The warning came as part of a BBC Panorama special, dubbed “If The Bomb Drops” broadcast on March 10, 1980, featuring a young Jeremy Paxman. It came at a time of heightened tensions in the Cold War as the Nuclear Arms Race was heating up and, on Christmas Day in 1979, Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan as part of the Afghan War, in which the US and the United Kingdom backed the opposition. This escalation in conflict between the East and West during a proxy war, sparked fears a full-scale World War 3 situation was imminent and the British Government began planning on how it would mitigate the effects of a nuclear attack, with the release of information broadcasts such as Protect and Survive.