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I’m tired of the city life
Summer’s on the run
People tell me I should stay
But I gotta get my fun.

“We in New Zealand, you know, used to be able to think that we would sit comfortably, while the rest of the world singed, seared, withered. We were enraptured!
And the fact is that we used to have the vision of our being some kind of antipodean Noah’s Ark, which would, from within its quite isolated preserve spawn a whole new world of realistic humankind. Now, the fact is that we know that that is not achievable. We know that if the nuclear winter comes, we freeze; we join the rest of you.”
- David Lange

From King, M., Disaster, Deprivation, and Deliverance: A History of New Zealand in the 1980s. (Palmerston North: Massey University Press, 2009).

Volume I, Chapter 19: Aftershocks

The detonation of a 300-kiloton nuclear weapon is never a small event, even against the backdrop of a nuclear exchange which (according to estimates collated by CSIRO in 2003) totalled some 1700 megatons, and when such an event occurs in the capital city of a small nation it is, for want of a better term, blown quite out of proportion…

…aside from the relocation of the Government to Ohakea in the interim, the deaths of approximately sixty thousand Wellingtonians and the fleeing of eighty thousands of their fellow townspeople, the strike on Wellington was to have longer-term effects…

February 22nd was a bright, warm day in Wellington, and the northeasterly wind (of about 10 to 15 knots) persisting throughout the day provided a relief in the short term for the residents of the Hutt Valley and the Kapiti Coast as they were spared the fallout – Geiger counters in the hands of Army personnel in Porirua recorded few changes in background radiation, and the fallout cloud only barely affected anywhere north of Johnsonville (see map in index iv) – that is, the dose per hour was less than 10 rads (or 0.1 Gy/100 mSv). When one considers that 40 rads (0.4Gy) is required in half an hour to cause even very mild radiation poisoning, and that this intensity of radiation was only reached as one got within the radius affected by the severe thermal radiation which caused third-degree burns (in Wellington’s case, as far north as Khandallah and as far east as Mount Victoria), the danger of radiation to upwind areas can be considered negligible in hindsight…

…the effects of radioactive fallout were well-documented, but with the lack of civil defence preparedness in 1980s-New Zealand there was a distinct absence of public knowledge as to the correct procedures. Without going yet into the other reasons hotly debated since then, this seems the least controversial explanation as to what was soon to unfold across the Cook Strait. From Blenheim, the mushroom cloud over Wellington was clearly visible, and as the smoke from the raging fires rose alongside it and the cloud drifted towards the town, the County Council, which had dispersed after the announcement of the destruction of Sydney, slowly began to trickle into the Town Hall to establish a plan…

…within two hours, the homemade Geiger counters in Blenheim Town Hall (particularly the one slung on the end of a string out a window) was going berserk, with readings in excess of 400 rads (4 Gy/4000 mSv) being registered by noon. There was clearly a crisis afoot.


Blenheim Town Hall
12:30 pm

Philip Taylor, Mayor of Blenheim, wasn’t a man to scare tremendously easily, but faced with whatever the hell was going on outside had his bowels aflutter. Wiping sweat not-entirely-borne-of-the-heat from his forehead, he looked across the table to where a young lass with a toaster-sized radiation counter from God-alone-knew-where (or when, though the words ‘RADIAC SURVEY METER, No. 2’ embossed upon the side implied sometime around the late 1950s) sat listening carefully to the clicks emanating from it and scrutinising a dial. The Mayor licked his lips nervously before speaking.

“Ah…what’s the outlook, Vicki?”

Vicki held up a forefinger, listening to the clicking while he stood and carried the bulky piece of equipment around the room, stepping briefly into the hallway before returning to the table, consulting a chart in a scientific volume and fiddling with a pocket calculator. After what felt like an eternity, the agonised silence punctuated only by the clicking of the RADIAC SURVEY METER, No. 2, Vicki cleared her throat and looked at the seven councillors sitting around the table.

“Well, assuming the intensity of the radiation is halved by every seven centimetres of concrete – this building has reinforced steel, I suppose? Yes, well then if we add the effect of the steel on the radiation…We’re getting about 50 rads per hour in here, maybe a hundred if this piece of junk is off. I’d go outside to check and be sure but frankly, I’d rather not risk it.”

At that the Mayor could only wring his hands as discreetly as possible and ask what that meant. The young scientist (was she on University Challenge that one time?) sighed and looked at him with a mixture of pity, frustration, and sadness.

“I’m not entirely sure, sir. This Geiger counter’s from the age of the dodo, this textbook still refers to plate tectonics as an exciting new theory, and to be quite honest, I’m a psych and sociology major so I’m in over my head here as much as you lot. But, if this is to be believed, 50 rads is sufficient only to cause a bit of blood cell trouble – and that’s of rather more concern to the injured, which we aren’t – and maybe some slight nausea after five or six hours.”

