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The vision of nuclear holocaust in Threads (1984) remains visceral and urgent
- arbitrage 10y ago"Unrelenting bleakness" is a pretty apt description of this production. The end is chilling. The whole thing is just crushing to watch.
- noir_lord 10y agoI live ~60 miles from the town it's set in and grew up in the 80's, I simultaneously admire and detest that film.
- throwaway12201 10y agoPeople don't seem to understand how close to the edge of disaster we still are. The message in movies like Threads and The Day After are quite relevant today, despite how impossible they may seem. While an intentional war may be less likely today, the danger of an accidental one is just as real.
- finid 10y agoWith the US finding any way to tease Russia into attacking first, intentional war is just as likely now as an accidental one.
- yarrel 10y agoYour low opinion of Russia is showing.
- finid 10y agoActually because of the restraint Russia has been showing in the last few years, I hold their leadership in very high regard.
- int_19h 10y agoRussia was the first country in Europe to invade and annex a part of a neighboring country since, what, WW2? If that's restraint, I hesitate to ask what the lack of it would look like.
- jacquesm 10y agoTurkey, Cyprus.
- int_19h 10y agoTurkey didn't annex Northern Cyprus. Nor did Albania annex Kosovo, nor Russia itself annexed South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria before. It's the combination of invasion and annexation - effectively, waging war for a formally acknowledged territorial gain - that makes the situation in Crimea unique post WW2.
- jacquesm 10y agoWell, technically it was Greece that tried the annexation and Turkey does maintain a large military on Cyprus. But you're right, the Crimea is both in scale, scope and ambition on a different level.
- xnlvkYDNCXjJw 10y agoDidn't Russia annex Crimea? How are the sanctions not Russia's fault??
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoWhich restraint would that be?
- enraged_camel 10y agoIt's the opposite: they have shown an incredible amount of restraint in the face of overwhelming opposition and crippling sanctions from Europe and USA.
- dagenleg 10y agoWell, nobody wants to die in a Nuclear War.
- vkou 10y agoIt might surprise, and horrify you to know that a large number of high-ranking US staff think that nuclear war is winnable [1]. It makes my blood boil. [1] http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/is-nuclear-war-becoming-thinkable/ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/is-nuclear-w...
- shrimp_emoji 10y agohttps://youtu.be/vuP6KbIsNK4?t=47 https://youtu.be/vuP6KbIsNK4?t=47
- ekianjo 10y agodo your smoldering bones care about whoever wins ?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago> a large number of high-ranking US staff think that nuclear war is winnable The article [1] cites two retired generals as its examples of "senior military officers" who "might be eager to get things started in the belief that a war with Russia could actually be winnable". [1] http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/is-nuclear-war-becoming-thinkable/ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/is-nuclear-w...
- fallingfrog 10y agoThere's a reason the last official declaration of war by the us was ww2- and why the great powers never make hard and fast alliances with smaller states, or aid them too openly. And the reason is to avoid world war 3. Relations between countries are always in a big muddy middle ground between peace and war because they have to be.
- dba7dba 10y agoI truly believe the reason we have not had WW3 is because of nukes. It is one small frignge benefit.
- lurker456 10y agoIt's the reason we have not yet had WW3. The jury is out on whether that is a good thing. Perhaps we'll find one day that several smaller conflicts (as horrifying as a WW without nukes would be) would have been preferable to one larger civilization-ending one.
- BrandonMarc 10y agoSeveral smaller conflicts ... yep, sounds like the last 70 years of history since WWII. In a sense, we're in the middle of finding out. I agree the jury's out, but it's probably preferable to WWIII, or even a limited nuclear exchange.
- SubiculumCode 10y agoperhaps we live in a multiverse, and only the surviver you-s still exist because their universes have still avoided WWIII... ;-)
- tomjakubowski 10y ago> the great powers never make hard and fast alliances with smaller states, or aid them too openly. Really? US-Israel? US-Saudi? Russia-Syria? All examples of basically untouchable alliances with smaller states and blatant, public military aid. If I were better educated/informed I'm sure I could come up with more.
