I've just watched the film 'Threads' for the first time. If you haven't seen it already, don't watch it!

[worriedhidinginplainsight]

I have been following some of the 'threads' on MN regarding people being scared of WW3/Nuclear war. Personally I don't worry about it. I have always been firmly in the camp of not worrying about something that I have zero control over. Also not worrying about something in the future, to the detriment of today. However, I noticed this particular film mentioned a few times during the discussions so today, out of curiosity, I decided to watch it.

What a mistake that was! It was a horrible terrifying watch. I would not recommend that anyone else watches it! Quell your curiosity.

It's just left me feeling really horrible and feeling like as humans we are all so vulnerable. I also felt very worried about my cat, if anything like that were to happen! Innocent animals would suffer so much because of very dangerous humans. If humans didn't exist, and the world was populated by only animals, it would be a much safer and peaceful place.

It did seem like a nuclear bomb would transport the survivors back to medieval times. In a way it has also made me feel that as humans we are pretty amazing, how we have built up and created our societies, technology, engineering. I feel really grateful for what we have.

But overall it was horrible and I wish that I never watched it.

This evening I have found myself on Amazon looking up gas masks, fireproof boxes and googling all about prepping!!

I need to forget about this film!!

In Australia the AIDS awareness ads were terrifying. It was the grim reaper rolling bowling balls at people.It was a lot scarier than it sounds. I'd just watched "Psycho" and found the ads scarier. Yes, my parents let me watch Psycho when I was about 10 and then decided they were tired and went to bed, leaving me alone watching. The ad seemed to be played at any time of day and a slogan about how anyone can get AIDS. There's no way that would get made now.
Also, in the 80's we just casually mentioned MAD ( mutually assured destruction) like that would suck but oh well. There was the nuclear disarmament party they were mostly older people though.

@Wahoobafoo I'm not saying children should be sheltered from everything but I'm not sure why they should watch it? It's not as if we can do anything to prepare for a nuclear winter. Films like Threads, When The Wind Blows, and The War Game surely showed us the futility of attempting to survive such a scenario.

I meant with a modern setting.

Cause I don’t think teens and twenty somethings would identify with it now… it’s from a bygone era they don’t remember

I don’t think children should watch it. I meant young people- Gen Z and millennials. I can’t imagine they are watching this on iPlayer

I work at an RAF base so I'm probably first in line for obliteration! Thank goodness!

I don't want to be wandering the.country in some sort of post apocalyptic waste land!

But why? I agree it's a well made drama.

Both my children were shown this at school. Dd1 watched it as part of her A Level history course (Cold War). I think dd2 was a little younger - possibly GCSE English Literature course.

Meant to say they're now only 23 and 19 so not that long ago really

Those kids in Threads survived though. Tbh, I think that’s worse and it would be better to immediately die.

A short time after it was shown. maybe a couple of weeks we had a power cut and when we tried the radio it was going on and off intermittently. This had been portrayed in one or the other as something that happens due to fallout.

As well as Threads there had been a US series and I had not long read Z for Zachariah.

We lived near the top of a hill with houses all around. Where my brother's girlfriend lived further down the hill they saw a red mushroom cloud.

Brother's girlfriend and neighbours thought it was the start of the end so they did things like check neighbours had candles, if they had a gas hob they boiled water for tea.

Basically just carried on as you would for any other inconvenience.

The mushroom cloud was, I believe, from a power station or sub station that was on fire, although I can't find a reference for it.

@Frankley I remember Survivors - the opening sequence and music were really effective, scary and well done. I rewatched it on video/DVD as an adult and still liked it. It’s not as hard-hitting as Threads, but excellent.

There was a remake some years ago, which was pretty good, but it got cancelled after one series, I think.

If you’re interested, the book by Terry Nation, (he wrote the original TV series and also Dr Who), is excellent. Some of the original cast from the 70s also read some spin off stories for Audible.

because younger modern people don't pay attention to any of our experiences or films. It must be made up to date, more modern, flashier - and with only young people up to the age of 25. (they can't hear older voices, it just comes across as a low rumble in their ears)

</sarcasm(possibly)>

I avoided watching Theeads based on the opinions here.

I remember watching Testament when I was in my mid teens and that was frightening enough (and probably a lovely gentle happy movie in comparison to Threads)

Threads* sigh.

I'm in the "grab my family and walk into the flames" club. We're not built for nuclear survival.

We were made to watch it at school when I was about 11 or 12 and I had nightmares for years afterwards. Truly horrible, don't watch it!

I haven't seen Threads but I watched Japanese animation Barefoot Gen as a kid. Its an account of a person who was a little boy during Hiroshima bombing. I cant even explained how horrific it is.

This, and Civil Defence lessons at school (USSR in the 80s) screwed me up so much I used to get hysterical during thunderstorms - because we were told nuclear explosion sounds similar to thunder. At around 7 I knew the effects of the radiation poisoning and what being close to the explosion does to a human body. Where to lay to escape the initial blast and how to make a makeshift gas mask by peeing on a piece of cloth. Urgh...

