While memories of World War 2 are rapidly fading, you don't have to be that old to remember the fears of nuclear war in the Cold War years (1950s-1991).

While films and dramas such as 'The Wargame' and 'Threads' predicted Doomsday, the booklet 'Protect and Survive' was circulated, encouraging the idea that such an event might be survivable. In reality, government planning centred round preserving elements of central and local government, and establishing a network of observer posts which would track and report on radioactive fallout.

The hope was to establish which parts of the country were still capable of sustaining life, and to set up some form of administration (equipped with extreme emergency powers) to mobilise what was left of the population into rebuilding basic services.

The county is full of remnants of these grim times, charted by the website Subterranea Britannica. It lists some forty Royal Observer Corps (ROC) posts, a Regional Government Headquarters, and a number of District and Borough Emergency Centres. Most of these were constructed from 1955 onwards, and demobilised by 1991, when the collapse of the Soviet Bloc removed the threat as it then was.

The ROC shelters were built to a standard design, with a fourteen foot shaft, a store and chemical toilet, and a monitoring room. Various pieces of equipment were installed to measure the power of bomb blasts and the radioactivity generated. Most still remain, though their access hatches are often damaged.

There is no trace of Maldon's ROC post (formerly between London Road and Cut a Thwart Lane). Latchingdon has a surviving post in the garden of Butterfields Lodge, Southminster has one in poor condition East of Goldsands Road, and Bradwell-on-Sea's is now buried under a pub car park. Nearby is the remains of the RAF Battle HQ associated with RAF Bradwell Bay.

District and Borough Emergency Centres were built to sustain local government, often in the basements of existing buildings. Some remain ready for use on the basis that any major civil emergency might require a designated centre. Castlepoint and Uttlesford both have centres which had usable equipment when visited by members of Subterranea Britannica, although this was some years ago.

These centres have heavy blast-proof doors, decontamination areas, generator rooms, ventilation equipment, toilets, a dormitory and planning rooms set up with communications equipment. Chelmsford on the other hand just had an unprotected basement with an ordinary wooden door.

Of course, the most famous of these relics is the Kelvedon Hatch 'secret bunker', open to the public as a Cold War Museum. Starting life as an RAF control station, this became the Regional Government Headquarters for London.

This goes 125 feet underground, and is entered via an anonymous-looking bungalow which leads to a 100-yard long access tunnel with armoured doors. It could house hundreds of personnel, and still has much of its equipment. The informative displays within give a fascinating insight into just how frightening those days were.

Maldon didn't qualify for such a grand installation, but it does have a surviving (albeit disused) Emergency Centre tucked away in a vehicle park in Promenade Park (and not open to the public). This was only built in 1982, and closed three years later when the emergency centre (unprotected as far as I know) was moved to the Council offices in the town. The original centre has a basement with four rooms and a gas tight door.

When visited in 2000, the building was used as a store for a plant nursery – but still had 60s and 70s vintage equipment lying around.

Thoughts of the Cold War have been rekindled recently with murders of dissidents on our streets, and the nerve agent attack on Winchester. While both sides are investing once more in armaments, we're also facing a new kind of conflict centred round cyberattacks, social media disinformation and manipulation of political and economic processes.