Protect and Survive was a public information campaign on civil defence. Produced by the British government between 1974 and 1980, it intended to advise the public on how to protect themselves during a nuclear attack. […] The series had originally been intended for distribution only in the event of dire national emergency, but provoked such intense public interest that the pamphlet was published, in slightly amended form, in 1980.

To Protect

This post is a continuation of The Massacre. If you haven’t read that first, I advise you do, but it’s not mandatory.

To protect is a crucial ability in the armour humans have made for centuries. Like the rope and the stick (from Kono Abe’s Nawa), we’ve had armour for as long as we’ve had people. The good to keep the bad away from us.

I’m using a very deliberately broad definition of “armour” here. It also includes things like HAZMAT or fire proximity suits; even centuries on, they still carry the same purpose as the armour of aeons ago—to keep the bad away from us.

The spacesuit, of course, being the most extreme example, protects the human wearer from the vacuum and prompt annihilation that being exposed to space would bring—the quintessential example of the ways humankind has explored.

I like to consider these as the patrons of Humanity. I look into the visor of a spacesuit, where it looks to have no human on the inside, but through the reflection, I see myself, and I see everyone. As I look into a face that isn’t human, I see humanity.

The Great Firepower / RAWFEAR

RAWFEAR starts off with a recording of Tyler Joseph’s daughters screaming into Tyler’s iPhone as loud as they could. Studies have shown that hearing a child’s screams elicits strong feelings of fear and anxiety in parents—so, it drives their “raw fear.”

The second half of this post is about the desire to protect, but in a slightly different way—whereas section 1 focused on protecting passively, this section is more emotional, angrier, and possibly represents some parental urge in me.

I’m quite a protective person, which took an embarrassingly long time to realise; but, it definitely makes sense. On multiple occasions where I’ve had these week-long anxiety spirals, they tend to centre around one specific theme: not being able to protect the people I hold close.

I feel like this is a bit of a personification of that part of me. The ability to blast out anything bringing the people I love to harm with just sheer firepower and armour, like some mythical science-fiction bullshit that lets me come at the moment someone is in danger, and get them to safety no matter what.