Britain's Horrifying Public Safety Films

[@ceterfo]

"Never buy a used condom. Even if he said he washed it." I will always remember this

[@c101vp]

You don't know where it's been

[@averagemonke4428]

@@c101vp well i mean it was worn on somones dick i guess, so we kinda know where it was.

[@Fr4ncM]

You better!

[@Meme-2038]

Why would someone even think of doing that?

[@seelz1136]

@Peter T didnt know people were so desperate

[@LeanneModenPoet]

I still remember the "if you hit me at 40mph, there's an 80% chance I'll die" - utterly, utterly terrifying.

[@bide7603]

“Please stop trying to hit me.”

[@harrier331]

Gotcha, so they are advising for a quick death you must go over 50. Understood.

[@jin_cotl]

@@bide7603 lmao

[@02Tony]

Mock the week!

[@sophroniel]

I had to rewatch a bunch of NZ and Australian roadsafety ads for my job a few years back and, thinking back, I was absolutely valid in being terrified of them, those ads were messed up

[@louayghanjati5056]

It's a win win to be honest. Employing film graduates to produce horror safety films to scare the crap of every British so they would never forget the safety instructions.

[@timhinchcliffe5372]

Keeps the ne'er-do-wells off the streets too.

[@honved1]

@@cool_manreal They kept me off train tracks and out of substations, job done.

[@seaotter4439]

In fact, one of the PIFs -- The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water -- was so effective that not only were children more careful when playing in the water; they stopped playing altogether.

[@jhjhjhjhjhjhify]

Great for the graduates too and film as a profession in the UK. Nowadays Filmmaking courses at Universities charge inflated tuition fees and entry level jobs for film/television are either low paying, unpaid in general, and out of reach for a lot of otherwise talented people. I certainly can't imagine the government hiring film students nowadays to make a bunch of public safety ads.

[@catherinewilliams3850]

@@jhjhjhjhjhjhify No the corrupt gits are too busy filling their mates pockets with our money.

[@maximo0987]

"The Helvetica Scenario" A Swiss man in lederhosen crawls out of your screen and force feeds you cheese

[@benetedmunds]

Ha! I assumed it was the danger of "sans seriff" fonts!

[@easytiger6570]

The question is what kind of cheese?

[@countbinfaceglobalpresiden7926]

@@easytiger6570 *Kraft Cheese*

[@arx3516]

@@countbinfaceglobalpresiden7926 the emmenthal or cheddar one?

[@fds7476]

@@arx3516 Cheddar isn't Swiss.

[@WeaselKing1000]

Personally, I'm kind of proud of our horrific PSAs. Always found them much more effective as a deterrent or a warning to pay attention when I was growing up (in the 90s by the way) than anything 'softly-softly' could have achieved. 'Scare the living crap out of children and they will be too scared to get into trouble' worked just fine with me. Hardwire the lesson in.

[@RetroPlus]

Agreed

[@AsDeadAsDillinger]

The problem is, when people exist in 'sterile' environments in which all potential hazards are removed, they loose, or worse, never develop, the habit of looking out for themselves and will eventually become unable to determine what's safe and what's not. Which is probably why, today, so many people freak out at such small and frankly inconsequential things today, and turn into perpetual hysterical victims of their own overactive imaginations. Whereas if they'd actually seen and learned to avoid serious dangers for themselves they would be able to more correctly gauge the level of threat they faced.

[@mattp558]

@@AsDeadAsDillinger Sterile environment? As a child of the seventies I grew up without computers, Xbox or Netflix. The only indoor entertainments we had were board games, Action Man and records so mostly we played out, we played on building sites, bombsites and sewage works but our favourite place was the firing range where we used to search for unbroken clay-pigeons. One day my mum told me that a kid in our street had been sexually assaulted over the firing range and that I was not to go there. For a few days me and my mates hung around the streets but we got bored so eventually we decided to go to the firing range to see if we’d get attacked by a paedophile.

[@catherinewilliams3850]

@@AsDeadAsDillinger We weren't molly coddled back then we were taught commonsense rules to keep us out of danger while enjoying our childhood. Now the health and safety brigade freak out over everything.

[@obnovas1]

@@catherinewilliams3850 yes, because heaven forbid we teach a child to idk NOT to play in the road, fiddle around with guns, eat something if they dont know what is you're right we should just throw our children outside and let them figure it all out on their own if they get killed its on them right they should have known better? Oh wait children are the one group who literally DON'T know any better. While we are at it lets outlaw seatbelts and Bike Helmets Motorcycle and Bicycle

[@fattyMcGee97]

I think the apaches one was actually quite sensible and still rings true to this day. My friend lives next to a farm where a kid fell out of a moving combine harvester and was torn apart by it. One of the people my mum works with was a first responder to it and he said it was the most gruesome thing he’s ever seen. Everyone involved was arrested and after interrogation it was deemed an accident. This was last year. Farms are dangerous places and the machinery commands respect.

[@seraphina985]

I mean to be fair there is a reason why the farming industry still has the second highest rate of workplace fatalities in the UK at 16.4% of all workplace fatalities. The double whammy of both being an inherently hazardous activity and often being far from primary care probably doesn't help.

[@dannygroom3327]

What about the driver, what was he/she doing whilst this kid was playing on a moving combine harvester?(probably watching a movie on his laptop)

[@dannygroom3327]

Oh he was playing in the machine. Must have been if he fell out of it!

