Fintan O'Toole questions the point of a Civil Defence exercise designed to imitate the outbreak of a nuclear war.
A national Civil Defence exercise aims to prepare Irish people about what to do in the event of a nuclear explosion or attack. The exercise involves not only a direct attack on Ireland but also Britain and Europe. The exercise will involve four thousand Civil Defence personnel, lighthouse keepers, An Garda Síochána, and having warnings broadcast on RTÉ starting at midnight.
It is to rehearse Irish people what to do if the bubble ever goes up.
Fintan O'Toole a journalist with The Sunday Tribune newspaper believes the entire exercise is a waste of time, money and effort. Taking to the Late Late Show soapbox, he sets out his views on the issues in three minutes.
The purpose of this weird exercise is to test the system for warning the Irish people that radioactive fallout is on its way after large scale nuclear war.
He argues that the whole exercise is as pointless as putting a string bag over your head to keep the rain off. The warning process goes through six different levels of command before it gets to the citizens. Each one of these stages is dependent on the phone system. Fintan O'Toole says that in the event of a real nuclear attack, all the telephone lines would be immediately knocked out.
A warning system with no phones and no radio or TV is a bit like a soccer match with no ball.
Fintan O'Toole says that in the event of this happening local wardens would be required to go out and test levels of radioactivity and take to their bicycles to warn the public. This is an ineffective means of dealing with the scale of catastrophe of a nuclear war. Even if the Republic of Ireland was not the direct target, there would almost definitely be a direct hit on Northern Ireland or the west coast of England where nuclear plants like Windscale are located.
Fintan O'Toole says that since the warning system would fail Ireland faces up to a million Irish deaths. Furthermore, there would be huge food supply problems resulting from the damage to livestock and crops. There would be massive increases in deaths from cancers. Anyone who did survive might just face total chaos and a slow death.
We would have to face the kind of changes in the environment that would make the continuation of human life probably impossible.
While conceding that the exercise is harmless enough, Fintan O'Toole says it is farcical. While those taking part have the best possible motives, their goodwill will not save Ireland from the horrors of a nuclear war. It is the responsibility of politicians to put more money into building a reasonable civil defence system or alternatively admit that there is nothing we can do about a nuclear war apart from trying to prevent it from happening in the first place.
The Late Late Show broadcast on 25 February 1984. The presenter is Gay Byrne.