Sometimes its better not to know.

I watched it as a teenager in the 80 s it gave me nightmares for years ,I tried watching it again on I player a few weeks ago i got up to the bomb just going off and turned it off I couldn't bear it again.

Yeah the UK had tombstone adverts about AIDS ,it was the don't die of ignorance campaign they were pretty awful too ,I think we are probably a similar age ,the whole campaign affected a generation of people and whilst I know the treatment etc has moved on hugely since the 80,s and its no longer considered a " killer" its hard to forget those adverts

For anyone traumatised by Threads, can I recommend the original 1970s version of Survivors as a cheer up? I was a teenager at the time and everyone seemed to think it was scary (aftermath of a pandemic, a really bad one)

In retrospect, there are a few hard hitting moments but on the whole it is all so civilised that it resembles a Noel Coward comedy rather than a dystopian future. The cut glass accents, the lovely countryside with an assortment of gorgeous mansions to shelter in, people working together for the greater good and the baddies firmly dealt with.

It's quite fabulous but I think Threads is rather more realistic

I don't care what anyone says. This is not suitable viewing for 11/12 year olds. Not then and not now. It's not about shielding children from the harsh realities of life, it's about recognising that young, developing brains may not be capable of coping with the very graphic and realistic scenes portrayed and also with the sheer magnitude of how vulnerable and lacking in true autonomy we are as human beings. I grew up in NI during the Troubles and, at the age of 10, I sat in a black cab with a poster of a charred, dead body pinned to the glass panel that separated the driver and passengers. I stared at it throughout the 15 minute journey. I knew who it was because the story had been all over the news. That night I woke up screaming. And the next night. And the next. Until I was finally put on Valium. I saw that body everywhere I went. In the play park. On the bus. In school. Other children probably saw that poster, wondered about it, then got on with their lives. But there were probably some who suffered as I did and felt unbearable anxiety and fear and had what amounted to PTSD. If I had seen that poster as an adult, no doubt it would have upset me, but as a child it hit me so hard. This was of course in the context of an already existing situation where death was a real possibility every single day. I can't even begin to imagine how horrific it must have been for the family of that person when I, a complete stranger, was affected so much.

Remember this from 1980s. Horrifying. My sister used to cry in bed as a child she was so fearful of nuclear war. Last night my teen came into my bed worried as she'd been watching news about Russia/Ukraine missiles. Worried we are heading to WW3.

I watched it as a young teen, will be rewatching it this weekend as it’s on I player. DH also Gen X so also around at height of the Cold War as a kid with all the get under your desks and information pamphlets doesn’t think he has seen it.

@ForPearlViper nightlights in the bathroom, sugar shortages, rubbish piling up in the streets because of the strikes, bodies left not buried at one point. The Miners strike with all the scrapping and hatred in the 1980’s. I grew up on the South coast so the miners seemed a million miles away I ended up settling in an ex mining area close to 30 years ago, still very strong opinions and families that do not get on because of that time. I worked with a woman whose Dad was a union steward for the NUM and she said dead animals were nailed to some of the scabs doors near where she lived.

I remember people queuing up to get free butter and tins of meat in the 1980’s at the church I went to as part of the EE butter mountains being distributed.

I remember huge parts of Threads to this day. It started off my love of post apocalyptic films, in a true world wide apocalypse it’s always better to die in the first wave.

I remember the opening credits to the 70s Survivors thing, and while it was nice and middle class (the scene of Abby cutting off her hair in her lovely home counties house stan.ds out, as does the sudden deference shown to the chap who revealed he was a vicar by putting his white shirt on backwards to make a dog collar)
But it wasn't all lovely, there were gangs and hoarding and rape (which puts me in mind of Day of the Triffids which i read as a young teenager, then again a few years ago, that has some awful awful post-apocalyptic stuff in it)

But. I was an army kid, so i grew up around bases and posters with "be on time, mask in nine" (for bio weapons) and knowing that at certain postings we'd most certainly be a target. We just got on with it. I'm not sure what my parents thought, but coming from military on both sides I'm sure it was all "keep calm and carry on".
Then when i was in the army and doing NBC drills (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical [warefare]) the official line was: when you see the flash, drop down, hands underneath you, face down, eyes closed, preferably under something stable. then when the shockwaves are over, suit up and do your job. Inoficially: put your head between your legs and kiss your arse goodbye. I remain philosophical about it, but I'm also a "run into the blast" type.

Only a crazy person would go nuclear. Cyber hacking is the big threat. Shut down a banking system, a power grid and you can threaten a country. Look at the Salisbury Novichok incident. Just a threat of that on a larger scale is terrifying. ,hard to identify the aggressors and the compound easily transportable.

I thought The Day After was shocking but Threads is on another level.
Maybe because its set closer to home and seemed very realistic.

I liked the ‘realistic’ way it was made but yes very troubling