[@darnstewart]

@@dannygroom3327 So you know nothing about farming then. The powers that be are dickheads, they'll legislate that children should not be on the machinery while it is in use, then a child gets run over by a machine, so they change the legislation that they should be on the machine, the child falls off so they jump to another ill thought out law. A farmer using a combine will have all his attention at the business end of the combine, to keep it in line with the cut and to see any dangers he is approaching, he will not be watching films. Perhaps we should stop farming you nanny state twat.

[@Roadent1241]

Oooof, yikes. When I was in college (not Uni), 18-ish, one of my classmates told us casually his weekend was somewhat ruined by one of his farmmates falling into a slurry silo. Yeah, they definitely are if ADULTS are dying by them, nevermind stupid children who don't think to look out for things like massive heavy tractors.

[@pyglett]

I was born in 1955, and my parents - especially Dad - taught us kids the dangers of electricity, gas, portable heating stoves, stranger danger, what to do if we ever got lost anywhere and playing on building sites, around railway lines and busy roads. It was what parents taught kids back then but seemed to have stopped in the 1990’s because there was this false belief these dangers had gone away. Unfortunately, kids are still kids. They don’t see a ‘Keep Out’ sign as a deterrent but a challenge. Luckily, many parents today are now teaching their kids essential life skills. So if you’re a teacher, relative or youth worker, tell kids that real life isn’t as per the ads on TV!

[@Bishka100]

Playing on building sites and the railway was a way of life for the kids in my road. If our mums had ever found-out what we got up too, they would have died.

[@amycupcake6832]

"Back in my day we knew how to raise kids" oh come off it, my parents taught me all the exact same stuff in the 90s, and they were hardly paragons of parenthood, failed quite miserably if anything

[@samaraisnt]

What do you do if you get lost anywhere? 🥺

[@Reppo80085]

Positive Ok,Boomer moment

[@amycupcake6832]

@@samaraisnt find main road, look for signpost, talk to someone, if you're under 18 or otherwise dependent, find a person in a position of authority, blah blah blah

[@Fr4ncM]

As an Ecuadorian I would like to thank the British taxpayer for funding the only horror films I have ever found actually scary. But really, I love them! "Protect and Survive" didn't let me sleep for almost an entire night and had me bummed out for a while! 10/10

[@generaladvance5812]

You're welcome my friend. Not a bad use of my taxes honestly.

[@johnseppethe2nd2]

@@generaladvance5812 Hope the latest budget includes a several billion pound fund for Horror movie PSA's. It would be invaluable for the cultural sector

[@generaladvance5812]

@@johnseppethe2nd2 Given how many children drowned this year in both extreme heat & cold temperatures I'm genuinely hoping there will be some suitably traumatising adverts on water way safety this coming year.

[@notgadot]

@@generaladvance5812 pray for britaiN

[@jonedwards7019]

I'm curious how they ended up showing "Protect and Survive" in Ecuador? 😃

[@katherineplenty2611]

I've just finished year 13, but when I was in year 11, they were doing work on rail in the local area so some people came in to talk about rail safety. They showed us this video of a guy holding his dead friend after he died from eletrocution. There were also more disturbing videos, but I remember that one vividly. One way to scare us to stay away from rail tracks lol

[@blingproductions4560]

I saw that aswell

[@orangeman3220]

Fear is effective

[@nickryan3417]

I learned not to fall out of trees when playing in the woods. I learned this because a friend did and broke his arm. Learning involves learning from others as well as personally - in some way these videos were the same thing.

[@AvrahamYairStern]

They showed us that one last year too

[@josephrohrbach1588]

When I was in year 12, we had a dashcam video of a real road accident fatality to remind us not to use phones whilst driving. We were given no warning that the video was real, let alone that the person died. When blood splattered over the windscreen in the video there was a lot of awkward laughter because none of us knew how to react.

[@Skippy19812]

I was subjected to this particular brand of psychological abuse back in junior school. We all knew that when the big CRT TV came trundling down the corridor we were either going to be watching The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, or we were about to be scarred for life. Either way we got out of lessons for the rest of the day, so it was all gravy as far as we were concerned.

[@goldeneagle99]

Lmao

[@oddities-whatnot]

Haha that is so true, they would have us all sat on the floor in the main hall while they wheeled the big telly out, no advance warning of what we were going to watch. Happy days.

[@goldeneagle99]

@@oddities-whatnot yea back in the 80's and early to mid 90's ! Great times! Lol

[@ShamanKyrick]

Full on true!!!

[@matushka__]

3:30 My ideal afternoon, is listening to grandad talk about killing 3 germans at the Somme? Why do so many people think those stories are so boring? They're actually super interesting.

[@simoncejka9121]

If you would heard it every time grandad comes for lunch (you would know it word for word). It had big inpact on his life (so much so he remebers everything from that day and not every time he tells the story) and, he thinks he don't know other interesting thing he could say to you.

[@sora64444]

they are interesting but only the first 50 times

[@hesterclapp9717]

Because you've heard them to death

[@skarpevindkast]

i would listen honestly

[@paulmaryon9088]

Not when you're 10

[@Mat-Ellis]

You missed some of the scariest one. I recall one of a boy hiding under a car who then gets squished and you see this mashed up fake body. And then there’’s poor George who has a heart attack after being given too much food and beer. I always felt so sorry for poor old George.