- cookiecaper 10y agoThe desire for positive relations with Russia is one of the reasons that Trump was elected. I'm not sure I'd characterize our government's behavior as "teasing Russia". The media is a different story.
- anovikov 10y agoThe scale of potential disaster is much lower now than then. We have many times fewer nukes, and counterforce is supposed to work a lot better for the attacking side leaving even less to be thrown on cities.
- throwaway12201 10y agoWhile our (and presumably Russia's) counterforce capability has improved, a lot of likely counterforce targets are still near major population centers. An all out counterforce exchange would result in tens of millions of civilian casualties. Such an event would probably end our way of life (speaking as an American).
- jacquesm 10y agoYes, but the present batch of leaders does not strike me as any more stable than those in the past.
- vkou 10y agoIt will only kill high tens of millions of people now, instead of hundreds! It's an improvement, but not much of one. Also, consider the aftermath of nuclear war. Consider how many people live in cities. Consider that cities are not at all equipped to survive without massive, and consistent shipments of food, water, and electricity.
- pmoriarty 10y agoWe'd be lucky if billions, not millions, of people didn't die in an all-out nuclear war between the US and Russia. It's still debatable whether any humans anywhere in the world would survive.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago> It's still debatable whether any humans anywhere in the world would survive Is it?
- cookiecaper 10y agoUnrivaled global superpowers go out with a whimper, not a bang. If war comes to the U.S. in the near future, I fully believe that it will be due to internal issues.
- fritzw 10y agoThe possibility of preemptive nuclear strike is still looms. There is also the possibility that the person with their finger on the metaphorical button is not all there, and maybe shouldn't have that power. There is a movement to remove the ability for the president to call preemptive strikes. There is also a movement to remove ICBMs from the Triad. If enemies launch toward the US, an ICBM counter attack launch only allows a 6 minute window. (Assuming they targeted our ICBMs.) A side note: Military doesn't man the ICBMs. They are controlled by civilians. This is by design because the past administrations didn't trust the military to control ICBMs. The fear that they would use them without hesitation was too great. Nuclear attack subs would pick up the slack and don't require the 6 minute response window. This would greatly reduce the currently great risk of thermonuclear war we live under.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 10y agoOne of the issues is that destroying a nuclear submarine is an ambiguous operation with respect to nuclear war. Are you really going to launch nuclear missiles in response to a sub sinking? With land based ICBMs, it is unambiguously a nuclear attack and you would respond appropriately.
- Tuna-Fish 10y ago> There is also a movement to remove ICBMs from the Triad. If enemies launch toward the US, an ICBM counter attack launch only allows a 6 minute window. The existence of ICBMs has been increasingly questioned in most of the countries that have them, with France leading the pack having phased them out of service. You've described one of the reasons, but the more important one is that their future ability to deliver warheads is now suspect. The SDI project was largely a comedy, but one of it's sub-projects, Brilliant Pebbles [1] was quite successful. While the work on the project as whole was ended, it's subcomponents lived on, most importantly the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle [2], the interceptor of the Ground-Based Interceptor [3], which was developed from the KE interceptor of Brilliant Pebbles. During the 00's, advancements in computers and especially digital cameras have made what were previously the hardest parts of Brilliant Pebbles have become not only realistic to implement but also quite cheap. At this point, it is widely believed that if anyone were to manufacture the ~5000 required interceptors and loft them into low earth orbit, this would provide nearly 100% effective missile shield against any exoatmospheric ballistic missiles. The reason this was not previously considered debilitating to ICBMs was because of the limitations in available rocket launches, boosting all those interceptor satellites into orbit would have taken a very long time, during which you could either seek diplomatic solutions blocking their deployment, start deploying your own ASAT assets, or seek other solutions. Enter SpaceX. Not only will ITS be the largest rocket ever developed, but they are intended to be very rapidly reusable, and SpaceX intends to build multiple of them operating from different pads. If they work as advertised, when they become operational the prompt space launch capability will go up by a factor of 100. This is necessary if we intend to make humanity a multi-planetary species. It will, however, also mean that the Chinese Premier can go to sleep one night in a world where ballistic missiles still work, and wake up into one where one power has deployed a functional ABM shield. And if the other space launch operators intend to be able to compete with SpaceX in the market, they will have to build competing systems. This means that even the US is now looking into other ways to deliver warheads. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative#Brilliant_Pebbles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative#B... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoatmospheric_Kill_Vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoatmospheric_Kill_Vehicle [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Interceptor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Interceptor
- erikpukinskis 10y agoPeople who understand how close to the edge of disaster we are don't seem to understand how far past the edge others already are, and have been for generations. Nuclear strike is only a relevant fear for people who live cushy lives exploiting those who already live in post-apocalyptic landscapes, often just down the street from them. Those who can afford to worry about imaginary disasters are clearly desensitized to current ones. Those who truly care about holocausts are already busy putting out fires. Those who only care about themselves are worrying about nuclear weapons.
