Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
"For the next ten days, both couples will have to cope with isolation and cold, with boredom and fatigue, and with very primitive sanitation. How will they manage underground?"
As part of the Q.E.D. documentary, A Guide to Armageddon, two London couples each volunteered to carry out a ten-day 'consumer test' - underground in a nuclear shelter.
Joy and Erik sealed themselves in an architect-designed £10,000 steel bunker, buried six feet underground. Ken and Liz followed Home Office recommendations and dug their own 36-inch-wide emergency trench in their back garden. They, too, planned to stay down for ten days.
This programme is a record of how the two couples coped underground during last winter's severe cold spell, with only a fixed camera to observe them, completely out of touch with the outside world.
Clip taken from The Underground Test, originally broadcast on BBC Two, 28 May, 1982.
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"For the next ten days, both couples will have to cope with isolation and cold, with boredom and fatigue, and with very primitive sanitation. How will they manage underground?"
As part of the Q.E.D. documentary, A Guide to Armageddon, two London couples each volunteered to carry out a ten-day 'consumer test' - underground in a nuclear shelter.
Joy and Erik sealed themselves in an architect-designed £10,000 steel bunker, buried six feet underground. Ken and Liz followed Home Office recommendations and dug their own 36-inch-wide emergency trench in their back garden. They, too, planned to stay down for ten days.
This programme is a record of how the two couples coped underground during last winter's severe cold spell, with only a fixed camera to observe them, completely out of touch with the outside world.
Clip taken from The Underground Test, originally broadcast on BBC Two, 28 May, 1982.
You have now entered the BBC Archive, a time machine that will transport you back to the golden age of TV to educate, entertain and enlighten you with classic clips from the BBC vaults.
Make sure you subscribe so that you never miss a single stop on our amazing journey through the BBC Archive - youtube.com/c/BBCArchive?sub_confirmation=1
You can also dive into plenty more BBC Archive on our website - bbc.co.uk/archive