[@daffers2345]

That reminds me of "Joe's Heart," a film where someone narrates the heart while Joe goes about his unhealthy way of life, such as smoking and eating too many fatty foods. Eventually Joe has a heart attack and the heart voice says something like "I'm sorry, Joe. It's the only way I can get through to you." Looking back on it, it was pretty depressing. Apparently there was also (I think) "Joe's Back" and "Joe's Lungs."

[@catherinebirch2399]

I can.remember a really good public information film which shows a little boy being persuaded to overeat. His mother is saying " one more spoonful for the king" . It shows him growing up and teaching middle age, lying in a hospital bed after a heart attack.

[@grand-dadmiral]

I remember once at my old primary school, they sat us down in an assembly of all students, and made us watch one of COI's horror flicks about the dangers of electricity. Needless to say, I never touch a light switch with wet hands.

[@balthiersgirl2658]

So it did it's job

[@couldntthinkofayoutubename6498]

Im from ireland, britains next door neighbour, and i remember our primary school showing us Apaches. I had completely forgotten about it till now. Thank u for bringing back my trauma

[@groundon462]

When I was in primary school they still did videos but they left the endings for the children ambiguous. They did however show images of various injuries caused by fireworks, car accidents and train safety.

[@kasyon3150]

The firework ones were the worst. We used to live in highrise flats with the chute bins. There was this firework PSA's where kids leave fireworks in the chute bins, then another kid comes along and opens the chute bin to have the firework explode on his face. I still very clearly remember the kid having a hole blown through his cheek. It became a trauma for me almost. Since my mum would always force me to take the bins out, even years later I still hated chute bins. And to this day I have a fear of fireworks, I haven't lit one ever.

[@wdwuccnxcnh7022]

How is this channel so small? The quality of your content easily beats other KZbinrs 100x your size. Keep it up bro? 👍🏿

[@theconductoresplin8092]

These are wonderful videos You just got to be patient until the algorithm deems you Worthy

[@takashi.mizuiro]

ikr

[@hollanderson]

@@theconductoresplin8092 My patience runs dry. This better happen soon.

[@boarbot7829]

@@hollanderson seems to be happening…

[@swiftrebooted7704]

@@boarbot7829 👀

[@vb2050]

fuckin hell Older generations are quick to tell us "tv makes you violent" "Umm grandma, your tv WAS violent."

[@Reppo80085]

Kek XD

[@edgarloike]

Thats how she knows.

[@disunityholychaos7523]

Lol Xd question is depends who owned those tv Broadcasting & Gov't Push.. in US or so have the lingering Red Scare theme or Nuke Strike/Be prepared in 1950s since the Cuban missile crisis or the whole cold war of soviet spies but were lax on Advertising on "smoking is good for your health!" or nonexistent products we now know as quack or harmful/obsolete, Gendered toys & some stereotypical foreign people or be the House wife keeping on the Jones family. but what is violent? getting TV Ads of Propaganda of Joining your nearest recruitment to the next Korean & later Vietnam war. yet on South East asia on where im from i barely seen this type of history unless due to dictator censorship here & there, home sensitivity and the TV broadcasting experience was still a beginning & people's households have few access of luxury to buy a TV could factor such less fear but possibly on our Neutrality/Deals with the US hope our country dint become the next vietnam at the time.. now my questions on what happened on the 1950s europe is prob this.. all i heard UK was having The IRA, deployments on West Germany to the warsaw pact, losing each colony/deals to have independence, debt & rebuilding from the War, The royal family to Diana's death and the worldwide hits of Bands like Beatles & Queen being Popular & the New rebellious fashions which was the personality of the coming decades are interesting to learn but TV history? nope new things to see and uncover i guess!

[@RandomPerson-hd6wr]

lol my father is a boomer but he doesn't say this stupid shit

[@Drobium77]

was it heck as like!, have you seen the stuff your generation has access to? the violence of the millennials and gen Z as kids is disgusting

[@BLGStudios]

Ahh yes, make horror films too educate people

[@f0rth3l0v30fchr15t]

Hey, I haven't had a face full of alien wing wong since seeing the PSA called Alien. It used to happen 2 or 3 times a week.

[@512TheWolf512]

they work. we need more of them.

[@larmondoflairallen4705]

"too educate..." Oh god, the irony.

[@chrischibnall593]

I remember the controversy around "The Finishing Line": the popular current affairs programme "Nationwide" showed it to a group of school-children in a BBC studio. Afterwards, one little boy was led away feeling sick, and I remember a teacher who was an absolute caricature of a 70s school-teacher, with long hair and a brown corduroy jacket with patches on the sleeves calling it "a Fascist film"...

[@aureliamaxiumus3918]

I wrote my bachelor thesis about shock advertisment and used the Bernados and Think! ads as examples. Wish I knew there were more of trhem. So thank you for bringing these masterworks to my attention!

[@bratwurstred]

Is your thesis available to read anywhere? Sounds super interesting!😄

[@aureliamaxiumus3918]

@@bratwurstred Sadly no, but I can send it to you. Thought it is written in German

[@benetedmunds]

The darned things worked. I'm 54 - was 10 in 1977. We were shown one or several (I can't remember) films about railways (including the Finishing Line) - although I think we also saw something involving what happens when children touch the [third] electric rail. Even now, I've hesitated about crossing tram tracks in several of the European cities I've lived in and visited, and in Austria, I regularlyhad alight from trains at rural and *walk* across tracks to reach the nearest platform.Sweaty palms and a stiff upper lip were all that got me through it - because of the "programming" I'd had in the 70s and 80s. (And don't get me started on the Russian Roulette that was S.E.X. in the mid to late 80s in the UK...)

