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I was 11 at the time the Berlin Wall came down, and I remember my mum waking me up and telling me to come downstairs. She was patiently trying to explain how i

I was 11 at the time the Berlin Wall came down, and I remember my mum waking me up and telling me to come downstairs. She was patiently trying to explain how important all this was, but as I sat there watching all of these people joyfully smashing a giant wall to pieces I kept thinking, "I wonder if I can ask for a sledgehammer for Christmas, if people on the telly are using them it must be okay for me". So yes, that was me growing up in the UK during the 80s. Cold War tensions, threat of nuclear war, proxy wars springing up all over the place and at the end of all that my abiding memory is "hmm, sledgehammers are cool!" That and the film Threads[0], possibly the scariest film I've ever watched and if offered the chance to watch it… DON'T. [0]: Nope, not linking to it. I'm doing you a favour, seriously.

jghn 12y ago
When I was a kid I remember watching Threads with my family. I had friends go on and on about how freaky The Day After was, which I never saw until about 2000 or so. Those kids who talked about being scared by TDA obviously didn't watch Threads at the time. I still shudder thinking about some of the scenes. I did rewatch it not too long ago and just kind of shrugged. I suppose that's a statement on both how far we've come in terms of actually fearing nuclear annihilation as well as the graphicness of horror movies.
- escapologybb 12y ago
  You know, I tried to rewatch Threads a couple of years ago just to see if I'd been desensitised to graphic violence. I hadn't been! I don't watch horror movies and graphic violence on the telly, they genuinely scare and disturb me. So that's my excuse for not making it through the first 45 minutes of Threads as an adult! I think one of the scariest things for me was that it was set in the north of England where I'm from. Normally disaster movies are all about London and the south-east corner of the UK if they are set in the UK at all. I'm from the North West, and it was the sheer ordinariness of the people that they managed to capture so perfectly that made themselves empathetic to me. It actually felt as though I might have known some of these people. I think it was that deep empathy that made it much easier to place oneself in their position, fucking terrible position though it was. You know, I was thinking about what you said about fearing nuclear annihilation and I think I'm more worried about it now. At least in the good old days there were only two likely candidates to start lobbing nukes about the place, these days who knows who's going to be the first to set one off.
  - jghn 12y ago
    Oh, I think that nuclear activity is at least as, if not moreso, likely than it was back then. But IMO it's much less likely for it to be a full scale, global thermonuclear war (to borrow a phrase). I just don't see people living in fear that any day might be the day that the entire world ceases to exist as we know it. For instance, I'm guessing that grade schoolers don't have a nuclear attack drill (which were laughable, now that I think back). Personally I fall into that camp, but if I woke up one morning to find out that some large city had a nuclear device go off in it via a terrorist attack, or (purely an example) Israel dropped a bomb somewhere in Iran, I wouldn't be surprised at all.
    - escapologybb 12y ago
      I agree with you 100% that the likelihood of global thermonuclear war has decreased, I definitely think it's going to be a small scale incident when it happens. If there is any such thing as a small-scale nuclear event. But yes, I don't think anybody would be surprised if there was a limited exchange between Iran and Israel one day. Or maybe a container ship containing a nuke goes off in a harbour somewhere in a terrorist attack, we'd be horrified, but not surprised. The thing that struck me as a kid was the mental image of two groups of generals and leaders sitting over a map, one in Downing Street and the other in the Kremlin. I always wondered why they didn't just play Diplomacy[0] instead, but play for real countries instead of the imaginary ones in the boardgame. They still get to do all the scheming, backstabbing and other diplomatic shenanigans that politicians seem to love but without the loss of life and destruction. Not sure my idea would gain traction these days though! [0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(game)
      - TeMPOraL 12y ago
        > I always wondered why they didn't just play Diplomacy[0] instead, but play for real countries instead of the imaginary ones in the boardgame. They still get to do all the scheming, backstabbing and other diplomatic shenanigans that politicians seem to love but without the loss of life and destruction. The reason is, of course, the metagame. The first one to drop a real H-bomb on the other or launch a real assault would win, hence both sides need to play at the least simulated level available. Also, you have just reminded me of ST:TOS episode "A Taste of Armageddon", where two planets fought a virtual war in which computers simulated the mutual bombing and after such fire exchange a computed number of people were euthanized.
arethuza 12y ago
One of the many interesting facts about Threads is that it is based on a rather optimistic view of what a Soviet nuclear attack on the UK would have been like! They used the official "Square Leg" exercise as a basis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Leg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Leg A real attack would probably have been far worse.... :-|

