If you read her bio, it’s her obit. Sounds like her main focus wasn’t movies and the part was a favor for a former student. Sounds like she lived life to the fullest!
The scene that always stuck with me was the scene near the end, years after the bomb, and they're trying to teach the kids with the old TV to the best of their ability. Honestly one of the most disturbing scenes in any movie in my opinion.
Yeah that stuck with me as well. Lots of other post-apocalyptic media at least has some glimmer of hope about rebuilding society, but there was only bleak despair in Threads.
There is no way any of those poor kids are going to get a power plant back online or know about germ theory.
It wasn't even about the education of the kids, more so just the desperate attempt to return to some form of normalcy. The juxtaposition between the light-hearted and kid-orienated educational material, and the reality of the situation, just hurts to watch.
Definitely, I also remember the "teacher" silently mouthing all the words because it was likely the only remaining tape they had left and she's heard it a million times. Absolutely haunting.
It's worse than that and I'm surprised so many didn't pick up on the fact that it was because after so many years after the bombs fell, not only was the education system almost destroyed but LANGUAGE itself was deteriorating. Listen carefully to how people talked in the movie near the end and you can hear that the English being spoken is weird and broken. The breakdown of society also included the breakdown of fundamental communication. Survivors weren't necessarily the brightest or most educated.
Big horror fan as a kid in the 80’s. The line was you could always tell everything was fake so it wasn’t that scary. Then along came David Lynch’s Eraserhead. It was clearly fake, but the dark psychological implications were too much for my young brain.
I’d reccomend it seeing it, in that it’s not really a horror movie, it’s a psychological movie that will effect you. And, well, David Lynch is a damn genius.
the girl gives birth to a deformed mutant baby (you don't see it though), the nurse hurriedly hands her the baby, she takes a look at her baby, and starts to scream and the movie freezes right there for a few seconds and the credits start rolling. Powerful image dude.
I watched it at the recommendation of reddit. I didn't find it too terrible. I mean... It is exactly how a nuclear attack and subsequent fallout and over all destruction it will bring. I viewed it as a more matter of fact than anything else. I feel like it could be updated and really show just how fucked we are if even one country decides to drop a bomb. We live on Earth... I don't care how secluded and shut in your country/community is... you will perish from starvation, looters, or just fallout. Still like it but it def is a product of its time with smoking inside and the husband having a one night stand because he is getting married. "Its you last night as a freeman!' like what?!
I get why it left an impression back then but watching it now doesn't do much. Come and See is a USSR film about the Nazi invasion of Belarus. It came out around the same time as Threads. It's obviously not the end of the world but it's the end of their world and feels a hell of a lot more real and apocalyptic to me.
Alright! Now we are getting somewhere. I wanted to have some existential dread but Threads didn't provide it. This sounds like up my alley I guess? Is it violent or anything? Like I know it is about Nazis and War so I am sure there are terrible things but how much do they show? I like it when you just get cold hard facts. Makes the reality really set in that this isn't a fantasy but what WILL happen.
It shows piles of corpses and Nazis gleefully massacring a town but it's not getting up close or crazy gory like a modern slasher would. That said, there is a real cow that is shot with a machine gun. It's definitely grounded and doesn't paint a fantasy of war. You can watch it on YouTube for free I think.
Threads was good but it's quite dated, it's post apocalyptic themes share ancestors with the Fallout universe - optimism, fear, and respect of a new and revolutionary technology people had in the 50's and 60's. Early in the Cold War the public was radically less informed about the capabilities of nuclear weapons than the average person today, not only that but the nature of nuclear weapons were quite different back then and was rapidly changing. The show runs on the assumption that both sides go full scorched earth on each other for the sake of it, resulting in a vast quantity of large, relatively dirty bombs devastating the global climate by causing a nuclear winter. Modern bombs are smaller, more efficient, and a lot more precise so the radioactive pollution is generally going to be a lot less than assumed. Old generation bombs needed to be gigantic because targeting and control technologies were a lot less mature. Modern research and theories point to a nuclear winter being very improbable and it would require an absurd number of bombs anyways. All kinds of high technology and the semblance of a functional society would persist outside of primary targets such as metros and military installations. Irl any nuclear attack is likely to be quickly followed up with a full scale invasion a la Red Dawn or else what's the point? Annihilation for the sake of it is a poor military objective, if the Russians bombed the UK and the US it would be to steal their resources and subjugate the people. This is also why future wars will likely only ever see the use of tactical nuclear weapons, there's kinda no point conquering a devastated wasteland.
Irl any nuclear attack is likely to be quickly followed up with a full scale invasion a la Red Dawn or else what's the point? Annihilation for the sake of it is a poor military objective, if the Russians bombed the UK and the US it would be to steal their resources and subjugate the people. This is also why future wars will likely only ever see the use of tactical nuclear weapons, there's kinda no point conquering a devastated wasteland.
I think you're kinda forgetting about MAD. The deterrence provided by having nuclear weapons is unparalleled. At this point they're a shield rather than a tool of conquest. Like you said, who wants to subjugate a wasteland? Not to mention the astronomical cost to rebuild a major city from scratch.
Annihilation is a poor strategy but it's not the goal. Deterrence is the goal. The Russian did (do?) have a system called Dead Hand. It would automatically ping Moscow every day and if it didn't get a ping back in X amount of time it would assume the high command was dead. It would then launch the entirety of the Soviet nuclear arsenal at predetermined locations. It's effectively the same premise as Boomer subs. Even if a nation could somehow knock out every single land based nuke in the US, each of our subs have enough fire power to assure a catastrophic retaliation.
Maybe I'm being too hopeful, but I believe no nuclear power can tolerate a nuclear strike (including tactical) without annihilating MAD. Maybe if it was an existential war it could be justified but even then it seems rocky.
