Skip content
Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! Start gifting
Attack Warning Red! by Julie McDowall
  Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account
Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Nowโ€™s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, weโ€™ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

Attack Warning Red!

How Britain Prepared for Nuclear War
Due to publisher restrictions, this audiobook is unavailable for purchase in your selected country.
Narrator Julie McDowall

This audiobook uses AI narration.

Weโ€™re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more
Length 10 hours 10 minutes
Language English
  Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

There have been many histories of the Cold War but Attack Warning Red is the first book to tell the domestic story of day-to-day life on the nuclear home front.

The dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 changed the nature of war forever. The awesome power of the atomic blast and its deadly fallout meant that nowhere was safe: every town, village, street and home in Britain fell under the nuclear shadow, and the threat of annihilation coloured every aspect of ordinary life for the next forty years. As the media reported on the inevitability of approaching conflict with the Soviet Union, the British people were told to prepare for the coming apocalypse.

Families were taught how to construct makeshift shelters in their homes and stockpile food and medicines; vicars and pub landlords were instructed to sound hand-wound sirens to deliver the Four Minute Warning. Schools and hospitals prepared for the worst, and thousands volunteered for civil defence organisations to be trained in nuclear first aid. And while the British people were expected to look after themselves, bunkers were prepared for government officials and experts needed to ensure that life continued after the catastrophe.

Looming nuclear war and the planning for it affected people's everyday lives: it informed their childhoods, structured their work, and inhabited their dreams and nightmares. Today, more than thirty years after the end of the Cold War, we read this story - with its Dad's Army comedy, endearing amateurism and futile measures for a war that was not survivable - with a sense of relief that the worst did not happen; but it is also a timely - and frightening - reminder that the nuclear threat will always be with us.

ยฉ2023 Julie McDowall (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Nowโ€™s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, weโ€™ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

Reviews

Timely ... McDowall's excellent book is a chilling reminder of the horrific reality of nuclear war Cracking So entertaining Very good ... A sobering book, but a gripping one Julie McDowall's thoroughly gripping study ... makes for genuinely startling and sometimes darkly funny reading... [it's] brilliantly chilling and sparkily engaging Expand reviews
Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! Start gifting