- rumcajz 10y agoJust this week, one nuclear state is threatening another nuclear state that happens to border with two other nuclear states. Meanwhile, the nukes are on hair trigger everywhere. What can possibly go wrong? The really scary part, however, is that, obviously, nobody cares. There are no angry tweets, demonstrations, whatever. Politicians must feel like they can do whatever they want without anyone even noticing. On the positive note, there are UN negotiations of nuclear weapon ban going on. In theory, the ban could be approved as soon as this summer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-Weapon-Ban_treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-Weapon-Ban_treaty
- BrandonMarc 10y agoAh, global zero idea, right? Which is cool, if you believe world leaders can be trusted ... and, even if they can, that they'll trust each other. It doesn't help that the Saudis are just one large money-transfer away from having their own nukes (the check is probably already written, just waiting to be cashed, so to speak). The Iranians are closer, and Pakistan's been there for some time. So even if the "grown ups" (USA, Russia, China, India, UK, France, Israel) can be counted on to behave themselves, the upstarts less so. It's also an open question how well the new members of the club would be able to keep their own arsenal under lock and key. If the Middle East gets into a nuclear arms race, to protect themselves from each other, that's all the more opportunities for some enterprising jihadis. In one sense, the presence of nukes has made large-scale war more unlikely, and taking them off the table might have the opposite effect.
- matthewmcg 10y agoThis is the original context for "trust, but verify."[1] There is already a lot of infrastructure for monitoring the development and production of new nuclear weapons. As you suggest, tracking existing weapons is much harder and depends mostly on the cooperation of the club members. It wouldn't be easy, but it can be done. [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=JQGHqScEFtoC&lpg=PP1&dq=hoffman%20the%20dead%20hand&pg=PA295#v=snippet&q=verify&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=JQGHqScEFtoC&lpg=PP1&dq=ho...
- rumcajz 10y ago
- gue5t 10y agoThis article is about a film called Threads, not about hazards in concurrency or parallel computation.
- iak8god 10y agoYes, but I don't understand this comment. Were you mislead by the title into thinking it was a visceral urgent article about concurrency that included a vision of nuclear holocaust?
- x220 10y ago"10 reasons not to use C for multithreading"
- cookiecaper 10y agoNot the OP, but I personally expected it to be a metaphor, and to colorfully describe a perpetually-impending disaster re: widely-used multithreaded applications, similar to the "horrors" of IPv4 exhaustion or Y2K-class bugs.
- yarrel 10y agoAlso, this "article" is not an individual item of clothing or part of a legal constitution, it is a piece of writing.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y agoEven after decades, this is still the single most terrifying thing I have ever watched.
- mcbuilder 10y ago_Threads_ changed my perception of what to hope for in the event of nuclear war. After watching _The Day after Tomorrow_ as a kid, I'd think of survival strategies about where to go to wait out the destruction. _Threads_ makes the point, all too clear, that there is no society left after WWIII, and what's left of our race will be horribly mutated and deformed. I'm almost happier now with the feeling that I might be caught in the initial blast due to my proximity working near a military base. If we are stupid enough to use these weapons at scale, it would be game over for humanity at this point.
