During the Cold War, in the event of a nuclear attack on the United Kingdom, this bunker would have broadcast the "Attack Warning Red" message to Carrier Control Points, the Armed Forces and the BBC who would have broadcast it to the public through the WTBS(Wartime Broadcasting Service). This would have mean't the apocalypse was on its way and many would have been hoping that the next four minutes would be their last.
Today the UKWMO ( United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation) National HQ in Preston sits partly stripped of its assets and overgrown. The above ground buildings are now a veterinary surgery, the masts around the site are now used by telecommunication companies and other satelite bunkers lie stripped, open and decaying. But thankfully these multi-million pound pieces of concrete were constructed but never had to do their jobs, the UK countryside is littered with throw-backs of the Cold War, from tiny ROC (Royal Observer Corps) posts to the bigger AAOR's (Anti-Aircraft Operations Room) to huge sites like Burlington and the quarries around Corsham in Wiltshire.
Luckily for the world neither East nor West pushed the button and the balloon never went up, but how close did we really come to being vapourized or imprisioned in a life of radiation sickness and cancerous illness'?