The Pigs Will Survive
Ever since I first saw it, I’ve been completely enamored with the drawing below of a very dejected looking family about to enter a DIY shelter that can’t possibly be very useful, which comes from “Protect and Survive,” a 1976 leaflet from the British government on surviving a nuclear strike. The guide advises,
All at home must go to the fall-out room and stay inside the inner refuge, keeping the radio tuned for Government advice and instructions.
Stay in your refuge
The dangers will be so intense that you may all need to stay inside your inner refuge in the fall-out room for at least forty-eight hours. If you need to go to the lavatory, or to replenish food or water supplies, do not stay outside your refuge for a second longer than is necessary. After forty-eight hours the danger from fall-out will lessen -but you could still be risking your life by exposure to it. The longer you spend in your refuge the better. Listen to your radio.
DO NOT GO OUTSIDE until the radio tells you it is safe to do so.
Unfortunately in the time between building this shelter and huddling inside it for a few days in the glow of the bombs on the horizon, pigs have taken over the shelter (in my version anyway)… I first painted this a few years ago but wasn’t very happy with it so I’m doing a new version. I prepped the canvas in a primer mix of gesso, crushed tortilla chips, oats, and stale crackers.
November 5th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
I love how you work with such different mediums!!
November 5th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
sometimes i think i love you. you’re so damn creative!
November 6th, 2007 at 12:06 am
i hope the pigs don’t survive.
November 6th, 2007 at 8:27 am
but only because i’m vegetarian and i know people will torture and kill them.
November 6th, 2007 at 8:54 am
Fun fact: When they were testing nuclear bombs on pacific atolls, they put pigs at various distances from ground zero. Pig flesh is the closest to human flesh in the animal kingdom, so bombed pig flesh shows roughly what happens to people at various distances from the explosion. (Shaved goats, I think, were used to approximate what would happen to human skin.) Incidentally, cannibals also confirm that humans taste somewhat like pork.
So, unless it was intentional, that’s actually really, really appropriate and awesome.
November 6th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
um… all I can think of is the NIN song…
now doesn’t that make you feel better?
the pigs have won tonight
now they can all sleep soundly
and everything is all right
November 7th, 2007 at 1:39 am
it looks like my ceiling (old school “popcorn”)
November 8th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
That mix of gesso, oats and tortilla chips has got to be the least archival paint scheme I’ve ever heard of.
Isn’t “Protect and Survive” one of the primary source materials for the film When the Wind Blows? The minute I saw that shelter, I immediately thought of that film.
November 8th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
dryer lint works pretty well mixed with gesso, too.
December 15th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
I have a friend who is seriously obsessed with British history from the cold war period, and we were recently talking about the protect and survive leaflets, amongst other things related to the government advice given to the general public at the time.
Anyway, he says that the protect and survive leaflets were not designed to protect the general public at all, but rather to falsely reassure them that they have a chance at survival. (Similar advice apparently included covering yourself with white paint to deflect the blast, although I am not sure if that is folklore!) But basically, the general public were urged to stay indoors, so that if they were wiped out by a nuclear blast, there wouldn’t be (many) dead bodies out littering the streets. Obviously, for royalty, the goverment, the rich and priviledged, they would have had access to specially built bomb shelters, but the government couldn’t afford to do this for everybody and so had to be selective.
Well, there’s a bit of saturday afternoon trivia for you anyway!