jghn 12y ago

When I was a kid I remember watching Threads with my family. I had friends go on and on about how freaky The Day After was, which I never saw until about 2000 or so. Those kids who talked about being scared by TDA obviously didn't watch Threads at the time. I still shudder thinking about some of the scenes. I did rewatch it not too long ago and just kind of shrugged. I suppose that's a statement on both how far we've come in terms of actually fearing nuclear annihilation as well as the graphicness of horror movies.

escapologybb 12y ago
You know, I tried to rewatch Threads a couple of years ago just to see if I'd been desensitised to graphic violence. I hadn't been! I don't watch horror movies and graphic violence on the telly, they genuinely scare and disturb me. So that's my excuse for not making it through the first 45 minutes of Threads as an adult! I think one of the scariest things for me was that it was set in the north of England where I'm from. Normally disaster movies are all about London and the south-east corner of the UK if they are set in the UK at all. I'm from the North West, and it was the sheer ordinariness of the people that they managed to capture so perfectly that made themselves empathetic to me. It actually felt as though I might have known some of these people. I think it was that deep empathy that made it much easier to place oneself in their position, fucking terrible position though it was. You know, I was thinking about what you said about fearing nuclear annihilation and I think I'm more worried about it now. At least in the good old days there were only two likely candidates to start lobbing nukes about the place, these days who knows who's going to be the first to set one off.
- jghn 12y ago
  Oh, I think that nuclear activity is at least as, if not moreso, likely than it was back then. But IMO it's much less likely for it to be a full scale, global thermonuclear war (to borrow a phrase). I just don't see people living in fear that any day might be the day that the entire world ceases to exist as we know it. For instance, I'm guessing that grade schoolers don't have a nuclear attack drill (which were laughable, now that I think back). Personally I fall into that camp, but if I woke up one morning to find out that some large city had a nuclear device go off in it via a terrorist attack, or (purely an example) Israel dropped a bomb somewhere in Iran, I wouldn't be surprised at all.
  - escapologybb 12y ago
    I agree with you 100% that the likelihood of global thermonuclear war has decreased, I definitely think it's going to be a small scale incident when it happens. If there is any such thing as a small-scale nuclear event. But yes, I don't think anybody would be surprised if there was a limited exchange between Iran and Israel one day. Or maybe a container ship containing a nuke goes off in a harbour somewhere in a terrorist attack, we'd be horrified, but not surprised. The thing that struck me as a kid was the mental image of two groups of generals and leaders sitting over a map, one in Downing Street and the other in the Kremlin. I always wondered why they didn't just play Diplomacy[0] instead, but play for real countries instead of the imaginary ones in the boardgame. They still get to do all the scheming, backstabbing and other diplomatic shenanigans that politicians seem to love but without the loss of life and destruction. Not sure my idea would gain traction these days though! [0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(game)
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      > I always wondered why they didn't just play Diplomacy[0] instead, but play for real countries instead of the imaginary ones in the boardgame. They still get to do all the scheming, backstabbing and other diplomatic shenanigans that politicians seem to love but without the loss of life and destruction. The reason is, of course, the metagame. The first one to drop a real H-bomb on the other or launch a real assault would win, hence both sides need to play at the least simulated level available. Also, you have just reminded me of ST:TOS episode "A Taste of Armageddon", where two planets fought a virtual war in which computers simulated the mutual bombing and after such fire exchange a computed number of people were euthanized.

arethuza 12y ago

One of the many interesting facts about Threads is that it is based on a rather optimistic view of what a Soviet nuclear attack on the UK would have been like! They used the official "Square Leg" exercise as a basis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Leg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Leg A real attack would probably have been far worse.... :-|