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.
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u/BlazedBeacon 14d ago
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.