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For reasons I'll never understand our biology teacher in secondary school decided to show it to us as the traditional end of term video one year, suitably traum

For reasons I'll never understand our biology teacher in secondary school decided to show it to us as the traditional end of term video one year, suitably traumatising a room full of 15 and 16 year olds. There are scenes from that film that will stay with me the rest of my life, I should really rewatch it sometime and see if its quite so powerful to an adult mind.

pjc50 10y ago
> scenes from that film that will stay with me the rest of my life I bet that's the most persistent thing you remember from that teacher. Effective education! And probably tipped you away from the idea that a nuclear war might be winnable, and towards disarmament. Our teacher showed us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_Darkness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_Darkness for similar reasons, I think.
- arethuza 10y ago
  I think the UK government has always realised that any level of nuclear war was not survivable let alone "winnable" - estimates from the 1950s suggested that it would only take 3 H-bomb strikes to cause a total breakdown in the UK (and some UK diplomat had a drunken debate with Khrushchev over that very point).
  - pjc50 10y ago
    I think there was significant effort devoted to making sure there could be some sort of "continuity UK" in the event of that happening; the Trident at-sea deterrent, the PYTHON project, all sorts of subterranean bunkers, and so on. It would clearly be pretty desperate, but there was real money spent on it. A bleak version of "thinking the unthinkable", I suppose. (http://burlingtonandbeyond.co.uk/wp/part-3/ http://burlingtonandbeyond.co.uk/wp/part-3/ etc)
    - arethuza 10y ago
      I doubt any of the UK bunkers would have survived an all-out attack - their locations were fairly well known and none of them were designed to resist a direct attack. In fact, nobody has bunkers that can resist a direct attack - not even Cheyenne Mountain.
      - Declanomous 10y ago
        Alas, Babylon has a good bit about that. One of the characters is stationed at strategic air command in Nebraska. He warns his brother about an impending nuclear war, and that is the last that is heard from him. The other characters speculate about whether he survived, given the fact that strategic air command is sure to have a very sturdy bunker. It turns out the base ended up being a very large radioactive hole. A bunker is, after all, a very static target, and it just ends up being hit by many bombs. That's my recollection anyways. I read it in 6th grade, so it's been well over a decade since I read it. I really ought to re-read it.
        arethuza 10y ago
        The novel Arc Light has an account of a fairly limited "counterforce" attack by the Russians against the US. Cheyenne Mountain, Omaha and Raven Rock Mountain are all destroyed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_Light_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_Light_(novel)
        pmoriarty 10y ago
        Speaking of warnings about a nuclear war, there's a great 80's movie that centers around one such warning and how ordinary people react to it: Miracle Mile. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_Mile_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_Mile_(film)
        mosdave 10y ago
        that movie traumatized me as a young man and definitely impacted my sleep for years thereafter.
        morganvachon 10y ago
    - BjoernKW 10y ago
      The Dover facility (which in case of an imminent all-out nuclear exchange supposedly would've accommodated the Royal Family as well) was shut down (or never really commissioned) in the early 1970s because someone found out that chalk rock is permeable to nuclear fallout ... So, I'm sure that despite the effort the UK Government was well aware of its futility.
  - mkesper 10y ago
    There were preparations for such a case in West Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_bunker_%28Germany%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_bunker_%28Germany%2... The english article also mentions Fallex 66, where for the first time, politicians were involved in a (favorable setting of a) NATO war game.
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    I think some civil servants realised this. That's not the same as the entire government realising it. It's certainly not the same as specific Prime Ministers understanding it. There are maps from the early 1950s - pre H-Bomb - which show large areas of the UK reduced to radioactive desert after a relatively small attack. Unloading tens or hundreds of larger weapons on the UK would do very little to increase its survival prospects. From that POV, Threads is terrifying but optimistic. It's not clear anyone at all would survive a full exchange. Spending a few years in a bunker would simply delay the inevitable.