- pmoriarty 10y agoI've read an article that argued Threads was actually a very optimistic view of what would have happened to the UK in case of a nuclear war. They said after the Cold War, the former head of the Soviet nuclear strike force who was in charge of attacking the UK assured his British counterpart that the entire UK was a complete overkill zone. There would have been no survivors.
- rhino369 10y agoThreads over sold and under sold the threats. A lot more people would have dropped dead from radiation and the blasts within the first month. But I think it's fairly unrealistic that if millions of British survived they'd go back to tilling land. Sure a lot of tools depend on long global supply chains, but trade would resume as soon as radiation threats died down (a couple weeks). We'd only go pre industrial if nearly the entire population was wiped out. Even then civilization would still thrive in areas not directly effected-like South America.
- rybosome 10y agoI've thought about this. In the event of nuclear war, I desperately hope that I'm killed in the initial blast. I don't want to die in agony of radiation poisoning or fight for survival in an apocalyptic hellscape.
- yazbo_mcclure 10y agoThat movie made me not want to have a nuclear war
- marchenko 10y agoJust being reminded that this film exists has put me in a bleak mood. It makes "The Road" look like "The Wizard of Oz".
- bluejekyll 10y agoOh man... I still get the ideas of "The Road" out of my head, and I saw that like 5 years ago. The only positive thing in that movie was that maybe at the end, there are some good people left.
- eric_h 10y agoI didn't realize they'd made a movie out of that book. That was a very, very depressing read, I can only imagine what it's like in movie form...
- tptacek 10y agoThe Road is considerably worse than Threads.
- marchenko 10y agoI think what gives Threads extra psychological heft is the fact that it opens with a very long sequence of everyday life pre-bomb, which grounds the film in reality. Because the cause of the disaster is unknown, it is easier to shrug off "The Road" as an alternate universe. The events in "The Road" are more awful, but less immediate. Now that I think about it, that grounding also enhances the "Wizard of Oz", in a different way.
- arethuza 10y agoI think the factor that made Threads so powerful, particularly if you saw it in the early 1980s, was that appreciating how close we were to that scenario actually happening. The Road is, I would agree, rather more bleak but as the threat is rather ill-defined it doesn't quite have the same sense of dread, at least to me. However, I was 18 when I saw Threads for the first time and it did rather leave a a mark, as did the related "QED: A Guide to Armageddon" which is a chilling look at the effects of a nuclear weapon on a large city. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GJttnC8PoA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GJttnC8PoA The bit where the effects of the heat of a nuclear weapon are shown on meat in a butchers window (around 6:40) literally gave me nightmares.
- excalibur 10y agoStreaming here: https://vimeo.com/18781528 https://vimeo.com/18781528 Maybe it would be beneficial to flood both Donald and Ivanka Trump's Twitter feeds with links to the film?
- s_kilk 10y agoFor the impatient, the money-shot starts at about 45:30.
- simplicio 10y agoSupposedly the similar "The Day After" convinced the previously hawkish Reagan to advance arms control talks with the USSR, so that isn't the worst idea. Though Reagan loved movies, while I haven't heard that Trump is a movie buff, so we'll need something equivalent with more appeal to its target. Has anyone tried filming a post-nuclear holocaust reality show?
- roywiggins 10y agoHello, good evening, and remain indoors. This is the Quiz Broadcast! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN0ixdOsrY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN0ixdOsrY0
- BrandonMarc 10y ago> President Ronald Reagan watched the film several days before its screening, on November 5, 1983. He wrote in his diary that the film was "very effective and left me greatly depressed," and that it changed his mind on the prevailing policy on a "nuclear war". The film was also screened for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A government advisor who attended the screening, a friend of [the film's director Nicholas] Meyer's, told him "If you wanted to draw blood, you did it. Those guys sat there like they were turned to stone." Four years later, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed and in Reagan's memoirs he drew a direct line from the film to the signing. Reagan supposedly later sent Meyer a telegram after the summit, saying, "Don't think your movie didn't have any part of this, because it did." [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After#Effects_on_policymakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After#Effects_on_polic...
- icc97 10y agoThe second to last sentence seems poignant: > And we recognize, acutely and uncomfortably, the fear and hatred with which she’s treated as a refugee. Escpecially with the impact of immigration in the Brexit vote, it's worth pointing out just how few refugees that the UK has accepted. The UK had 9,000 applicants (and 5,000 accepted) [0] vs Germany's 600,000 and Sweden's 110,000. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_W...
- alva 10y agoThe approach of the UK government has been to provide aid and safety to the refugees near to their country of origin. The main justification is that by allowing the people to find temporary safety and assistance there, they will hopefully soon be able to return and help rebuild their country. Many of those fleeing to Western Europe will not return to contribute to the their country which will desperately need skills. This approach, which was widely and heavily chastised by the other dominant European countries, is now being adopted by its primary critics, Germany and Sweden. They have quietly changed their mind and decided it is a better approach in the long term, especially considering some of the problems they have been facing. The United Kingdom is also the second most generous donor of foreign aid behind the US.
- icc97 10y agoIndeed you're correct [0][1] with regards to foreign aid. Personally I disagree with that viewpoint though. One is sending money and trying to stay as little as involved as possible and the other is dealing personally on your doorstep with an immediate crisis. Which may be the best in the long-run I doubt is conclusive either way. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/sep/09/foreign-aid-which-countries-are-the-most-generous https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals... [1]: http://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/documentupload/ODA%202014%20Tables%20and%20Charts.pdf http://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/documentupload/ODA%202014%20Ta...
- corford 10y agoThe UK's refugee approach is one of the few policies I think they've got right recently (notwithstanding the government's shameless treatment of child refugees already in Europe, which is/was indefensible). Another idea behind it is it limits the horrendous impact people smugglers have on refugees trying to cross over to Europe.
- everyone 10y agoA lot of superlatives about this. Just in the comments here for example. Whats interesting is that this is achieved through realism. Its a pretty well researched show, they tried to depict the facts as clearly as possible.
- maxxxxx 10y agoThis movie is really bleak but when you read descriptions from people who were in Hiroshima you realize that reality is even worse.
- s_kilk 10y agoFor fans of Threads, (or for anyone who just doesn't want to sleep tonight), I found a wonderful piece of Nuclear Fiction last week: A fake BBC news report tracking an escalating conflict between NATO and Russian forces. "Nuclear Attack Emergency Broadcast - Live Breaking News from London (fiction)" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VZ3LGfSMhA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VZ3LGfSMhA It's the only piece of fiction that has made me feel deathly ill in quite the same way Threads did. [EDIT] also, those familiar with The Day After should watch out for a little easter-egg toward the end. [DOUBLE-EDIT] I'm just re-watching the end now and even with full knowledge that it is fiction, the Attack Warning Red sound is still absolutely horrifying.
- balabaster 10y agoWow! Just wow! I knew this was fiction the whole time I was watching it and it's still horrifying, right from the outset. They did such a great job, I can't give them enough credit for their realism.
- s_kilk 10y agoYeah, it's really, _really_ well made. Good job on whoever put it together.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- protomyth 10y agoIs that the one that they've been updating with the changing politician names and situations. I seem to remember a version that was a bit different.
- s_kilk 10y agoI think they've done a few different versions. The differences seem to be mostly in the TV trimmings at the start and end, and a few versions have US or Canadian civil-defence warnings at the end. Skimming through, the content seems to be largely the same, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were making small changes too. [EDIT] Actually, you're right, some of the older versions have different (to my ear, worse) voice work. I'm glad the iterated on the idea and polished it up.
