Director Peter Watkin was assigned by the BBC to make a documentary about the possible effects of nuclear war on Great Britain.
His film describes the deadly stakes of the arms race and the dangerously absurd notion that a nation could "survive" a nuclear attack, repeatedly making the point that the same leadership that brought in the bomb has done almost nothing to protect citizens from its effects. The blast of a hydrogen bomb is almost the least of the horrors that would await England after a nuclear attack; the slow, decaying effect of radiation poisoning, the breakdown of social order and rise of martial law, and the grim faces of survivors who envy the dead are images as disturbing as the firestorms and destruction left by thermonuclear attack.