Threads (1984 BBC post-nuclear film set in Sheffield)

[Iguana]

Tbh that's the thing that strikes me most about Threads, and all the other nuclear war films, and the bits and bats of research I did in the wake of watching them - that in the event of a nuclear war it'd be best to be fried in the first few minutes, because to survive would be to enter a world in which the living would envy the dead.

Yeah, my parents told me that if nuclear war happened and we didn't die right away their plan was to break into a chemist and rob enough sleeping pills to kill us all fast. They told me that after explaining what the lyrics of The Sun is Burning meant because I got upset when my dad was singing it. I think I was 5.

 

[StraightOuttaQ]

Have you seen Countdown to Zero? Goes into some scary cases of nuclear material being intercepted at the Russian / Georgian border (the most likely route to get it out). Also lists the 70 household items that give a similar radioactive signature at a container port (kitty litter is the best masking material). One of those films that make you just think how the fuck did we survive the cold war. For 15 years the entire ground based US arsenal of minuteman missiles could be triggered by a individual who felt like inputting the test code in the launch computer (all zeros!)...and Yeltsin being woken in 1994 and being given the footballski by a general and told they had detected a trident launch of the coast of Norway (it was a weather satellite launch)...lucky for all of us he wasn't pissed.

Not seen it, would love to. However, the possibility of getting it on disc at a price worthwhile to indulge my curiosity is minimal. (Don't even get me started on watching online, its not going to happen). It was 1977 when they finally changed the launch codes from 0000000.... what madness.

 

[StraightOuttaQ]

Yeah, my parents told me that if nuclear war happened and we didn't die right away their plan was to break into a chemist and rob enough sleeping pills to kill us all fast. They told me that after explaining what the lyrics of The Sun is Burning meant because I got upset when my dad was singing it. I think I was 5.

In the book "World War III" (a hypothetical scenario by Hackett) which outlines a nuclear attack on B'ham, its posited that the Nuke goes off over Winson Green. Useless location. I'd go for Spaghetti Junction, which would knock out the rail network (The Bham-Sutton+ Bham-Walsall lines run under it, used for intercity routes) plus the motorway infastructure plus its about 2 miles from Bham city centre. Going to school about a mile away I was sort of glad for - I'd be among the first to be incinerated, as any possibility of living after the event is not one I ever wanted to entertain....

If I did survive a singular nuke, My escape route involved staying off the roads, and walking using the by then mostly abandoned railway lines...

 

[Mr Smin]

Possibly the most depressing imdb.com page ever

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1856457/

There's a link from there to an item about her taking the IMDB charts by storm - excellent.

 

[Sigmund Fraud]

I sa

Not seen it, would love to. However, the possibility of getting it on disc at a price worthwhile to indulge my curiosity is minimal. (Don't even get me started on watching online, its not going to happen). It was 1977 when they finally changed the launch codes from 0000000.... what madness.

I saw it on more 4 about 2 months ago, I'm sure it will be repeated soon.

 

[StraightOuttaQ]

I saw it on more 4 about 2 months ago, I'm sure it will be repeated soon.

Living in a life without broadcast television, which I don't miss, thats going to be difficult!

 

[Orang Utan]

Watch it online then!

 

[Roadkill]

Bump. A load of papers from the early 80s related to nuclear war planning have just been released under the 30-year-rule.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...lans-nuclear-armageddon-finally-revealed.html

Apologies for the Fail link, but it's not actually too bad an article, although its author doesn't seem to have read The Secret State and thinks a lot of this is more surprising than it actually is. Many of the comments are batty, as you'd expect, though.

 

[Mr Smin]

Christ - had to wash my browser out with soap after that.

Usual crap from the Heil. All they left out was an analysis of the effects of an apocalypse on house prices, and some discussion of whether nuclear bombs cause cancer. And so many linked stories about women in bikinis I though I might be on a Richard Desmond website.

 

[laptop]

And there the exercise ends, with the world poised on the brink of nuclear armageddon.

Eh?

The whole point of those exercises was to practice the "response" to nuclear attack. All the Fail appears to have read is the scenario setup - unless the later bits have been withheld.

 

[8den]

Yeah, my parents told me that if nuclear war happened and we didn't die right away their plan was to break into a chemist and rob enough sleeping pills to kill us all fast. They told me that after explaining what the lyrics of The Sun is Burning meant because I got upset when my dad was singing it. I think I was 5.

We're never letting your parents babysit.

 

[frogwoman]

I saw it a few days ago, very disturbing. It could easily have happened.

 

[King Biscuit Time]

I bought this just before Christmas

Explaining in detail what would happen if/when a nuclear bomb goes off a mile away from my house. Fucking petrifying.

