5 ms·

I'm there with you man. Every time this comes up I point out that Cold War, and specifically Threads related PTSD, is a very real thing for UK Gen X!

seoulmetro 3y ago
Equating watching a scary drama in 1984 with something as severe as PTSD and saying it's a very real thing for an entire generation is over the top. Baby boomers, sure they dealt with the cold war pretty realistically.
- sundvor 3y ago
  Not quite "boomer" but vividly recall air alert sirens being played for evacuation exercises to seek shelters in Norway when I was a child of I guess 6 or 7 in the late 70s. "Better dead than red." That's another one I vividly remember circulating, a bit later (early 80s). The threat of nuclear war was very real. I guess we got lucky in the end.
- nocoiner 3y ago
  I dunno. Try watching it. It’s one of the few movies I’ve seen that I’d call literally “life changing” and certainly convinced me that nuclear war is the most immoral act our species is (currently) capable of undertaking.
  - beowulfey 3y ago
    I can relate to this a little. I had a similar experience (maybe not quite as strong, but still) when I first read On the Beach by Nevil Shute
    - nocoiner 3y ago
      I first read that back in high school and it is legitimately one of my favorite books - I re-read it every few years. I think in my area it was pretty broadly assigned reading at the time - lots of other high schools in the US assigned it - though no idea if that’s still the case (the book certainly isn’t perfect - the female characters are incredibly one-dimensional) but I hope it is still commonly read. I see On the Beach as being Threads-Lite. On the Beach is certainly upsetting but wow, does Threads show a more upsetting version of similar dynamics. Plus none of the characters of Threads are as uncomplicatedly virtuous as the characters of On the Beach.
  - seoulmetro 3y ago
    I've seen it. I've also seen some scary movies that make me scared of the dark, but that's not PTSD.
- marcus_holmes 3y ago
  UK-born Gen X here. We entirely expected to be nuked before we were 40. If millenials can have PTSD from climate change [0], then we had PTSD from the cold war. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/20/climate-emergency-anxiety-threapists https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/20/climate-...
  - seoulmetro 3y ago
    They can't have PTSD from climate change. Unless you want PTSD to just mean "uncomfort". In which case, everyone has PTSD. But then what does disorder mean if it's normal?
    - marcus_holmes 3y ago
      I agree, but apparently PTSD from climate change is a thing.
      - tremon 3y ago
        Doesn't the P in PTSD require climate change to be over before it can be classified as such? Shouldn't it be called Ongoing or Anticipatory rather than Post?
        marcus_holmes 3y ago
        true. Is the danger from nukes done now?
      - seoulmetro 3y ago
        Lots of fake ideas are "things".
    - truculent 3y ago
      Seems weird to play semantics with what is, as I understand it, a collection of symptoms. You wouldn’t gotcha the flu because it’s not actually caused by the stars’ influence, would you?
  - 3y ago
- UncleSlacky 3y ago
  It's on the Internet Archive if you want to see for yourself: https://archive.org/details/threads_202007 https://archive.org/details/threads_202007
- firecall 3y ago
  PTSD is a spectrum :-) As all disorders are. I can remember being in bed and hearing jets flying overhead and literally being terrified I was about to be nuked. These weren’t commercial airliners. I lived on the coast in the UK. It was airforce jets and it happened often enough for me to remember it. To this day I could not watch threads. The post Thatcher / Reagan / Gorbachev and Berlin Wall era in the 90s had a culture born out of Cold War trauma.
  - seoulmetro 3y ago
    Everything is a spectrum, but you either class it as X or you don't. This is not X. You don't have PTSD, you had a rational fear of something. Take a trip to any at war country and you still may fear planes overhead. But it won't give you PTSD.

seoulmetro 3y ago

Equating watching a scary drama in 1984 with something as severe as PTSD and saying it's a very real thing for an entire generation is over the top. Baby boomers, sure they dealt with the cold war pretty realistically.

sundvor 3y ago
Not quite "boomer" but vividly recall air alert sirens being played for evacuation exercises to seek shelters in Norway when I was a child of I guess 6 or 7 in the late 70s. "Better dead than red." That's another one I vividly remember circulating, a bit later (early 80s). The threat of nuclear war was very real. I guess we got lucky in the end.
nocoiner 3y ago
I dunno. Try watching it. It’s one of the few movies I’ve seen that I’d call literally “life changing” and certainly convinced me that nuclear war is the most immoral act our species is (currently) capable of undertaking.
- beowulfey 3y ago
  I can relate to this a little. I had a similar experience (maybe not quite as strong, but still) when I first read On the Beach by Nevil Shute
  - nocoiner 3y ago
    I first read that back in high school and it is legitimately one of my favorite books - I re-read it every few years. I think in my area it was pretty broadly assigned reading at the time - lots of other high schools in the US assigned it - though no idea if that’s still the case (the book certainly isn’t perfect - the female characters are incredibly one-dimensional) but I hope it is still commonly read. I see On the Beach as being Threads-Lite. On the Beach is certainly upsetting but wow, does Threads show a more upsetting version of similar dynamics. Plus none of the characters of Threads are as uncomplicatedly virtuous as the characters of On the Beach.
- seoulmetro 3y ago
  I've seen it. I've also seen some scary movies that make me scared of the dark, but that's not PTSD.
marcus_holmes 3y ago
UK-born Gen X here. We entirely expected to be nuked before we were 40. If millenials can have PTSD from climate change [0], then we had PTSD from the cold war. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/20/climate-emergency-anxiety-threapists https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/20/climate-...
- seoulmetro 3y ago
  They can't have PTSD from climate change. Unless you want PTSD to just mean "uncomfort". In which case, everyone has PTSD. But then what does disorder mean if it's normal?
  - marcus_holmes 3y ago
    I agree, but apparently PTSD from climate change is a thing.
    - tremon 3y ago
      Doesn't the P in PTSD require climate change to be over before it can be classified as such? Shouldn't it be called Ongoing or Anticipatory rather than Post?
      - marcus_holmes 3y ago
        true. Is the danger from nukes done now?
    - seoulmetro 3y ago
      Lots of fake ideas are "things".
  - truculent 3y ago
    Seems weird to play semantics with what is, as I understand it, a collection of symptoms. You wouldn’t gotcha the flu because it’s not actually caused by the stars’ influence, would you?
- 3y ago
UncleSlacky 3y ago
It's on the Internet Archive if you want to see for yourself: https://archive.org/details/threads_202007 https://archive.org/details/threads_202007
firecall 3y ago
PTSD is a spectrum :-) As all disorders are. I can remember being in bed and hearing jets flying overhead and literally being terrified I was about to be nuked. These weren’t commercial airliners. I lived on the coast in the UK. It was airforce jets and it happened often enough for me to remember it. To this day I could not watch threads. The post Thatcher / Reagan / Gorbachev and Berlin Wall era in the 90s had a culture born out of Cold War trauma.
- seoulmetro 3y ago
  Everything is a spectrum, but you either class it as X or you don't. This is not X. You don't have PTSD, you had a rational fear of something. Take a trip to any at war country and you still may fear planes overhead. But it won't give you PTSD.