Philip felt a manically relieved grin begin to break out across his face. “You mean,” he asked, “you mean we’re not all going to get radiation sickness? Thank God; we can head out and begin to organise some actual civil defence, and…” he noticed the psychologist’s crestfallen look “…and…and…no?” She shook her head.

“Assuming the walls of the Town Hall are protecting us by a decent factor, the radiation outside is probably in the region of 400 rads, so eight times greater than what’s happening in here.”

“Oh,” said one council member in a very small voice. “And that means…?”

“Going by what this book says, within 24 hours of a full dose of 400 rads – and remember that what we’re looking at is the dose overall, while the counter only shows rads per hour – vomiting, diarrhoea, possible fever, and loss of nervous function.” Now she was the one to lick her lips nervously. “And that’s a low guess, given that anyone outside is getting about 400 roentgen – it’s the same as rads; the measurements are complicated – per hour, the actual effects over, say, 12 hours to a day, those would be much, much worse. Mortality rates rise on a curve very steeply after 600 rads; without care upwards of three-quarters of those exposed.”

Nobody in the room said anything. There wasn’t really anything to say. Eventually, Philip thought of something.

“For God’s sake,” he said hoarsely, “is there anything we can do?”

Vicki shrugged sadly. “The best thing to do is stay in shelter until the fallout begins to clear, which should be by midnight, though I can only guess.”

A man at the end of the table – Trevor, that was who it was – raised a shaking hand.

“If there’s nothing else for it,” he said, holding his voice still by force of will alone “do we have a telephone and a phone book? We might as well call people and let them know to stay indoors at all costs.”

All heads turned back to the young scientist, who stared back at them with a resigned and exhausted expression.

“I don’t bloody know; can’t be a worse idea than leaving twenty thousand people to die a slow death as they try escaping, can it?”

“Thirty thousand,” corrected the Mayor automatically. “In the district, anyway. Right, then, let’s get to it, shall we?”

“Shouldn’t we take a vote?” asked one of the members, a puffed-up fellow who was looking deflated by the events overtaking them. Philip, Vicki, and all the rest looked at him with almost pitying scepticism.

“If you want to dawdle while people are out there getting covered in all that radiation, you can leave now. Any objections? Good, as I was saying…”


It was a perfectly admissible and indeed noble argument that led to the Blenheim councillors and a few staff calling as many households as ten people could practicably manage with nine telephones. It was also, however, a hasty and misinformed one.

The atmosphere in Blenheim was suffused with an eerie calm at the time, as those who hadn’t fled (which is to say most of the population: only the most pessimistic had predicted any horrifying fate befalling Blenheim, of all places) remained indoors as the radio broadcasts and television updates had advised them. After radio services finally ceased around 10am, people took it as a bad sign; the second sun which rose in the northeast only served to confirm the unimaginable. So when the telephone rang in a hypothetical house, the reaction was surprise – as one person put it: “A nuclear war had just started and finished, and somebody thought now was the time to make social calls?” – quickly followed by terror as the quavering voice of some council functionary alerted them to the invisible death which was floating outside their windows and saturating their veggie patches, before attempting (with nary a trace of irony) to reassure them of the need to remain indoors.

The population thus split into two sections: the “well that’s bloody obvious” set, who were if anything annoyed that at this juncture all their local government was doing was repeating the same phrases they’d been hearing ad nauseam for the last fortnight and to a maddening crescendo over the last 24 hours; and the “flee the oncoming certain death” group, who were quite understandably terrified at the prospect of a slow death by irradiation. This latter group was mainly comprised of those who had already been in the process of fleeing or making contingency plans when TVNZ made its last broadcast that morning, and who had only stopped because of the fear instilled by the blinding flash across Cook Strait, and were therefore galvanised back into action by the sudden public service announcement. For many this meant rushing themselves and/or their families into cars hastily fuelled earlier that day, and speeding through the roads of Blenheim towards either Nelson or Christchurch, getting considerable doses of radiation in doing so. Worse still, the very unlucky few who decided to head up the Wairau Valley found themselves being chased by the fallout cloud, with the higher than average cluster of fatalities occurring in West Coast hospitals among the refugee population throughout March (and a string of suicides) directly attributable to this.

The mushroom cloud over Wellington had dissipated entirely by 1pm, and the level of radioactivity in the fallout which drifted through Blenheim had decayed to a hundredth of its peak intensity after about 48 hours, but it was more than long enough to deliver lethal doses of radiation to those who tried to leave. The dry, dusty conditions of the area, particularly at the tail end of a not unusually dry summer, exacerbated the spread of radioactive dust and thus the degree of radiation poisoning in the area. Cars driving along roads kicked up dust which was breathed in, either through open windows or ventilation systems or by chance when people leaving their cars after they had reached safety touched the radioactive material on the sides of their vehicles and unwittingly irradiated.

