Post-apocalypse bread plan reveals ignorance of nuclear bomb impact

Planners for the aftermath of a nuclear strike in Belfast during the Cold War had a disturbingly naive attitude to its apocalyptic impact, records have revealed.

Emergency bread centres were envisaged and an “inner zone” of six miles from the site of a notional blast at a now-demolished railway station close to the city’s docks was to be established, according to a 1953 file released by the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI).