Threads - BBC4 - 9 October 10.15pm

[AlecTrevelyan006]

Probably the most harrowing television show ever made, Threads follows the build up to and aftermath of a nuclear attack on Great Britain.

It is being broadcast for only the fourth time, and the first time since 2003.

If, like me, you watched it first time around you will never have forgotten it. If you’ve never seen it before, it is a must-watch - but prepare to be traumatised.

I noticed that Bernie from Corrie was in it as Alison - Jimmy's sister, there are a few famous faces in the cast

@Netaporter I saw it the first time in school , Modern Studies teacher played in on VHS.
The part that stuck with me for years was the bit where she gives birth in the shed and has to bite the umbilical cord with her teeth! I would have been 11 or 12 when I saw it …
If a teacher put it on for a class of 11 year olds now can you imagine the complaints from parents the next day !

Age 11/12 is waaaay too young. How awful for you.

Yes I think so too
What was the teacher thinking !
Same modern studies teacher also put on the Oliver Stone film “ JFK” over a few lessons which is pretty violent and defo wasnt rated for 11-12 year olds.

So a random question

Presumably the Royal Family would have gone to a bunker somewhere.]

But then what. Would they just live their lives out in the bunker? The nuclear winter would affect them. How would society work? The armed forces - their families would have been affected.
Money, property, property ownership...meaningless

Who would have power - and how would it be wielded.

I remember him mainly from Home to Roost with John Thaw.

Yes this is so interesting, I wonder what the official plan / protocol for this type of attack is…
Would it be like in Threads ?
I thought they disbanded / mothballed all the Cold War era bunkers ?

I do like wondering about these things.

I wonder how life would be for the billionaires, the Musks and Zuckerbergs and Bransons of the world who have invested in nuclear proof mansions on their private islands.

And for the Swiss, where every house snd apartment has a nuclear bunker ready stocked for six months, how would they fair? Would they be able to rebuild their society? (the law requiring any new building to have this only changed about a decade ago)

I imagine society would look like the dark ages again. Small communities living basically with basic power hierarchy based on who is physically strongest, probably with religion becoming very powerful again in absence of any other information flow or belief system.

@Imperfectionist Wait , what ! All Swiss houses have nuclear bunkers ?

He was also in Coronation Street as one of Gail Platt's husbands, Joe McIntyre (father of Tina McIntyre, played by Michelle Keegan).

New Zealand/Australia, Argentina, South Africa the places reckoned to be the most likely to emerge as new powers after a global nuclear war.

The Monarch and immediate family would be out of the UK as soon as the threat increased to the point whereby it was likely, and afterwards would probably end up on some island in the Pacific, New Zealand, or wherever was least affected.

The ridiculous thing about it is even if the Royals were vaporised and the entirety of the UK turned into a sheet of glass, whatever remained of the UK establishment, whether it was up in the air, in Canada, the south Pacific, or wherever, would immediately just find some distant relative, coronate them, and continue calling the vestiges the "UK" and carry on as before.

I had some nascent crush on Reece Dinsdale but it all evaporated when he was in a drama that involved Keith Barron rutting with Maggie O'Neill in the back of a taxi 🚖 😱

In the event of an actual nuclear war would there be some parts of the world that would be relatively unscathed?
I admit I didn't and won't watch threads ,because I watched it in the 80 s and it terrified me
How many nuclear bombs would it take to destroy the UK,?

According to this article 2-300 to kill everyone but over 100 you start to get environmental consequences that affect everyone including the country that sent them, even without retaliation.
I have no idea how accurate or widely accepted this is.
I wouldn’t have thought it would take many to pretty much paralyse us though and obviously only one would cause incalculable suffering and trauma.

According to On the Beach, nobody was going to survive, the radiation gradually got everyone, but it took about a year longer to get to Australia (and presumably a little longer to New Zealand).

But I guess it depends if it was a full on attack with several modern warheads or a few Hiroshima sized bombs, which were terrible, but localised.

As I understand it, On The Beach isn’t scientifically accurate (even by standards of knowledge at the time) and the idea of a wave of fallout killing everyone is wrong.
But the clouds of dust that would be sent into the climate would cause considerable damage to agriculture. Even a 10-20% lower crop yield would starve a lot of people.

Looking at graphs of the number of nuclear weapons in the world, they peaked in 1985 and have fallen a lot since.

Has anyone caught the director talking about it on iplayer? Only short but quite interesting.

I've been ver intrigued by a novel recently discussed on Atomic Hobo (again) called Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban.

It tries to imagine life 2000 years after an atomic bomb drops on the UK, and is written in a lingo the author tries to imagine the language would have turned into over time. A really fascinating premise, I really should get round to reading!

Once you get used to the style of English, it's a good read. This isn't a spoiler but the sound the wild dogs make when they eat people is 'Arga warga'.

I wonder how life would be for the billionaires, the Musks and Zuckerbergs and Bransons of the world who have invested in nuclear proof mansions on their private islands.

The astonishing wealth of those people comes from the businesses they run and in a post nuclear world those businesses would be completely worthless, so I can't see them being especially desirable to keep around. The likes of those men will have created a lot of resentment in one way or another and I imagine they'd either stay in their shelters forever or emerge and be promptly slaughtered.

The likes of those men will have created a lot of resentment in one way or another and I imagine they'd either stay in their shelters forever or emerge and be promptly slaughtered

Heartening to know that global nuclear annihilation does potentially come with an upside.

I got halfway through and switched it off, it was bleak and now I'm sat here needing something to cheer me up. Not sure if I want to watch the rest.

But by God did we like traumatising children back in the 80s. What with showing this in schools and the government safety adverts I'm surprised Gen X aren't a quivering mess.

How did this pass me by?? I was mid 20's then , sounds horrific

I think I muddled the story up in my memory - we did z for Zachariah in England o grade and then watched the video. There was a scene of the guy stripping off and getting into the river because it was safe. I remember being shocked by the Willy more than the post apocalyptic horrors. Which is interesting to reflect back on in my 50s, I’m now very comfortable with a penis but not so keen on nuclear bombs. Funny how things change.

Just watched this for the first time, absolutely horrific, way worse than modern dystopian horrors. Finished it about an hour ago and can’t get to sleep, unbelievably and unrelentingly bleak. Genuinely wish I hadn’t watched it, especially on a Sunday night!