Dennis's one job in a war was to count the mushroom clouds, the symbol of each side's mutually assured destruction. It was not only his job, it was his duty, far above that of husband and father. Just sit in a 12 foot concrete bunker, record blasts and predict the fall out across the English countryside. Problem was, the war lasted but a few hours, cutting off all forms of communication in its wake. Now Dennis and his fellow Royal Observer Corp volunteers could only speculate what the post-apocalyptic world would look like, as they hid in their underground tomb for weeks on end until the radiation subsided.
Riots, marshal law, summary executions and finally war. Surely England would never be the same again? And neither would Dennis.
'The Observer: Watching' is the first of a two part series based on the role of The British Royal Observer Corp during the Cold War years of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the various War Games the government would play out to simulate nuclear attacks.