[@bethyngalw]

same. I remember needing to cross the tram lines in Blackpool, and just freezing in fear, because I knew you should never cross train tracks. Those films scared me silly, I think my mum had to more or less drag me across. It didn't help that there was a tram coming, and even though it was plenty far away, and travelling at crawling-pace due to approaching the station in an overcrowded area, I was still entirely convinced it would put on speed and smash into us like the trains in the film. Wasn't no way I was going to cross that line. Nuh huh.

[@bruhistantv9806]

@@bethyngalw heh, you'd dislike serbian trains then. They're powered by overhead wire that used to be kinda dodgy. Random people just standing on the platform or entering the train then bam 25000 volts to the head

[@FlyGuy2000]

When I was young I was told to never cross a train track because you can get your foot stuck and end up being crushed. To this day I am wary of crossing train tracks on foot.

[@crazyleyland5106]

The other well known railway PIF is Robbie. Robbie, as well as being brain damaged, loses his feet. In the south of England version, where electric trains are powered by a third rail, he gets catastrophic injuries from treading on the live rail. Elsewhere, he got his feet hit by the train.

[@midnightmosesuk]

I'm still haunted by the screams of the little girl who accidentally drank poison in Apaches. Absolutely chilling.

[@sylus1010]

I mean they did succeed in their goal of scary the living crap out of some people as to stay far away from crime.

[@davidbeadle3270]

If you remember "The Snowman" by Raymond Briggs, (very sweet, and on every Christmas), he also did a cartoon book called "When the Wind Blows". This follows an old couple applying the government's post nuclear attack advice in "Protect and Survive". Worth digging out a copy and reading it. Was also made into a film.

[@arenski816]

Oh god I watched that when I was like 10 and it scared me to death pls 😭 I could barely watch the snowman after that bc it reminded me of it lmao

[@ayounglivelysoulinanoldtir3512]

the film never went nearly as far, in terms of sheer ,graphic horror as the book did. i only read the book, once, while browsing around a bookstore. at the beginning of the book, the charicters are a cute, but rather naeve, middle aged couple. by the end of the book, they are so far gone with radiation sickness, that they look like rotting zombies. gross!

[@JohnDoe-ne4kg]

Listen to Iron Maiden - When The Wild Wind Blows. The story set to great music.

[@Videogamer-555]

Ever seen Barefoot Gen? It's an anime about the actual abomb dropped on Hiroshima. It's written by someone who actually survived it.

[@overlordofthepies]

Just old enough to have seen some of the ones about trains, roads, strangers, and farm dangers. Considering how hands-off my parenting was, they probably did keep me from drowning in an open cesspit that was on our property. Also the aesthetic and sound design of these videos is amazing.

[@TheHorrorDevotee]

The one that freaked me out was a more modern one where there's this family hiking through the woods and through a little village with their bikes, all laughing, joking, having a good time. Then they come to this wooden fence and one of the kids begins taking his bike over and half way across, the screen cuts to black with a loud train noise. I think it was one of those 'stop, look and listen' PSAs. The abruptness of it just traumatised me when I was 10.

[@karicewillis]

I saw a train PSA where a woman with a bike sees one train pass, so she starts crossing the train tracks, and ANOTHER train coming from the OTHER side runs her over! 😱😳 The PSA says something like,"Trains can come in opposite directions. Wait for BOTH trains to pass before crossing train tracks." 😱😳

[@inventor4279]

"and BAM, murdered children" sounds like a friday to me!

[@peterpumpkineater68plus1]

Ok, you live in a PSA.

[@Yamezzzz]

You're focussing on the England ones which are absolutely nothing compared to what we have on TV in Northern Ireland. The rest of the UK is always appalled by the adverts we have on ITV and Channel 4. Very very graphic drink driving PSAs, some of which would be rated 18 if it was in a film. And they play AS SOON AS the watershed is reached (9pm), so kids see it. It's a part of growing up in Northern Ireland that 96% of British people (i.e non Northern Irish people) would never see or know about. It's been going on for decades.

[@Sevrgpro]

Dude that fucking car ad with the school And don’t even get me started on the one where they crash into a lake

[@samaraisnt]

I want to see but I'm scared.

[@Mouldypeanut]

When we reached driving age in sixth form the school decided have a little PSA on car safety… They played the PSA which had a guy turn a corner too fast, roll through the nearest field and mow down a gaggle of primary school kids. It really do be like that.

[@cosmiceyness]

uo ireland fucked up

[@Yamezzzz]

@@cosmiceyness Northern Ireland mate, they wouldnt and don't show them on TV in Ireland. It's a UK thing

[@Krilium]

I remember being shown a road safety film in year 4 of primary school, we were what... 8-9 year old. It was horrifying, and the crappy sound design made it even more sombre. There as always this droning low pitched bass rumble in these videos, same with some of the educational science videos for some reason. This was 2009, might have actually been a 'Think!' road safety film, either way, still horrifying. 5:53 this is partly what I mean, was that sound necessary? You can tell the Moog synthesizers were popular lol

[@biblemaniswatchingyoumastu1920]

Was it animated?

