Although many thousands had taken to their cars and were driving north to the M25 motorway or to the coast in the hope of getting to France, many more people had either made the decision to stay or did not possess the means to leave. In the latter category were the homeless and elderly. Here it was decided that social services should immediately set out to determine who were at risk; to identify their whereabouts; and, in the case of the homeless, remove them to an appropriate residential establishment.
The subject no one really wanted to discuss but every one knew had to be discussed came towards the end of the meeting: health. Governments did not plan expenditure on the basis of the sort of medical facilities a country of sixty million people would need to survive a nuclear attack. Kent would have to make do with what it had. One of the consequences of civilian nuclear disasters is a rise in thyroid cancer. This occurs because radioactive iodine produced by a nuclear accident lodges in the thyroid glands of affected workers. One way of preventing thyroid cancer is to administer potassium iodate. This lodges in the thyroid and crowds out the radioactive isotopes which then pass through the body. Stocks of potassium iodate were at the Dungeness nuclear power plant on Kent's south coast, beyond the Romney Marshes, but they were hardly adequate for a county-wide emergency. Hospitals had been alerted and were instituting their own emergency procedures. But only one, the Royal Marsden Hospital at Sutton in Surrey, was geared up for nuclear accidents. It offered a procedure known as `pulmonary lavage', whereby a patient who had breathed in radioactive particles was put on an alternative oxygenated blood supply while he had his lungs irrigated. Pulmonary lavage was, however, a complicated and time-consuming process, and Royal Marsden could accommodate only a fraction of the expected casualties from the Chinese bomb.
Eric Wallace, father of two, looked out of his sitting room window on to St John's Road. It was usually a busy road to the north it offered access to Tonbridge and Sevenoaks, to the south Lewes and East Grinstead but on that Thursday morning it was bumper-to-bumper both ways. Wallace had talked things over with his wife, Cathy, and they had decided to stay put. `If it's going to hit us direct then it doesn't matter where we are,' he said. He also thought that of all the places in the south-east Tunbridge Wells was about as unlikely a target as you could get… and London by far the more likely. In any event he was taking no chances.
The television had been turned on and tuned to BBC 1 since Wallace heard on his clock radio that south-east England might be the target for a Chinese nuclear attack. The calm voice of the announcer explained that the greatest threat to life was from gamma radiation. Some houses impede the progress of gamma radiation better than others. Caravans are next to useless as they stop virtually no radiation at all. A lot of modern houses are not much better. The best dwelling to be holed up in during a nuclear attack is in the basement of a three-storey block of flats. The announcer said that a Home Office study pointed out that the occupants of such a cellar or basement would receive one three-hundredth of the external gamma radiation. In general, cellars or basements are the best place to hide because they are furthest away from the roof, which lets in a lot of radiation, and because the ground is a good shield against radiation. Eric Wallace and his family, however, lived in a two storey mock-Tudor house without a cellar. On the ground, with only the windows blocked, more than 80 per cent of gamma radiation would pass through the house, without some protection.
Soon after he and his wife had decided to remain in their house Cathy set out for the shops in Tunbridge Wells. She was in charge of getting the family's survival kit together. She set off down St John's Road towards the town centre. The roads were packed with cars. The cars were packed with people and possessions. She passed car after car. None overtook her. She got to Grosvenor Road but Tesco's was closed. A crowd milled around its entrance. She continued on. She always shopped at Tesco's; it was the closest and they knew her.
Grosvenor Road became Mount Pleasant Road just at the point where Calverley Road met both. Calverley Road was a pedestrian mall and a short way down was Marks & Spencer. It was open, but an angry crowd was milling around the entrance like a swarm of agitated bees. Five policemen were attempting to restrain one group of people who had claimed that another had jumped the queue. Cathy spoke to one of the policemen who told her that Safeway's, down by the mainline railway station, was open, so she made for that. As she passed the Town Hall, a thirties structure of studied ugliness that dominated Mount Pleasant Road, she saw a Transit van full of vagrants being unloaded and taken into the town hall. Safeway's was as crowded and rowdy as the other supermarkets. Cathy queued and said little. All she knew was that she had a list to get, and then get back home although the prospect of a twenty-minute walk carrying what she had to carry scared the living daylights out of her. Eric had told her that they needed enough food for four for fourteen days. Since 10 a.m. the BBC had been broadcasting advice about what to buy. The government's advice was to stock up on sugar, jams, and other sweet foods, cereals, biscuits, meats, vegetables, fruit, and fruit juices. She also had to get batteries for the portable radio, pain killers, adhesive dressings, bandages, disinfectant, three buckets (with lids), and bin liners.
When she got home it looked as though a bomb had hit. Eric had removed doors and filled rubbish-bin liners with soil from the garden. He'd also painted the glass in the windows white and moved pieces of furniture in front of them.
The main ground floor room in the Wallaces' house ran the full depth of the house. The room was divided in two by sliding doors and they used the front half as their sitting room and the back half for dining. Behind the dining area was a kitchen and behind that a garden. Mr Wallace made his family's internal shelter in the dining room. Along the wall the room shared with the kitchen he propped four doors which he had removed from rooms upstairs. These were arranged in a `lean-to' and secured on the floor by a batten running its length. According to the film which had been running continuously on the BBC since 10 a.m., the next thing to do was insulate the lean-to. This was most effectively done by filling rubbish sacks full of earth and placing them over it. He also stacked sacks of earth on the kitchen side of the wall the lean-to was using. In all, he managed to fill and stack more than fifty sacks of earth by lunchtime. The entrance to the lean-to posed a problem until he uncovered two old tea chests. He filled each with earth. He put planks of wood over the top of the chests and on the planks stacked more bags of earth. There wasn't much left of the garden after he finished.
With the shelter built Mr Wallace set about securing the room housing it. He closed the double doors, both of which were solid timber. The dining room had only one window. He painted its panes white — this might deflect the flash, although they would likely break if the bomb went off in Kent itself — and then set about bagging the window. After he'd done that he moved a cupboard to cover the bags. The last thing he did, before the period of waiting began, was to construct a makeshift lavatory. The BBC advice was to remove the seat from a dining chair and place a bucket, lined with a rubbish bin liner, underneath it. The three buckets with lids that Cathy had bought now had a use.