- Apocryphon 10y agoI wonder if societal expectations of the end of the world will affect how it does play out, should the unthinkable happen. Threads is a horrific, profound work- but it's also very rooted in the anxieties of densely urban England. In the U.S. there's much more open land, unclaimed wilderness, and so the concept of post-apocalyptic plenty abounds, whether in survivalists building compounds in forests and fields, or the looting of abandoned malls in zombie films. The prepper subculture has been around long before current geopolitical realities. In the face of nuclear apocalypse, those who can't flee to New Zealand will just preemptively take to those compounds[0]. It'd be interesting to see a work of art that includes our culture's awareness of prior works of art. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13462865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13462865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13482107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13482107
- smacktoward 10y agoIf you want a sour vision of post-apocalyptic America that puts the lie to the prepper dream, I recommend the 1984 novel Warday (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warday https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warday). Warday is set five years after a "limited" nuclear war between the US and USSR, in which only one salvo of nukes was fired by each side before their governments collapsed. In the US only two cities (Washington and San Antonio) are hit directly, with one more (NYC) taking a "near miss" when its missiles go off course and explode offshore. Beyond those urban areas, only the sparsely populated areas around the US' western missile silos are hit. So in that respect, it's very much an optimistic scenario, much more so than the one laid out in Threads. But the book's argument is that even an optimistic scenario like that would be devastating in real life. Warday's America has been thoroughly hobbled, not so much by the bombs themselves as by knock-on effects the bombs caused. Fallout from the strikes on the missile fields has irradiated the nation's farm fields, leading to persistent famine and turning the Midwest into a radioactive Dust Bowl. Malnutrition means reduced resistance to disease, leading to a range of exciting new ways to die that include a horrific strain of flu that kills three times as many people as the bombs did. Even five years after the war medical care is still being triaged, the price of food is subject to wild fluctuations, and with the federal government mostly dissolved the states are starting to pull apart into their own regional fiefdoms; Texas is gearing up to go to war with Mexico, and relatively unscathed California is gradually descending into a police state in order to keep from having to share what they still have with refugees from the rest of America. It's a great, grim story, one that's stuck with me decades now after I first read it as a kid in Cold War America.
- bouvin 10y agoAnother British nuclear war favourite would be When the Wind Blows, which is probably one of the saddest things, I have ever watched.
- RantyDave 10y agoThe original was a book (https://www.amazon.com/When-Wind-Blows-Raymond-Briggs/dp/0140094199/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492037172&sr=1-3&keywords=when+the+wind+blows https://www.amazon.com/When-Wind-Blows-Raymond-Briggs/dp/014...). It works better when preceded by "Gentleman Jim" (https://www.amazon.com/Gentleman-Jim-Raymond-Briggs/dp/1897299362 https://www.amazon.com/Gentleman-Jim-Raymond-Briggs/dp/18972...) It was an interesting time to grow up in.
- uhtred 10y agoWhen the Whistle Blows
- loudmax 10y agoI've read enough about Threads to know that I absolutely do not want to see it. Just reading the story in the article makes me queasy. The article calls The Day After "reassuring and sanitized," but from what I remember, that was something of a nightmare. The movie Testament also came out around this time and it's often brought up in the same context as The Day After and Threads. Watching Testament felt like a gut punch. I wouldn't tell anyone else not to watch Threads. (How could I? I've never seen it.) But if you are going to watch it, you should brace yourself emotionally. If your idea of a post nuclear apocalypse is driving around in cool cars like Mad Max in the Road Warrior, you probably should watch Threads.
- UncleSlacky 10y agoI saw both Threads and The Day After at about the same time - the American production was ridiculously upbeat by comparison. "The War Game" is similarly realistic, although somewhat dated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Game It appears to be available here: https://archive.org/details/TheWarGame_201405 https://archive.org/details/TheWarGame_201405 (clip here: https://youtu.be/Nzd_VE-bfhA https://youtu.be/Nzd_VE-bfhA )
- s_kilk 10y ago> The article calls The Day After "reassuring and sanitized," but from what I remember, that was something of a nightmare. Can confirm: Threads is substantially worse than The Day After.
- jghn 10y agoAs a kid Threads terrified me in a way which still resonates. I never understood what the big deal about Te Day After. When I watch it now I actually find it somewhat amusing. Threads, not so much Considering the relative difference in our reaction to TDA I'd concur you shouldn't watch Threads. It's that much more intense.