[@borisjohnson7553]

And to be honest I would rather stick with Yorkshire tea adverts

[@robertwilloughby8050]

"Yorkshire Tea can scald! See this gruesomely scarred cheek for proof! Be careful with Yorkshire Tea! You will have an accident! 100% chance of being scarred by Yorkshire Tea! Ha ha ha ha ha!"

[@Hrafnskald]

Thanks for shedding light on this. When I started working in hotels in the US, we had to watch a hilariously bad safety film in this style, where housekeepers forgetting to store chemicals led to the hotel burning down and the poor housekeeper being trapped for all eternity in a broom closet with a man with an absurdly strong British accent who rambled on about "baaahhhthroooom Cleeeenuh". Now I finally understand where this comes from :)

[@connorconnor1631]

2:20 i love the kid that goes "aye look thers sumone in the wotar"

[@cerealenjoyer3000]

binging all your old videos because you deserve it and i cant believe that you are still a small youtuber with content quality this high

[@AtheistOrphan]

I can’t believe the number of people thinking that the ‘Used condom’ One is real and not a spoof, even though this is stated in the video.

[@Neddyfram]

To be fair it is absolutely convincing

[@dannygroom3327]

It certainly stopped me from buying used condoms, no now I splash out and treat the girls with new ones. They all think I'm loaded so now I think of it as money well spent with the action I get now!

[@dannygroom3327]

@Allergy . So is mental health care. You should try it,it could help?

[@erikthenorviking8251]

​@@dannygroom3327I'm a cheapskate. An empty crisp packet, especially ridged, does the job. Neat!

[@Dragosteaa]

This was fascinating, thank you! Reminds me of the War Amps Planet Danger ad breaks .. the robot dodging everything sharp and whirring and the iconic “I can put my arm back on, you can’t” always stuck with me

[@CertifiedNEETClassic]

"Keith, aged 15 years, was killed in an explosion on a farm." Don't screw around when the dynamite is ready for harvest.

[@brianc4056]

8:40 So should I not be using the Helvetica Font?

[@Bacony_Cakes]

Unless it's a Helvetica scenario.

[@Chewbaccalypse]

As an American this is the absolute opposite of what I would expect. Our "Don't Get Into A Car With A Smelly Molester" PSA (Public Service Announcement) was a cartoon crime-fighting dog named McGruff who urged viewers to "Take a bite out of crime". I'm guessing if the same ad was made in the UK it would be "Don't Get Into A Car w/ Strangers. Because you'll be sold into international sex slavery ; be destitute on the streets of Sao Paulo by 17 and your head will be cut off by a 'client' and kept on display in his collection'

[@rogerstestingshit9865]

Is this where Canada got their creepy psa films?

[@froogsleegs]

I bought a copy of the Protect and Survive manual a few years ago, it's definitely an interesting book. Also there exists a terrifying programme called "Threads", a made-for-TV film that aired only once in 1984. It was based in Sheffield and depicted the UK coming under nuclear attack, a nearby air base taking a direct hit and the town being utterly destroyed by the blast. The film was partly intended to show how the techniques in Protect and Survive could be used in a real-time situation. Even for a 21st Century viewer it is hard to watch, no wonder they only aired it once- it's horrifying and gruesome, absolutely bone-chilling.

[@wannabuyabridge]

A mate's girlfriend's dad (tenuous I know) worked on the Threads film. One of his jobs was creating the right sort of vomit, depending on the circumstances.

[@hebneh]

"Threads" was also shown in the US, and I very well remember shots of this nuclear survival film appearing on TV screens that the characters were watching; one time in a store's display window where the televisions all had price tags on them. I was sure that this must be a real government-made movie, and not something made for this program, but it wasn't till decades later that I encountered it here on KZbin.

[@Volunteer-per-order_OSullivan]

I remember watching these in junior school, in the 00s. Oh and once in a French lesson in 2015 because posters telling people not to swim in old quarries were being put up and out teacher remembered the PIFs.

[@texluh]

Absolutely brilliant and brilliantly made. Thank you. If the government decided that properly educating people was not the preferred option, and simply scaring people was better, then if that went away, it surely came back with a vengeance from 2020!

[@kate_cooper]

I was a kid in the 80s. We didn’t see “The Finishing Line” in my school but we did see the replacement “Robbie” which you showed a few seconds of. That one was pretty terrifying. It was part of an entire presentation on railway line safety with a loud-voiced host who told scary stories, showed scary pictures and kept suddenly loudly hitting the board with the pictures on as a jump scare.

[@Edgeworthscravat]

Protect and survive terrifies me. I was born at the tail end of the cold War, and I asked my mum how she coped with this hanging over her head while pregnant. She told me more than once I was almost born early.

[@nevango0690]

It is the most unsettling

[@swagmundfreud666]

The scores for these films are a sampling gold mine. They're incredibly well made.

[@wannabuyabridge]

Years ago I did a remix of 'Jimmy!' the unfortunate frisbee retriever. Great fun.

[@AN474-e1o]

As an American, every single one of the PSAs I ever saw were about telling kids not to try drugs.

