Jim is horrified at a radio news report stating that a war may be only three days away, and sets about preparing for the worst as instructed by his government-issued Protect and Survive pamphlets. Jim frequently travels to the local town to read newspapers and keep abreast of the deteriorating international situation regarding the Soviet–Afghan War while frequently misunderstanding some specifics of the conflict, he is fully aware of the growing risk of an all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Jim Bloggs and his wife two years his senior, Hilda, are an elderly couple, living in a tidy isolated cottage in rural Sussex, in southeast England (located near Lewes, as indicated on the bus Jim rides on). The soundtrack album features music by David Bowie (who performed the title song), Roger Waters, Genesis, Squeeze, Hugh Cornwell and Paul Hardcastle.

'Protect And Survive' is also featured as the booklet that Jim takes instructions from to survive the nuclear attack. The stop motion environments utilised are based on the style used for the Protect and Survive public information films. The characters of Jim and Hilda Bloggs are hand-drawn, as well as the area outside of the Bloggs' house, but their home and most of the objects in it are real objects that seldom move but are animated with stop motion when they do. When the Wind Blows is a hybrid of traditional and stop-motion animation. A subsequent graphic novel by Briggs, Ethel and Ernest (1998), makes it clear that Briggs based the protagonist couple in When the Wind Blows on his own parents.

It was distributed by Recorded Releasing in the UK, and by Kings Road Entertainment in the United States. The film was Briggs' second collaboration with TVC, after their efforts with a special based on another work of his, The Snowman, in 1982. The film recounts a rural English couple's attempt to survive a nearby nuclear attack and maintain a sense of normality in the subsequent fallout and nuclear winter. The film stars the voices of John Mills and Peggy Ashcroft as the two main characters and was scored by Roger Waters. When the Wind Blows is a 1986 British animated disaster film directed by Jimmy Murakami based on Raymond Briggs' comic book or graphic novel of the same name.

When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs