Nuclear Information Centre
Four-Minute Warning (2026). (MP4, Duration 4m 00s)
[NIC/NW/021]
This 4 minute moving image exhibit strays into the realm of the nuclear sublime courtesy of a frighteningly dispassionate 1950s Civil Defence Corps training infographic about the immediate effects of an atomic bomb drop, now set against a suitably emotive, searingly yellow backdrop. During the Cold War, the four-minute warning was an official yet arguably performative alert system, designed to warn the UK public of a confirmed and imminent incoming (Soviet) nuclear missile attack which nominally gave people enough time to seek and find cover from the impending blast and ensuing fallout.
Further afield, those directly affected by 40 years of atomic testing by nuclear weapons states between the 1950s and 1990s received altogether more variable alerts when it came to pre-detonation announcements and warnings of potential health implications from the ensuring contamination caused by the blasts.
Nuclear weapons are still with us and quite possibly rising in number and active deployment again as we seemingly enter a new period of proliferation.
Where does this sit within our much heralded and so-called golden age of nuclear which conveniently seems to overlook the ongoing threat and still unfolding legacies of global nuclear weapons programmes?
https://vimeo.com/1197152560
Information last updated: Thu 02 Jul 2026
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