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

[zoltan]

I saw it again a couple months ago - chilling as fuck, especially the ending that makes it clear humanity hasn't got a hope!

I don't know why people are talking about the threat of nuclear annihilation like it was a thing of the past because there's a lot more spare nukes floating around the world now than there ever were in the Cold War. With the Americans and Russians facing off, there was the hope that neither side would be insane enough to use them. With there being every chance of a nuclear weapon being in the hand of some randoms, you never know what the fuck's going to happen...

Was in Transnistria 18 months ago ............depending upon which hysterical/ sensible account of the place you read, the Nuclear Weapon/Rogue state ( let) scenario could be nearer to us than we currently imagine.

 

[Error Gorilla]

Threads was indeed written by Barry Hines, who also wrote the book that would become Kes. He still lives in Sheffield.

I saw the film when I was about 10 and it scared me half to death. I spent the next few months going to the library to read Protect and Survive. I watched it again a couple of years ago, with some housemates and it hadn't lost any of its power to shock.

 

[Laclustre]

Official Government documents, which discuss the realities of UK post-nuclear attack planning, are now starting to come into the public domain; and pretty chilling reading they make too.

This gem is a first draft of a recently declassified H.M. Treasury document, written in the mid 1970s. It concerns monetary policy in a post-attack UK.

"As for (d) [an all-out nuclear missile strike on the UK], the money policy would of course be absurdly unrealistic for the few surviving administrators and politicians as they struggled to organise food and shelter for the tiny bands of surviving able-bodied and the probably larger number of sick and dying.

Most of the other departments' contingency planning might also be irrelevant in such a situation.

Within a fairly short time the survivors would evacuate the UK and try to find some sort of life in less affected countries (southern Ireland ?)."

It would seem that Whitehall planners were in agreement with Threads, as to the true picture of a post-attack UK.




Laclustre

 

[SonOfGoatboy]

It's so true.
I couldn't sleep properly for weeks after watching it.
At that point in history nuclear annihilation was a very real fear.
I still consider "Threads" the most disturbing thing I have ever watched. Ever.
And I still remember it vividly, years after.

Couldn't agree more. Watched this once, on a nice sunny afternoon after a very heavy night, about three years ago. We all sat in silence for the duration and for about ten minutes afterwards. I've never been able to watch it again. Quite the most sickeningly scary film I've ever seen. Chilling and horrible. the public information film tone adds immeasurably to the nastiness of the whole experience.

 

[laptop]

I fear that the current lack of preoccupation with the nuclear threat is a cultural phase - it's about what we're looking at, not what there is to see.

The Pugwash Conference and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists agree with me:


wiki

These are serious people - Pugwash was founded by people who'd helped build the Bomb and then - especially after the attack on Nagasaki - gone "uh-oh".

One ot the things they bear in mind in setting the clock is the background level of risk of an entirely accidental nuclear war - due to bugs in warning system computers, for example. I think it was a Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) paper that estimated this risk at one per cent per year. Dan Plesch, now at the Royal United Services Institute and all over BBC News 24, certainly agreed with this when I discussed it with him.

Sweet dreams

 

[machine cat]

What a freaky film. I'm glad it's out on DVD because i'd like to see it again but when I searched for it a while ago the only versions cost 70+ pounds!

One of the most disturbing pieces of film i've ever seen, but not as bad as *shudder* Scum.

 

[Reno]

What a freaky film. I'm glad it's out on DVD because i'd like to see it again but when I searched for it a while ago the only versions cost 70+ pounds!

For some reason that's the case on amazon, but play.com and others have it for under £10.

 

[golightly]

I found it for £8.97 on Amazon.

 

[machine cat]

Must have been reissued recently then. The last time I looked was a couple of years ago.

 

[Grandma Death]

A true classic that chills to the bones. Bleak dark and far superior to The Day After.

Although the best 'nuclear bomb going off scene' ever was in Terminator 2.

 

[Backatcha Bandit]

Here's a snippet of vintage footage of a well known individual to help place it in context:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1123774119508772272&q=rumsfeld+soviet


(from 'The Power Of Nightmares' - a good antidote).

 

[chainsaw cat]

Great film.

I started a thread on another board a while ago, asking if other 30smethings felt, like me, that they'd grown up tall and proud, in the shadow of the mushroom cloud (thank you F Mercury). And, if so, did they feel like there were any lasting effects?

I for one feel like it's a big thing to have had hanging over my childhood and adolesence, possibly something we won't know the consequences of for a while yet.

Maybe there could be a PhD for someone in looking at links between baby boomer 'fuck tomorrow-ism' and the assumption that they were the generation destined to be flash-fried en masse?