[@TenaciousSLG]

yes! Oh, and about not starting forest fires. Odd priorities 🤣

[@pdbsstudios7137]

"don't leave your children alone..." 2 seconds after the entire bed and the children are burned out and the room is burning

[@DevKerrigan]

It took 'til 7:30 before the Look Around You music caught my ear. You've really recontextualized the whole series for me.

[@scopex2749]

We were shown 'Protect & Survive' in the forces as part of our basic training!! I remember as a chikd a film about a little boy trying to get his ball back from a transformer compound, as we had one across the road it was very vivid. The litte boy ended up falling into high voltage wires and became a 'crispy thing' very graphic and scary. Years later i had to worked in ultra high voltage industry with reactors and that film STILL haunted me!

[@Т1000-м1и]

"The British Advisory Department presents: B.A.D. Advice" Somebody show this to 4chan

[@ryanfrancis827]

It’s called pragmatism; if you make an advertisement/public information broadcast weird or brutal enough, more people will watch it, thus spreading the information to a larger audience. It’s pretty smart really.

[@Tuberuser187]

These films didn't even work, we got showed some of these and some others not presented here but two kids I loosely knew of when I was a child died in accidents like this. One happened when the council were digging out large pits when turning a crossroads into a traffic island with underpasses beneath, they were waiting for spring and for a water main to be removed and it filled with water. The local kids would run across the pipe, one day a poor boy fell and couldn't get out of the freezing cold water and drowned. Some years later an A road was being bypassed into a large dual carriageway, a huge building site and a natural magnet for the children and when they were climbing around an unsupported trench caved in and crushed a child.

[@LouiseBrooksBob]

We need this sort of information more than ever - the horror depicted in Central Office of Information films was actually real for some of those who fell foul of whatever dangers the films were warning against, and attempting to prevent from happening. I had forgotten about that railway safety film which looks to have been the first Battle Royale, (or Hunger Games), but now I recall having seen it. As you can see I grew up on this stuff. A shame to see the COI was disbanded, though I had no idea this happened so recently.

[@Dev1nci]

In South Africa we don’t have safety ads like these. Our kids are either taught by their parents or die doing irresponsible things… suddenly the creepy ads seem like a much better idea 😕

[@dumbbell1231]

I remember when I was little (late 90's), PSA about AIDS were everywhere in Malaysia. One of them depicted a man parted with his wife and children at the airport, then it cut to a woman knocking on his hotel door, and back to him being greeted by his wife and children at the airport again. I had no idea what that was about and it was so subtle that it faded from the collective mind of Malaysians. That's how ineffective our PSA was. Today, the government stopped making PSA altogether, and a whole new generation without the concept of safety was born.

[@Videogamer-555]

Then there's anti-drug psas, and more recently anti-bullying psas.

[@eduardlouvage2223]

Stopped making Public Safety Films and before you know it, kids were eating Tide Pods.

[@rosemaryrassmussen1511]

the one that has stayed with me the most is a kid who got electrocuted on the train tracks. you see his friends crying out in horror and calling the ambulance. then it cuts to a policeman peeling off his charred flesh from the train track and his mother screaming. then videos of irl people getting hit by trains and electrucoted and railway workers telling you about all the dead kids they have had to deal with and their parents. i was eleven and it still scares the shit out of me so it worked ig. we also had a school trip to a warehouse (it was called the risk factory) where it was interactive risks, with models of dead charred bodies, and videos of people getting hit by trains, and how to deal w unconcious people and all that. terrifying.

[@CuriousCrow-mp4cx]

It's a shame you didn't look further at the janky animation ones, because I really remember Timmy the Cat meowing and him being translated by a child with creepy eyes warning you about something or the other.

[@FlawedFabrications]

You guys should check out Threads, a 1984 British documentary/drama movie about what would happen if a city in northern England got nuked. It was made to educate people on the dangers of nuclear war and is one of the most terrifying things you'll ever see. Fun fact, I grew up in and have lived in all the locations featured in the movie and it's terrifying and trippy watching your home town be portrayed as utterly destroyed by nuclear fire while literally being there in real life.

[@Videogamer-555]

Watch the anime Barefoot Gen, about the abomb on Hiroshima Japan, written by a guy who actually survived the attack. Most horrendous thing I've ever seen.

[@aeropunk4127]

The best one I saw was in about 1973/74 when I was 5 or 6. I grew up in a town in Wiltshire next to the Salisbury Plain Training Area. One day we all got called into the school hall and were shown a film by some soldiers about not going up onto the Army Ranges to play. There were various children getting blown up in numerous gory ways as they played with unexploded ordinance they had found. We definitely got the message from that one.

[@AvrahamYairStern]

I remember being shown one of these in primary school about some kids playing on a construction site, they all died and I remember thinking at the time it was a bit brutal to show kids. I'm not from the 70s or anything, this was the early-mid 2010s.

[@HolyFlare484]

COI turning into a pub is the most British thing i've heard

[@punlovincriminal5564]

7:14 The central office of information is now a pub says the caption on the bottom left. I would most certainly hope it is called the Central Office of Intoxication.

[@KoasterKing205]

Even some of the Public Safety Films of today can be quite sinister. You'll also notice in these 70's PSFs that they style it out like a Horror film with a posh guys voice in the background like some 50's monster film.

[@hesterclapp9717]

It's so British that it was shut down to budget cuts

[@lagritsalammas]

I only just recently discovered your channel but I'm really hooked. Your videos are super interesting and very unique!

