YP Letters: Do nuclear weapons really deter or just make us a target?

From: Royce Bradshaw, Greenwood Avenue, Littledale, Sheffield.
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IF nuclear weapons deter nuclear war, then what are nuclear fallout shelters for?

They are only for top people; at the top of politics, army, navy, air force (and their families). The rest of us – 65 million people – will be outside those shelters being blasted by nuclear bombs or killed by radioactive dust poisoning us, or causing cancers to kill us.

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If a shelter is planned for 1,000 people, with food, medical supplies, fuel, water, what happens if one million people go there? It would be standing room only, no space to lie down.There would not be enough food for everyone, so the guards would have orders to shoot dead anybody who did not have a pass.

In such a scenario, we would be killed both by our enemies and our own people.

New Zealand does not allow American warships into its harbours because they might have nuclear weapons on them.

If there were to be a nuclear war at that time, the harbours could be targeted and destroyed by enemy missiles and millions 
of New Zealanders could be killed.

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New Zealand people are safe because they do not have any nuclear weapons. British people are told that they are safe because they do have nuclear weapons.

One of them is wrong. Which is wrong?

If you thought there would be a nuclear war next week, where will you and your family prefer to be – Britain or New Zealand?

From: Arthur Quarmby, Mill Moor Road, Meltham.

I AM surprised that there seems to have been no real investigation into what the effects would have been if, as the world expected, Winston Churchill had been re-elected triumphantly to power at the end of the Second World War.

Instead he was replaced with the non-entity Clement Attlee and a left-wing government, nationalisation of most major industries, rampant inflation, power cuts and worse food rationing than during the war.

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Those of us who were around at that time are getting on a bit by now – perhaps our thoughts and opinions might be assembled in order that future historians might understand the unthinkable 1945 election result.

At the end of the war, Churchill was the best-known leader in the world. His authority was so high that certainly Britain would have been returned to prosperity without delay – instead of the Attlee government’s ineffectiveness and nothing to show for it at the end, save (perhaps) the NHS.