 

[marty21]

Growing up in the 70s possible nuclear war was something you thought about - #happychildhood

 

[Mr Smin]

Growing up in the 70s possible nuclear war was something you thought about - #happychildhood

Still current in the 80s. On a school trip to the Science Museum in about 1986, at a display where buttons made lights go on on a map, my mate immediately shouted "i challenge you to a game of tactical nuclear bombing".

 

[youngian]

One of the reasons Threads was commissioned was the mid 60s War Game, which the BBC shelved from government pressure at the time was an understatement

Some less than convincing protect and survive information from the Barret helicopter man



It wouldn't be much less convinving if Jimmy Saville and Tufty had led the campaign

 

[SpookyFrank]

All that protect and survive stuff is genius. What do you do when you see the flash? Hide under a fucking blanket. Never mind the fact you won't be able to find a blanket if your eyeballs have already melted; or the fact that a blanket and a stack of matresses provides about as much protection from radiation as a string vest does from the vacuum of space; or the fact that you really, really, really don't want to be one of the people left alive after a nuclear war.

I mean, if the power of nuclear weapons can be defeated by blankets, tinned food and a little Dunkirk spirit why even bother dropping them on other people?

 

[Reno]

This is a popular documentary from the 80s, all about public information films and how the US government downplayed the dangers:

 

[Idris2002]

This is a popular documentary from the 80s, all about public information films and how the US government downplayed the dangers:

wildtangent/ There's a similar one about 50s sex ed films, isn't there? /wild tangent

 

[Reno]

Dunno, there could be. I remember Atomic Cafe because it was quite big for a theatrically released documentary at the time and I saw it at the cinema, which I didn't do a lot for documentaries then.

 

[Mr Smin]

All that protect and survive stuff is genius. What do you do when you see the flash? Hide under a fucking blanket. Never mind the fact you won't be able to find a blanket if your eyeballs have already melted; or the fact that a blanket and a stack of matresses provides about as much protection from radiation as a string vest does from the vacuum of space; or the fact that you really, really, really don't want to be one of the people left alive after a nuclear war.

I mean, if the power of nuclear weapons can be defeated by blankets, tinned food and a little Dunkirk spirit why even bother dropping them on other people?

Measures which are pointless in a total nuclear war can be the difference between life and death in a scenario where only a small number of bombs are detonated.
A blanket and a stack of mattresses will protect you from blast debris to some extent if you are a good distance from the epicentre, painting windows white will make a difference regarding thermal flash even if they are blown out by the blast wave immediately after.
For some very moving insight have a read of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_(book)

 

[Belushi]

I'm pretty sure the Protect and Survive stuff was just intended to give folk something to do while we waited for annhilation, rather than have us out on the streets rioting and lynching the leaders who'd brought death and destruction down on us.

 

[Mr Smin]

I'm pretty sure the Protect and Survive stuff was just intended to give folk something to do while we waited for annhilation, rather than have us out on the streets rioting and lynching the leaders who'd brought death and destruction down on us.

Half and half. There was/is a theoretical possibility of 'limited' nuclear war so P&S plays up the survivability factor partly to stave off social collapse and partly because it really will increase the total number of survivors (at least in the short term). A greatly reduced economy will still need a proportionate number of workers to struggle on.
Slightly off topic but in World War Z there's a contribution from a guy managing the recovery effort who laments the abundance of people with "assistant" and "executive" in their pre-war job titles, and the difficulty of finding someone who can replace a broken window pane or unblock a toilet.

 

[Diamond]

Watched this the other night - bloody terrifying.

It all feels horribly relevant now in light of this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25155605

 

[butchersapron]

Watched this the other night - bloody terrifying.

It all feels horribly relevant now in light of this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25155605

And this.

Are you ever not in a state of easily manipulated paranoia?

 

[Diamond]

And this.

Are you ever not in a state of easily manipulated paranoia?

Care to reconsider?

 

[butchersapron]

Not really no. Not when you leap from demanding Iran is bombed right this second because OMG they're going to nuke us!! to OMG the euro is going to collapse this week and the whole economy is going to crash!!

 

[moody]

just watched it on youtube. grim.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

I'm pretty sure the Protect and Survive stuff was just intended to give folk something to do while we waited for annhilation, rather than have us out on the streets rioting and lynching the leaders who'd brought death and destruction down on us.

Couldn't get at them; the top leaders would all have been in nuclear-hardened bunkers while the rest of us were outside burning and starving.

 

[tombowler]

Odd and disturbing film, a friend of mine found a usb stick lying on the floor in a car park in The Czech republic a few years back and this movie was on it. Freaked him out a bit