I was at Bruggen in the late '70s when there was a big sign outside the main gate saying the role of the station in peacetime was to prepare for war. God did we prepare; it seemed like every other week there was a minival, and always in the middle of winter.
However the blood really did freeze one time when the hooter went off around 4 o' clock on a Friday afternoon. Down came the barrier, everyone back to work and then the tannoy telling everyone to get the goon-gear on. WTF? Surely the Russians wouldn't be so unsporting?
It turned out there'd been an explosion at a chemical works in Holland, and the noxious cloud was heading towards the more densely populated areas of MGB or Erkelenz. We would have been 'assisting the civil powers' if the worst had happened. Fortunately it didn't.