[@glenjones6980]

Living by a river and a railway line as a child in the 60's and 70's and being here to tell the tale is to a great extent down to these COI films.

[@DanA-fk6tl]

Wow. This is real nostalgia! I remember the boy drowning in the slurry pit. I think of it every time I see a slurry tank. ..No kidding, I warned my daughter about 6 weeks ago about never walking on the crust of a tank of cow shit even though they don't have the open tanks anymore. I also remember the kids in the train tunnel. If it was banned, it must have been after they played it at my primary school. They may be shocking, but they stay with you. And you have to remember, childhood in the 70s was very different from today. These films certainly did save lives. In the 70s, parents used to let their kids go out to play on their own. The attitude was "when they're hungry, they'll come home and if they don't come home, they've gone to someone else's for tea". So, we did play on building sites, and railways and derelict buildings. It was fun and I only knew 2 kids who were killed. They were tunnelling in giant sand heaps...the tunnels collapsed. We were all told not to do that again. To this day I have never gone tunnelling in sand. And I never leave glass bottles on the beach, fly a kite near high tension cables, or throw frisbees into electricity substations. But the most shocking of all was the nuclear war films in the 80s..."Threads" and the American one that they all watched on "the Americans". They were truly horrifying because we all knew that nuclear annihilation was a real possibility. One day in 1983, I think, we were in a history class and the teacher was droning on about something or other when a siren went off at a nearby building site. We'd never heard it before and for a moment we all stopped cold....Everybody...kids and teacher had exactly the same thought flash across their minds..."Oh shit...it's happened" Then we realised where it was coming from...People were white as sheets and shaking...but the interesting thing is NOBODY ever spoke of it to anyone. Too scary! Too real! Yeah...nostalgia.

[@NJPurling]

I thought the water safety films with the hooded figure of Death himself to be particularly scary. The 'Protect & Survive' films were actually meant to be serious information in the event that the Cold War heated up. They are actually quite laughable. I thought that the best idea would have been to venture as close to where it was understood Ground Zero might be to remove the possibility of any suffering whatsoever.

[@daffers2345]

I think Donald Pleasance did the _Dark & Lonely Water_ ones.

[@cgj28ok]

As a Canadian, I remember some pretty crazy CBC shorts from the 70's and 80's, but these look way worse. I love them! LoL

[@HDTomo]

I remember watching a TV show about some in the 70s with my dad. And one of them was about a child at night who went into the basements drank some chemicals in a jar and screamed in pain waking the whole house up. I cant find the video at all however so I dont know anymore

[@Gilberto90]

That's from Apaches.

[@Benjiesbeenbetter.]

The COI was cut back in the 1980s and 90s. The government gave the reason "People can be trusted to act as grown ups and don't need these warnings". In the year when there were, for the first time, no warnings about firework safety in the run up to bonfire night the number of injuries from fireworks trebled. Over the years, I've lost count of the number of stupid accudents I've read about and thought "There used to be a publuc safety warning film about that."

[@erikthenorviking8251]

I suspect the gov felt that country was overpopulated, and that everybody has a sell-by date. Even little kids. I believe the institute for research into the common cold was also closed down for similar reasons, ie that colds rarely kill, and duvet days don't really harm the economy much. Covid years, however..

[@Ben111000111]

5:20 Bells chiming as the chisel is struck - was this safety film referenced in the montage at the of Royal Space Force: Wings of Honneamise?

[@skoomaaddict256]

I had such a weird obsession with protect and survive as a kid. I first seen it in a cinema in the old transport museum in Glasgow and just got infatuated with it?? It was kinda masochistic of me considering my autism used to throw me into full meltdowns over any type of alarm, especially air raid sirens

[@RetroJack]

I remember seeing the one of the kid climbing a power station insulator in school. It must've worked, as I've never felt a desire to do that to this day!

[@YuuChoobHandle]

I don't remember any of these other than the "Don't die of ignorance". But the one that has stuck in my mind is about the dangers of mixing radial and cross-ply tyres. I've no idea what either of these are, but I'm sure as shit not going to mix those buggers and die horribly, thanks.

[@rtdlaboratories]

"Never buy a used condom" Uhm.. if you're the kind of person who would even consider that, getting an STD or whatever is like the least of your issues. But I guess that was a big enough issue for Britain to have an entire association dedicated to unused condoms. Smh...

[@CompaSystem]

That was one of the parodies.

[@darganx]

WHOOOSH

[@Kitty-mb4hy]

@@CompaSystem oh thanks for telling, the thing is just so ridiculous I can't...

[@69waveydavey]

I watched the original "Finishing line" at school, all gathered in assembly to "Watch a film". Old school, an actual film, curtains drawn, projector buzzing. The irony was it didn't stop me playing on the railway, my local one had been closed since 1972.

[@axelprino]

And I thought that the driving safety ads that we had in my country during the 90's were a bit much because they implied horrific death scenes, meanwhile the British were straight up doing horror films.

[@goodwood-rc4nx]

part of the audio for frankie goes to hollywood song "Two Tribes" came from the Protect and Survive documatary/public infomation film voiced by the great Patrick Allen

[@BritMonkey]

good music taste

[@leftysheppey]

I remember watching the video at 6:35. Bare in mind, I was born in 1996. I was shown it in school in maybe 2002-2004, something around that age

[@Videogamer-555]

Have you seen the Canadian PSAs? Some of those are also pretty messed up.