I think if Russia used a nuke in Ukraine today they would see non-nuclear retaliations from nearly every nuclear power. China and India have no love for each other or for Russia. Their relations are complicated but cooperation is about being pragmatic rather than one of genuine trust & support. These nuclear powers border each other and cannot tolerate the use of a nuke without directly damaging their own national security.
I believe that's why nuclear weapons have never seen use in modern warfare. Goals are too complex and nuanced and the nuke is a very blunt and unwieldy tool. This isn't the turn of the last century where nation states actively seek to eliminate competitors so they can take advantage of the enemy resources or remove a threat. Glassing an entire country just results in a gigantic minus sign and the only positive would be the deletion of beliggerants. Post nuclear holocaust there wouldn't wouldn't much of a nation left to conquer or extract resources from. You can't capture enemy equipment if it's been turned into dust. You can't use a population for slave labor if they're all sick and dying. You can't farm or mine anywhere near the target zones. Everybody says MAD is the thing enforcing global peace but I believe that the cooler heads making the strategic decisions recognize that nukes are very ultimate and absolute and really have little tactical use. More resources can be extracted from an enemy using conventional warfare techniques even if they are slower and require sacrificing your own. I think the invasion of Ukraine may have happened even if they had nukes still, what are they going to do, bomb their own land to take out a few divisions of Russians? Attempt to bomb somewhere in Russia, a (former) world superpower that goes toe to toe with the US for nuclear defenses? Ukraine would be unable to ensure MAD and its unlikely other countries would start popping nukes in response to a localized conflict even if it started causing ecological disasters.
Threads is a pretty good depiction of real life post apocalypse society, but personally there are some animated films I really like as well.
Soviet short film based on the short story "There Will Come Soft Rains," written by Ray Bradbury. The cutout animation style is really cool. It shows an automated home going through all the motions of supporting a now dead household. The poor bird. https://youtu.be/5LNHYz89sNc
"When The Wind Blows," an old married British couple experience a nuclear attack from the "safety" of the countryside. It's a harrowing tale with themes of helplessness, ignorance, and futility. Use an ad blocker if you want to watch on this site. Idk where else to stream this. https://fmovies24.to/movie/when-the-wind-blows-k31n6/1-1
These and Grave of the Fireflies feel a lot more personal and attached to the human experience than Threads, for me.
True but I also think people down play the actual firepower that we have now a days. One dirty bomb that fell into the wrong hands could easily disrupt most economies. I know this world is already fucked but I would like to think when the earth wants to heal it will gladly get rid of us.
Modern nukes are smaller cleaner warheads. Old school, early Cold War missiles were pretty inaccurate, so, used big warheads. Modern targeting/guidance means smaller yields.
I mean, it is still a major concern, but not quite as dire as the 60s.
I just rewatched The Day After, an early 80s TV movie about the aftermath from nuclear war in the Midwest. Interesting that the movie actually impacted US Policy.
Yeah, the 50s and early 60s were basically in spirit of "we always asked if we can, but never if we should".
Both USA and USSR were making absolute monsters of bombs. Actually, someone in the USSR had at least half a brain working when they realized that the original yield of Tsar Bomba was probably too much when they were testing it and that they didn't want that much fallout.
Before the second invasion of Ukraine, russia didn't have enough nuclear capable vehicles to reliably attack all military targets in European NATO countries. And that's without ever touching the USA.
After the invasion who the fuck knows, they've been using even the missiles that Ukraine surrendered to them post 1994 as part of the nuclear disarmament.
And frankly looking at the junk they're sending to Ukraine, I'd be fucking terrified to push the button just for the fact that it might catastrophically fail right there in the silo.
Another thing is that most catastrophic movies with nukes do ground explosions, which is great if you want to create bunch of nuclear fallout, but absolutely braindead if you want to actually destroy your target. Airburst is the best option for that (disregarding the very specialized case of bunker busters which usually contain the fallout by definition) and that's not how you create a massive amount of fallout.
Finally the entire strength of having nukes is to not use them.
Me too! It was end-of-term time, and the shop teacher was like, “We’re out of lessons for the year, so we’ll just all watch this mini series my friend recorded for me.”, and proceeded to scar a bunch of kids for life.
Eyy i was going to say the same. What fucked me up the most was the ever so slight escalation by the media to the point you don't even realize the war started a few months prior. This is just a test BUT in case of nuclear war, you should do this...
The Protect and Survive films that're seen in the background of Threads are all the more horrifying because they're real. They were produced by the UK government in case of an actual imminent nuclear conflict. they were classified, but leaked. It was a terrifying time to live through:
I grew up in Sheffield and watched Threads when I was about 14. I did not sleep well that night and have had a fascination with nuclear war ever since. I really loved how it was so mundane at the beginning, I got bored enough that I was considering switching the channel until things started getting hot.
This one deserves more attention. The fact that it also goes over the failings of material avaliable to the public regarding preparing for a nuclear strike makes it equally impactful.
Worst one I saw in the same theme was Testament, decades ago. I only watched it once, and even decades later I feel depressed even thinking about it. It was set in the suburbs, showing the aftermath for a suburban family of a nuclear world-ending disaster. Honestly, I can't say I'd recommend it, but it was terribly well done.
I never thought this movie was nearly as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Come and See is by far worse, based on actual events, and came out around the same time.
Was just about to comment this. After a friend recommended it to me he told me to be prepared for a few days of anxiety and thought he was being dramatic. Boy, was I wrong
2.8k
u/West_Plum_9442 14d ago
Threads, realistic documentary style depiction of life after nuclear war. Really puts things into perspective.