    - pmoriarty 10y ago
      "Spending a few years in a bunker would simply delay the inevitable." All of life could be said to be merely delaying the inevitable. I am reminded of the story of a man running away from a tiger when he reaches the edge of a cliff and falls over, managing to grab hold of the edge and hanging by one hand. Below him is certain death from the fall, above him is death by the tiger. The man notices some sweet dew dripping from a blade of grass by his face. With moments left to live, he licks the dew.
  - ajlburke 10y ago
    'Now, we shall receive four minutes warning of any impending nuclear attack. Some people have said, "Oh my goodness me — four minutes? — that is not a very long time!" Well, I would remind those doubters that some people in this great country of ours can run a mile in four minutes.' - Peter Cook, Beyond the Fringe, 1960
    - arethuza 10y ago
      Part of the UK preparation for nuclear war sound like black comedy - my favourite being that we were too cheap to build a dedicated communication network to allow the PM to launch the V-bombers when out and about so the AA radio network was to be used: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/in-the-event-of-a-russian-nuclear-attack-call-the-aa-710672.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/in-the-eve... Yes - that AA - the Automobile Association....
      - pmoriarty 10y ago
        That's almost as bad as US launch codes being all zeroes for 15 years: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/05/nuclear-missile-code-00000000-cold-war_n_4386784.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/05/nuclear-missile-cod...
        sjg007 10y ago
        Good thing it changed.. imagine trying to pair a bluetooth keyboard.
      - wolfgang42 10y ago
        The national air raid sirens were controlled over random POTS lines[1]. The theory was that a dedicated system would need proper upkeep and testing, but when a telephone line goes down the customer at the end of it will notice and file a complaint. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HANDEL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HANDEL
- zo1 10y ago
  Sounds more like child-abuse to me. If the video is indeed as shocking as most people here claim it is then it isn't age-appropriate for younger adults and especially children. As adults, we can choose to not see it. As children, in a classroom, we are generally not. Peer pressure and adult authoritarian rule should not be taken lightly. Especially when used to scare children into compliance and leave them lasting marks into adult-hood. -Speaking as someone that still has irrational issues with being alone, or being alone in the dark. After watching age-inappropriate movies as a child.
  - ipnon 10y ago
    You know what's real child abuse? Entirely preventable nuclear wars that are only initiated due to ignorance of their effects.
    - zo1 10y ago
      No, that's called not raising your kids to be good citizens.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    > Sounds more like child-abuse to me. If the video is indeed as shocking as most people here claim it is then it isn't age-appropriate for younger adults and especially children. You'd be amazed at the kinds of films that were shown to young people in an effort tochange their behaviour (with no evidence that it would actually do so). My favourite example was of a UK tv show Nationwide that got a studio full of young people to watch US style shock films about road and rail safety. The films were so gruesome they couldn't be shown on broadcast tv at that time of the evening. There were shots of young people throwing up and feinting and having to be taken out of the studio, weeping. (This is mentioned on a TV discussion forum somewhere, but I can't find it. :-/)
  - DKnoll 10y ago
    I can only imagine how coddled your childhood was if you weren't aware of the dark realities of death and war by 15 or 16. Fear is a choice. Also many people have overcome much greater trauma than 'age-inappropriate movies'... that's absurd.
rwallace 10y ago
I saw that movie around the same age, back in the day. Good for your biology teacher! There's a really worrying trend in recent years of politicians and the media carrying on like they'd stopped being scared of nuclear war. How the fuck is that something you stop being scared of?
Florin_Andrei 10y ago
> I should really rewatch it sometime and see if its quite so powerful to an adult mind. Yeah, I was in my 20s when I saw it for the first time. It's powerful.
- jon-wood 10y ago
  Ok, you've sold me, I'll see if I can find a copy somewhere.
kafkaesq 10y ago
For reasons I'll never understand Probably to make whatever grain-sized impact he or she could possibly make towards preventing the scenario described in that movie from ever happening. I miss the Cold War (during which I also had teachers like this).

