THE revelation of a nuclear bunker in Ludlow takes us back to a time that feels long gone. But would such a bunker have been any use and could the threat come back or has it ever really gone away? ADRIAN KIBBLER looks back and forwards.

PEOPLE who would not consider themselves old can remember a time when nuclear Armageddon was a real fear but most would probably be surprised to learn of a bunker in Ludlow.

There is no suggestion that Ludlow would have been a target in a nuclear war although Birmingham and probably Cardiff almost certainly would have been. A Government report from the early 1970s suggests that Kidderminster that had been designated a ‘regional centre’ so might have been.

The three threats from nuclear weapons are blast, heat and radiation.

Even in the event of a thermonuclear weapon (hydrogen bomb) being exploded over Birmingham, or even Kidderminster, it is unlikely that Ludlow would have been obliterated. However, it would have been vulnerable to radiation.

The most likely explanation is that the Ludlow bunker was not intended as protection against blast or burns but as a bolthole for a chosen few against radiation and also a store for vital medicines such as iodine tablets that can restrict to take up of radiation by the body.

After receiving a death sentence from an Athenian court, Socrates allegedly accepted his fate telling the court it was time to go: ‘I to die and you to live; but which of us has the happier prospect is unknown to anyone but God.’

Surely the same sentiment applies in the event of a nuclear holocaust as heaven knows what world ‘survivors’ would have been left with.

Fortunately, at least so far, that holocaust has been avoided although there have been some close shaves, most notably the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962.

Ironically, the terrible power of nuclear weapons has been a major reason why they have not been used.

MAD (mutual assured destruction) has worked since the 1960s when the USA and Soviet Union had a sufficient arsenal of deliverable nuclear weapons to be able to cause enough damage to each other to make their use pointless.

However, at the heart of MAD is the acceptance that no sane or rational person would use nuclear weapons. But this only works as long as only sane and rational people hold these terrible weapons.

Does anyone believe that ISIS or some other extremist regime where death in regarded as martyrdom would not use such weapons if they were available?

Another risk is that weapons technology has moved on. Most of us still think of nuclear weapons as strategic weapons of mass destruction used to obliterate cities and towns and render huge areas uninhabitable.

However, technology has ‘advanced’ and means that smaller tactical nuclear weapons are now available capable of being very accurately targeted providing options for their use not available in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

The global picture is mixed because, while the number of nuclear weapons has been reduced, there are still thousands and you can only die once.

Nuclear weapons proliferation has been fairly successful but the fact that countries like Pakistan and North Korea almost certainly have at least atomic if not thermonuclear weapons is frightening.

In short, the fear of nuclear war that was behind the nuclear bunker in Ludlow may have changed but has not completely gone away.

Even if every nuclear warhead in the world were destroyed the knowledge of how to make these terrible weapons cannot be eradicated so the threat is with us forever.