As a result, by the end of 1984 directly-attributable radiation deaths from Blenheim and the Marlborough would exceed 3,500: roughly ten percent of the pre-war population of 37,100. This high death toll, while far below that seen in areas of South Auckland and Manukau or Wellington’s eastern suburbs, presented a major challenge for healthcare and governmental authorities in the South Island as the year wound on. The strain placed on overstretched healthcare resources would lead to instability in some cases (pharmacies in most major towns were placed under armed 24-hour guard from March 7 onwards) and caused a major moral dilemma in regards to care for those suffering radiation sickness and the legal standpoint of voluntary and/or assisted euthanasia.

Nonetheless, it is important to remember is that these were longer-term consequences of the nuclear attacks, and against the grim backdrop of those first few hours after the attacks it is miraculous that the population of Blenheim stayed put in numbers as large as they did. While decontamination efforts would only begin in earnest once it rained in the first week of March, the immediate danger had passed – after the all-clear was sounded on the 24th following two days of agonised waiting and panicked phone calls to Christchurch (whose survival the Blenheim Council regarded with immense relief) and Palmerston North (whence a shaky Interim Cabinet was coordinating relief) some effort was made to hose off buildings and roads, though innocent ignorance of the insidiousness of irradiated dust would end up plaguing the survivors of Blenheim with mild radiation poisoning throughout the next fortnight, and cancer-related health issues for decades to come. All in all, the events which unfolded in Blenheim were representative of what would come to pass in 1984 New Zealand – fear and lack of awareness of what to do in the event of nuclear war led to hastily-issued directives which did harm as often as they did good while well-meaning people prospered and suffered in equal measure,

As an aside, a further casualty of the fallout plume from the attack on Wellington for the medium-term future was the nascent Marlborough wine industry. Although much of the fallout was washed out in the week of rain from March 1, the high mortality rate from radiation sickness in the area crippled all economic activity, and viticulture was no exception. After the immediate chaos of the post-Exchange period, the privations of future years, and later reluctance to engage in any kind of agriculture in an area of land viewed as ‘poisoned,’ the wine industry was crippled until well into the 21st century (although in the lowest reaches of the Wairau, where the vineyards nudge up against the inland Kaikoura ranges, some production of Sauvignon and Pinot Noir would continue as a means of supporting families who found themselves with little other livelihood but to barter alcohol). Vintage bottles from the vineyards producing before the Exchange remain sought-after by collectors and connoisseurs alike, for their historical and sentimental value, their perceived purity from radiation (more than one vintner survived by hiding out in their deep cellars), and the attached sense of a piece of old New Zealand which could never really be rebuilt, but merely replicated.


He hadn’t meant to do it, but the silly bitch had asked for it after all. She’d got in the way was all; he’d been dazzled by the flash and heard the roar of a million jet engines and felt the blast and he knew he had to run, get south, get somewhere safe, so he’d jumped the fence, opened the door of the house and walked in. She’d been in the bedroom and come out to see what was going on, saw him taking the keys and started shouting at him. He grabbed for her keys, she slapped at his hands, he slapped her in the face and she spun and fell. Fear in her eyes, fear in his. A siren in the distance, the scream of the air-raid warning dying out as the cloud rose out there, out the window and in the distance. He was panting, and the sound of his blood rushing filled his ears and covered the sound, as he turned to leave, of her standing up and moving towards the phone. A click as the receiver was lifted and he span on his heel, moving to stop her. Then he saw the knife, a yell and a dull glint as she held it up in front of her face. The hand, him pressing her up against the wall, the two of them eye to eye, breath heavy on each other’s faces as he looked down at the knife which had slashed a red line across her shoulder.

And then…then it was a blur. He didn’t know why he’d done it but she’d tried it first right and that made it self-defence and besides where were the pigs to stop him anyway with the war and the panic and the Russians and the riots and the Emergency Powers Act and now he was driving through the Waitakeres where they wouldn’t look for him after they found her and the things he’d taken to use for himself.

And now here he was, parked on the side of a dirt road up a hill somewhere in the ranges. The blood on the gearstick and steering wheel had dried some time ago, filling his nostrils with a coppery-iron stink and occasionally bringing him out of his bewildered reverie. The sun was shining hot and oppressive in the west, as if trying to outdo the second suns which had risen all over the world, and the heat bore down upon him in the metal box of a Jap import model which had been pulled over after the radiator started to boil over. It would be a while before he could drive anywhere. Oh well. Best to drive at night anyway, he thought.

As day turned to night, he looked to the north where the mushroom cloud had drifted off only to be replaced by a cauldron of smoke, the essence of a hundred thousand caught in the blast, and shook his head as a wave of tiredness overtook him. He’d sleep, move on in the morning, he thought as he lay in the backseat, feet dangling out the open window as the breeze from the north blew gently past and a headache pounded gently but insistently on the inside of his skull.


Take me to the April sun in Cuba, whoa-oh-oh!
Take me where the April sun will treat me
So right!
So right!