 

[zArk]

Google Vid Undersea Explosion

scientists and military observe the bomb. Very surreal sight

 

[Laclustre]

One aspect that Threads didn't go into detail about, was the whereabouts of Central Government during the nuclear attack.

From 1961 - ?, should a nuclear strike on the UK be considered imminent, they were going to head for their 35 acre underground bolt-hole at Corsham, North Wiltshire, known as the Central Government Wartime relocation headquarters - variously codenamed SUBTERFUGE, STOCKWELL, BURLINGTON, TURNSTILE.

Initially, it was to operate with 3,750 staff, but by the early 1970s this had dropped to circa 750.

Once the order to man the bunker was given, all 3,750 nominees would have evacuated London over a 14 hour period. Chartered trains would have collected them from Kensington Olympia Station and taken them to a still classified location, codenamed CHECKPOINT. From there, the MOD would have transported them in a huge single convoy to the enormous bunker underneath Corsham.

The original Interim Operational Manning Orders for the bunker (then codenamed STOCKWELL have recently been declassified, see below.

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f288/linstock/BURLINGTONT199924014.jpg

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f288/linstock/BURLINGTONT199924015.jpg

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f288/linstock/BURLINGTONT199924016.jpg

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f288/linstock/BURLINGTONT199924017.jpg

The BBC has recently set up a good site, devoted to the Cold War Central Government wartime HQ - BURLINGTON (see below)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/underground_city/index.shtml

And if you want to see how big this formerly Top Secret bunker really is, click on the link below. Its the official 1996 MOD map of the site, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h56/shadwellbright/54d685b0.jpg



Laclustre

 

[Flashman]

Cool. The virtual tour wotsit reminds me of some Tomb Raider levels, Aldwych and the like. The level would be called The Telephone Exchange though. Fuck me, I'm not even drunk and I'm posting bollocks.

 

[Tom A]

Inspired by the "what films you watched at school" thread in General.

I first saw it a few months ago, and I must say it is one really fucked up film, really realistic and must have given many people nightmares when it first came out. Also cast a really poigant message today, even if the Cold War is history, giving way to the War On/Of Terror.

 

[pk]

Terrifying film.

Though the actual bomb was a bit crap.

 

[belboid]

did I ever say that my old flat gets blown up in this?

Oh, yes, every single time the film gets mentioned.....

As you were.

 

[Tom A]

Though the actual bomb was a bit crap.

I think the Beeb got told off for letting off smoke bombs in Sheffield in order to simulate a nuke. That itself might be a poor deployment of special effects, but I just love it when one of the men goes "Jesus Christ, they've done it!". Also there is a quite graphic depiction of a woman losing control of her bladder

Also when the bomb is dropped on Sheffield itself you get some pretty harrowing scenes, including the total destruction of the city centre, melting milk bottles, and a poor kitty gets burnt alive

Must be one of the most terrifying films ever to be made, and will ever be made, by the BBC.

 

[machine cat]

A kitten dies? I can't remember watching that.

 

[pk]

It's the best bit!

 

[machine cat]

don't say that. it's mean!

 

[Apathy]

Didnt laugh once, i remember going to bed feeling a bit disturbed a few years back when i first watched it

 

[Belushi]

I watched it in about 84 along with The War Game and it fucking terrified me, saw it twice again in recent years when its been shown on BBC4 and it still terrifies me.

 

[StraightOuttaQ]

I went to school just by Spaghetti Junction - I always assumed I wasn't going to make 16, because I just took it as read that Birmingham would be the first target, and Spaghetti Junction the epicentre of any nuke attack in order to knock out the roads network. Making it to 16 without being nuked was probably the proudest acheivement of my life up to that point.....

 

[editor]

The full film is now on YouTube. It's a fucking fantastically bleak anti war movie, set in a time when nuclear annihilation was a very real possibility. It should be made compulsory viewing for world leaders and warmongers.

 

[DotCommunist]

fucking hell. that was grim. If i'd been alive to watch it during the cold war I'd have shit bricks

 

[Divisive Cotton]

still today it is probably one of the most disturbing dramas you are ever likely to see

 

[dylanredefined]

The American Version was rubbish(only good bit was their missiles flying)Threads was chilling.Though remeber some crass jokes about the bbc getting complaints about the horror.Showing sountherners pre bomb Sheffield .

 

[19sixtysix]

It should be made compulsory viewing for world leaders and warmongers.

I used to think that but I've realised Blair must have had all the education on the trenches and battle fields and surely have seen the grave yards in Northern France. I have concluded he is a murderous war mongering bastard who gets off on war