pjc50 10y ago

> scenes from that film that will stay with me the rest of my life I bet that's the most persistent thing you remember from that teacher. Effective education! And probably tipped you away from the idea that a nuclear war might be winnable, and towards disarmament. Our teacher showed us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_Darkness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_Darkness for similar reasons, I think.

arethuza 10y ago
I think the UK government has always realised that any level of nuclear war was not survivable let alone "winnable" - estimates from the 1950s suggested that it would only take 3 H-bomb strikes to cause a total breakdown in the UK (and some UK diplomat had a drunken debate with Khrushchev over that very point).
- pjc50 10y ago
  I think there was significant effort devoted to making sure there could be some sort of "continuity UK" in the event of that happening; the Trident at-sea deterrent, the PYTHON project, all sorts of subterranean bunkers, and so on. It would clearly be pretty desperate, but there was real money spent on it. A bleak version of "thinking the unthinkable", I suppose. (http://burlingtonandbeyond.co.uk/wp/part-3/ http://burlingtonandbeyond.co.uk/wp/part-3/ etc)
  - arethuza 10y ago
    I doubt any of the UK bunkers would have survived an all-out attack - their locations were fairly well known and none of them were designed to resist a direct attack. In fact, nobody has bunkers that can resist a direct attack - not even Cheyenne Mountain.
    - Declanomous 10y ago
      Alas, Babylon has a good bit about that. One of the characters is stationed at strategic air command in Nebraska. He warns his brother about an impending nuclear war, and that is the last that is heard from him. The other characters speculate about whether he survived, given the fact that strategic air command is sure to have a very sturdy bunker. It turns out the base ended up being a very large radioactive hole. A bunker is, after all, a very static target, and it just ends up being hit by many bombs. That's my recollection anyways. I read it in 6th grade, so it's been well over a decade since I read it. I really ought to re-read it.
      - arethuza 10y ago
        The novel Arc Light has an account of a fairly limited "counterforce" attack by the Russians against the US. Cheyenne Mountain, Omaha and Raven Rock Mountain are all destroyed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_Light_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_Light_(novel)
      - pmoriarty 10y ago
        Speaking of warnings about a nuclear war, there's a great 80's movie that centers around one such warning and how ordinary people react to it: Miracle Mile. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_Mile_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_Mile_(film)
        mosdave 10y ago
        that movie traumatized me as a young man and definitely impacted my sleep for years thereafter.
      - morganvachon 10y ago
  - BjoernKW 10y ago
    The Dover facility (which in case of an imminent all-out nuclear exchange supposedly would've accommodated the Royal Family as well) was shut down (or never really commissioned) in the early 1970s because someone found out that chalk rock is permeable to nuclear fallout ... So, I'm sure that despite the effort the UK Government was well aware of its futility.
- mkesper 10y ago
  There were preparations for such a case in West Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_bunker_%28Germany%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_bunker_%28Germany%2... The english article also mentions Fallex 66, where for the first time, politicians were involved in a (favorable setting of a) NATO war game.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  I think some civil servants realised this. That's not the same as the entire government realising it. It's certainly not the same as specific Prime Ministers understanding it. There are maps from the early 1950s - pre H-Bomb - which show large areas of the UK reduced to radioactive desert after a relatively small attack. Unloading tens or hundreds of larger weapons on the UK would do very little to increase its survival prospects. From that POV, Threads is terrifying but optimistic. It's not clear anyone at all would survive a full exchange. Spending a few years in a bunker would simply delay the inevitable.
  - pmoriarty 10y ago
    "Spending a few years in a bunker would simply delay the inevitable." All of life could be said to be merely delaying the inevitable. I am reminded of the story of a man running away from a tiger when he reaches the edge of a cliff and falls over, managing to grab hold of the edge and hanging by one hand. Below him is certain death from the fall, above him is death by the tiger. The man notices some sweet dew dripping from a blade of grass by his face. With moments left to live, he licks the dew.
- ajlburke 10y ago
  'Now, we shall receive four minutes warning of any impending nuclear attack. Some people have said, "Oh my goodness me — four minutes? — that is not a very long time!" Well, I would remind those doubters that some people in this great country of ours can run a mile in four minutes.' - Peter Cook, Beyond the Fringe, 1960
  - arethuza 10y ago
    Part of the UK preparation for nuclear war sound like black comedy - my favourite being that we were too cheap to build a dedicated communication network to allow the PM to launch the V-bombers when out and about so the AA radio network was to be used: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/in-the-event-of-a-russian-nuclear-attack-call-the-aa-710672.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/in-the-eve... Yes - that AA - the Automobile Association....
    - pmoriarty 10y ago
      That's almost as bad as US launch codes being all zeroes for 15 years: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/05/nuclear-missile-code-00000000-cold-war_n_4386784.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/05/nuclear-missile-cod...
      - sjg007 10y ago
        Good thing it changed.. imagine trying to pair a bluetooth keyboard.
    - wolfgang42 10y ago
      The national air raid sirens were controlled over random POTS lines[1]. The theory was that a dedicated system would need proper upkeep and testing, but when a telephone line goes down the customer at the end of it will notice and file a complaint. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HANDEL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HANDEL
zo1 10y ago
Sounds more like child-abuse to me. If the video is indeed as shocking as most people here claim it is then it isn't age-appropriate for younger adults and especially children. As adults, we can choose to not see it. As children, in a classroom, we are generally not. Peer pressure and adult authoritarian rule should not be taken lightly. Especially when used to scare children into compliance and leave them lasting marks into adult-hood. -Speaking as someone that still has irrational issues with being alone, or being alone in the dark. After watching age-inappropriate movies as a child.
- ipnon 10y ago
  You know what's real child abuse? Entirely preventable nuclear wars that are only initiated due to ignorance of their effects.
  - zo1 10y ago
    No, that's called not raising your kids to be good citizens.
- DanBC 10y ago
  > Sounds more like child-abuse to me. If the video is indeed as shocking as most people here claim it is then it isn't age-appropriate for younger adults and especially children. You'd be amazed at the kinds of films that were shown to young people in an effort tochange their behaviour (with no evidence that it would actually do so). My favourite example was of a UK tv show Nationwide that got a studio full of young people to watch US style shock films about road and rail safety. The films were so gruesome they couldn't be shown on broadcast tv at that time of the evening. There were shots of young people throwing up and feinting and having to be taken out of the studio, weeping. (This is mentioned on a TV discussion forum somewhere, but I can't find it. :-/)
- DKnoll 10y ago
  I can only imagine how coddled your childhood was if you weren't aware of the dark realities of death and war by 15 or 16. Fear is a choice. Also many people have overcome much greater trauma than 'age-inappropriate movies'... that's absurd.

rwallace 10y ago

I saw that movie around the same age, back in the day. Good for your biology teacher! There's a really worrying trend in recent years of politicians and the media carrying on like they'd stopped being scared of nuclear war. How the fuck is that something you stop being scared of?

Florin_Andrei 10y ago

> I should really rewatch it sometime and see if its quite so powerful to an adult mind. Yeah, I was in my 20s when I saw it for the first time. It's powerful.

jon-wood 10y ago
Ok, you've sold me, I'll see if I can find a copy somewhere.

kafkaesq 10y ago

For reasons I'll never understand Probably to make whatever grain-sized impact he or she could possibly make towards preventing the scenario described in that movie from ever happening. I miss the Cold War (during which I also had teachers like this).