[@zuluhyena305]

"DON'T BOIL A KETTLE ON A BOAT!"

[@jamesheath4845]

thanks for including the little clip from The Quiz Broadcast, a nice unexpected chuckle

[@widget3672]

Maybe uts because I grew up with them but I quite like the notion that the little Isle of Britain, so often seen as being very proper and controlled, has this long history of public information horror films. Personally I think the surreal and shocking content is what makes them so interesting, and the notion that it's also genuinely useful information (most of the time) makes it better than normal horror, like the moral of the story is actually relevant to something that could happen to you and not ghosts or some other supernatural stuff. I wouldn't be disappointed to see more of these, but I also found Don't Hug Me I'm Scared terrifically entertaining so perhaps these educational films have just instilled a strong sense of dark humour.

[@pete1942]

I remember a poster from the 80s in a workshop, ether at school, or at my Air Cadet squadron, can’t remember which. It was highlighting the danger of wearing jewellery around machine tools. It was a picture of a finger with a ring on it and tendons trailing from the ragged end. I’ve never worn a ring since seeing it.

[@sentientweetabix2228]

I believe the film “Threads” was meant to be an educational film. It is by far the scariest and most disturbing (unintentional) horror film ever as it follows the story of Sheffield after being nuked and explains a timeline of the effects of nukes.

[@darganx]

What added to it at the time was the USSR was looking very unstable, Brezhnev was dead and a couple o his successors died in quick order.. anyone could have got in to 'push the button'. And Reagan was trigger happy himself with talk of Star Wars and all that.. meanwhile we were all piggies in the middle shitting bricks about what will happen next. Ahh those halcyon days..

[@sentientweetabix2228]

@@darganx have you seen Threads? It’s absolutely horrific. Every world leader should watch it when they come into power just to show them the power they have and the suffering it can cause

[@stevetaylor8698]

Lefty drivel. @@sentientweetabix2228

[@erikthenorviking8251]

The Finishing Line... Fond memories of school sports day. The PE master shouting "If the trains don't get you, I bloody will!"

[@shayZero]

In all fairness, after being shown The Finishing Line in year 7, I was scared so badly I never went near a traintrack. Says so much about this country that they used/use fear to control instead of the cost to make them completely inaccessible.

[@hallamhal]

2:24 omg that's Gabriel Woolf! He voiced Sutekh in 70s Doctor Who

[@Peacefrogs3854]

can't even share condoms with the bois without being judged. literally 1984

[@paulorocky]

I spend my early childhood in 1980s and early 90s UK before my family moved to Melbourne, Australia. There, I would be subjected to gory ads from the Transport Accident Commission warning of the various causes of road trauma. No wonder I’m such a messed up safety freak.

[@LGTheOneFreeMan]

Having watched both, 1983's "The Day After" is downright comfy viewing compared to "Threads" (1984).

[@alexkubrat3868]

Kid: * dies * Britain: I can milk you!

[@alexandergangaware429]

So, 70's Britain used the "German Fairy Tale" doctrine of pedagogy. I now understand Brexit implicitly

[@benbooth2783]

How arrogant, you really think you can sum up the complexities of Brexit in one little sentence that actually makes no sense? The reason I voted to leave was because of what the EU did to Greece (undemocratically putting a technocrat in charge to force Greece to pay debts incurred due to the single currency destroying their economy), the fact that the decision makers are unaccountable, the fact that we were making a net loss, and the increasingly antagonistic attitude of the EU's leaders. Just look at the way they tried to punish us for exorcising our democratic right. Basically the EU is neo-liberalist, authoritative, and undemocratic. Pedagogy: "the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept". So learning was the cause of Brexit, wtf are you talking about?

[@dannygroom3327]

@@benbooth2783 . The reason you voted to leave is because you believed, along with most of the other Brexit voters, the lies being banded about by the right wing press and most Tory MPs. What do we have now, a shortage of unskilled workers, Euro wide laws and regulations that we need to follow but can't vote on, and the real possibility of it kicking off in Northern Ireland again. What are the pros again? Oh yeah Greece took on the Euro voluntarily so surely they played a major role in their economic crisis?

[@benbooth2783]

@@dannygroom3327 I gave actual reasons that I had researched, you just said I was wrong with no evidence. You haven't convinced me.

[@dannygroom3327]

@@benbooth2783 . Ok you got me there Greece was forced into the Euro, there is no tension over the new Irish border, and no eastern Europeans have gone back to their country of origin. Yeah you got me there. I know when I've been busted. My bad.

[@maxwild1212]

@@benbooth2783 Answer his question, what are the pros?

[@eatingonlyapples21]

The woman in the thumbnail and briefly at 10:27 is from one of my absolute favourite 70s PIFs - "polish a floor and set a rug on it, and you might as well set a mantrap." So dramatic and unnecessary

[@james3181]

This video reminded me of the films: The War Game and Threads. An interesting look at the cold war in Britain. They are pretty retro, but a good watch nonetheless.

[@gambucino1260]

8:07 does anyone know how to spell this artist last name? I teied googling for his posters but nonsense comes up because i think im misspelling his name. Pla help, the posters look dope af

[@schluebenschlaucher1130]

This feels Like local 58

[@БананЦент]

Frankly speaking, I cannot understand why is it criticised. It is the most effective way to prevent people from doing dangerous things.