. He'd found that out yesterday when he'd shot a hungry and scared alsatian. It was a lovely dog, he thought. It had been a police dog once, and you could tell by the way that it ran at you. It was just two feet away when he shot it.
The sergeant was letting them out for a couple of hours at a time to patrol the streets around the infirmary. An army cordon on Ashton Road secured the hospital from all but the most essential patients. Triage was simple.
You walked here? Go home, you'll be safer there. Get rid of them. Simple. Out of sight. Out of mind.
There were few injuries in Lancaster. Just scared and shocked patients who were better off at home. A twelve seater ambulance came in. Quietly. It had a party on board that had been brought up from the old county HQ at Westleigh. They needed decontaminating for sure. Without a doubt the ambulance driver would need something too. In the first instance a whisky would be helpful. The journey down the M6 and back wasn't much fun.
-----
Before the war people often referred to the building as the Mushroom. Those stationed there didn't dare do that now.
Forton Services was one of the most secure places in the north west of England three days after the bombs. Straddling across the M6 five miles south of Lancaster it acted as a checkpoint and decontamination base as the great and good were pulled up from Preston. It also acted a refugee station as the less fortunate also arrived from Preston. Northbound was for the fortunate. Southbound for those less so, who huddled together for warmth and comfort. It didn't stop them getting a dose though, and walking past Inskip certainly hadn't helped.
Two thousand people had arrived from Preston in the first seventy two hours. It was smaller than expected, but the "couriers" that were running errands up and down the motorway said that there were plenty more lying on the tarmac to the south.
The blessing in disguise was that the bridges over the Ribble and motorway junction by the Tickled Trout Hotel had collapsed, preventing people coming north, without diverting perilously close to the ground zero of the Preston bomb.
-----
The student was alone. She didn't want to come to Lancaster, with it's out-of-town campus. She hadn't really mixed in the five months that she'd been there. Hadn't fitted in at all. She didn't do the drinking. Not until now anyway. It took away the pain. She thought about her family back home.
Gone for sure. Probably top of the list. Dad working in the docks, no doubt he'd have been amongst the first to go.
She tried to rationalise everything, but couldn't. She hadn't gone down into the shelter that had been opened up over the past few days. Instead she decided to sit in her room at Bailrigg. Eleven stories up. She'd looked out of the window a few times and considered jumping. A few others had already. She'd have to smash the window to get out. She didn't have the will for it.
She'd heard Barrow go. Indeed she'd crawled out from under her bed and looked at the cloud twenty miles away to the west, thinking she'd be next. She thought it looked beautiful in a stange way.
Magnificent and towering
Superimposed in front of the Lakeland fells, and reflecting upon the Morecambe Bay tide. Like a glorious sunset. She smiled as the tear smeared her cheek.
The hours passed. The days. The rain came and went. There was a snow shower. It was Friday before she realised that she hadn't eaten since the bombs. Only a bottle of Smirnoff and sleep for company, and even then the sleep was rudely interupted with increasing frequency by nightmares. Or was it her waking hours punctured by hallucinations? She wasn't sure. She didn't care.
Outside wouldn't be fun she thought. Inside wasn't fun either.
She wished she'd been with family when the inevitable had come. Wished she'd been with her mum and dad and brother when it happened.
On Saturday evening she cried herself to sleep.
She never woke up. The paracetamol saw to that.
Her family, back home and cowering under the stairs in Portsmouth, worried about her too.
-----
Can you hear me, can you hear me?
Falkenburg
Monthly Donor
Great stuff, Will.
/Hitting close to home. I lived at Southwaite for a while (those services were my nearest shop
).Intimately familiar with that view of the fells as you approach from the South, so that's a particularly vivid image.
Another sterling effort. A fine addition to the P&S-verse.
Falkenburg
Macragge1
Banned
Fantastic stuff, Will; I put 'Rain' on whilst I read this and it really did give the whole thing a sinister edge, especially with the backtracked vocals coming in when we came to the Student.
Obviously the Lancaster pocket's survival is a blessing, although it's come fairly heavily disguised at the moment. The big problem in the near-future is going to be refugees from harder hit areas, although the fallout and the cold in the Lakes and on the Moors should thin them out substantially.
Great work, looking forward to the next update!
Obviously the Lancaster pocket's survival is a blessing, although it's come fairly heavily disguised at the moment. The big problem in the near-future is going to be refugees from harder hit areas, although the fallout and the cold in the Lakes and on the Moors should thin them out substantially.
Great work, looking forward to the next update!
Eeeek you said the 'D' word!
Seriously, though an excellent new chapter. Keep up the good work.
I've stopped at Southwaite often enough, now I think about it.
Seriously, though an excellent new chapter. Keep up the good work.
I've stopped at Southwaite often enough, now I think about it.
Goosnargh is intact so there are communications, I am sure that there are other surviving bunkers around the UK and that they will have some ability to communicate with each other
In a way, yes. I'm working to the document that was quoted in the original P&S (post #194) when there was an update on where the bombs had fallen in the UK. This document is dated 1st March 1984. My assumption is that to gather this information the ROC have been, by and large, able to do their job effectively and report to the powers that be regionally and nationally.
Most of the ROC and UKWMO Group H.Qs will have survived, though a few, such as Edinburgh (ROC 24 Group) and Dundee (28 Group). will have been destroyed. The loss of Dundee is more serious because it is also the UKWMO Caledonian Sector.
Depending on where the Dundee GZ is the Group H.Q could have survived. I'll need to double check the main thread and see whether Jack has mentioned a yield for the bomb.
EDIT: Jack hasn't mentioned a yield, but trying both a 750kt warhead and a 1MT warhead burst roughly over the centre of Dundee reveals that the group H.Q would be subject to approximately 4.6psi of overpressure. Craigiebarns House itself will be smashed to bits, but is is possible that the bunker could survive, if shaken (unless the Soviets used it as the DGZ).
Depending on where the Dundee GZ is the Group H.Q could have survived. I'll need to double check the main thread and see whether Jack has mentioned a yield for the bomb.
EDIT: Jack hasn't mentioned a yield, but trying both a 750kt warhead and a 1MT warhead burst roughly over the centre of Dundee reveals that the group H.Q would be subject to approximately 4.6psi of overpressure. Craigiebarns House itself will be smashed to bits, but is is possible that the bunker could survive, if shaken (unless the Soviets used it as the DGZ).
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Sad to say this reminds me of Betjemen: "Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! It isn't fit for humans now"