- njharman 10y agoI was born in 1970. I grew up (~12 to 17-19) expecting to not live into adulthood. It wasn't always on my mind, but I thought there was pretty high likelihood of nuclear war. It was pervasive meme in the art(movies/books/etc) and news of the time. And nobody expected to survive, era of "duck and cover" were long over.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jghn 10y agoI feel like there always a background acceptance of this which younger people will never understand. I've had this conversation and they always say "yeah, it's like the threat of terrorism" and I try to make the point that global destruction was something a bit different. Much like terrorism though you didn't live in constant fear, but there was a certain gallows acceptance
- Diederich 10y agoI'm the same age as you, and I grew up in Southern California. Most of my peers didn't expect to survive to be adults, as you said. We weren't generally freaked out about it. We laughed grimly when we had earthquake and nuclear drills in school, both of which consisted of the same thing: getting under our wooden desks. We were completely surrounded by primary nuclear targets. A major oil refinery was a couple of miles away. I believe it's safe to argue that the most dangerous time in the cold war was in the first half of the 1980s. The Cuban Missile crisis in 1962 was a very close call, but we were really on and off the edge for most of 10 years in the late 70s and early 80s. Yet most everyone feels far less safe today than we felt then. How we feel about safety is rarely connected to how safe we actually are. I believe that unlimited information and communications is making us insane. How many tens of thousands were killed by gas attacks in the late 70s and early 80s in the middle east? We knew it was happening, but we didn't see it, as we do today. I won't go into this theory more now, I've posted it a number of times in greater length, so it's available in my post history.
- secfirstmd 10y ago
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y agoI've been thinking recently that we need a similar movie today to give us a stark picture of the reality of a world facing severe climate change.
- jacquesm 10y agoLet's hope it remains a vision and not reality. The way Trump and Kim are rattling sabers does nothing to make me sleep better. Neither of them appears particularly stable to me and both could do with a bit of a diversion from their other foreign and domestic issues. Wag the Dog squared.
- angry_octet 10y agoWhen I read this headline my first thought was 'pthreads are bad but calling them a nuclear holocaust seems a bit harsh'. And then I remembered that POTUS needs an external threat to make him look precedential.
- camperman 10y agoOne of the reasons Threads worked because it felt like a documentary about ordinary people. That bloody voiceover with its calm measured tones describing the absolute horror that was unfolding...brrr.
- pizza 10y agoIt isn't great that Trump said relations with Russia are at an "all-time low" earlier today..
- gdubs 10y agoCarl Sagan, for me, was always the clearest voice on the threat of Nuclear disaster. Here he is in 1986: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB7BKhWs8dQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB7BKhWs8dQ
- secfirstmd 10y agoNever forgot the first time i watched Threads. I was a teenager up late and flicking through TV, probably hasn't had a nightmare since i was 4 years old but I dam well did that night. Brilliant piece of work by the BBC.
- pmoriarty 10y agoBoth Radiolab and Hardcore History recently released programs on the threat of nuclear war.[1][2] [1] - http://www.radiolab.org/story/nukes/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/nukes/ [2] - http://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-59-the-destroyer-of-worlds/ http://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-59-the-destroyer-o...
- SAI_Peregrinus 10y agoThreads is undoubtedly the greatest horror film ever made. Monsters can't come close to the reality of what humans can do to each other.
- branchless 10y ago"pretty much everyone dies eventually, while rats, maggots, and the class system endure" Well written. Love that the author groups these three. The class system and rats are the last to leave the UK.
- interfixus 10y agoThere was this great surge of nuclear scare in the early eighties. Threads, The Day After, and on lighter note WarGames are among the movies which came out of that scare. I lived through those years. I was scared. I went and saw The Day After on what I believe was its first European showing, in Copenhagen a few days after the American TV airing had made a big splash in the news. It didn't tell me anything I didn't know, but I was seriously shaky all the same, going home that night. I'm still sort of incredulous to find us all alive in the 21st century. And at times I wonder - were we all just in silly hysterics back then? But then I read up a bit on things like Operation Able Archer, autumn 1983, and realize how clear and present the danger really was.
- BenMarking 10y agoHi all - I'm the author (backed by a very capable team) of the YouTube nuclear attack video. I appreciate the commentary and the dialogue about Threads, The Day After, The war Game, Fail Safe and other such movies, all of which inspired us in making our own modest production. Ben Marking.