While out, they notice the smell of cooking meat, unaware that it comes from the burning corpses of their neighbours. Thus, they go outside, to find that their garden and likely the whole area, has essentially been reduced to a wasteland with dead trees and grass in their garden, and that there is no sounds such as the trains that would usually be running, Hilda also thinks that the bomb has caused nice weather, as the day is bright, hot and near-cloudless (different from the nuclear winter seen in the film).

On the third day, misreading advice given in government leaflets, they come to believe that they must stay in the fallout shelter for just two days rather than two weeks. They find the house to be in shambles, with both the water and the electricity cut off. Undaunted, they try to continue life as normal, as if it was the Second World War again. They spend all the first day within the fallout shelter, on the second day however, they start suffering from aches and pains in their bodies and still feeling tired, hinting that they have already started being exposed to radiation and start moving about the house, exposing themselves to more radioactive fallout. The Bloggs soon hear of enemy missiles heading towards England and make it into their shelter before a nuclear explosion. With the first being a nuclear missile on a launch pad, labelled 'MEANWHILE, ON A DISTANT PLAIN.', the second a squadron of Warthogs, labelled 'MEANWHILE, IN THE DISTANT SKY.', and third a nuclear submarine labelled 'MEANWHILE, IN A DISTANT OCEAN.' A constant theme is Jim's optimistic outlook and his unshakeable belief that the government knows what is best and has the situation under full control, coupled with Hilda's attempts to carry on life as normal.ĭuring their preparations the action is interrupted by two-page dark illustrations. Their reminiscences are used both for comic effect and to show how the geopolitical situation has changed, but also how nostalgia has blotted out the horrors of war. Jim immediately starts construction of a fallout shelter (in accordance with a government-issued Protect and Survive brochure, which he has collected from a public library), while the two reminisce about the Second World War. One afternoon, the couple hears a message on the radio about an 'outbreak of hostilities' in three days time.

The book follows the story of the Bloggs, a couple previously seen in the book Gentleman Jim.

The book was later made into an animated film. When the Wind Blows is a 1982 graphic novel, by British artist Raymond Briggs, that shows a nuclear attack on Britain by the Soviet Union from the viewpoint of a retired couple, Jim and Hilda Bloggs.

When the wind blows by raymond briggs