I’m from Sheffield, born and bred. I had to watch Threads at school aged 10. It scared the hell out of me then and it still bloody does now. Without a doubt, Threads is the most frightening and utterly depressing piece of filmography ever made.
I watched this on my portable b/w Tele in my bedroom the night it was broadcast -I was 11. Im not from Sheffield, I was born and bred in Halifax so the scenery/accents were so familiar.... Terrible mistake. I spent the remainder of the 80's with knots in my guts waiting for the inevitable wail of air raid sirens. Unbelievable that 40 years later this film is more relivent than ever. The only difference now is I'm not waiting for the sirens I'm waiting for my phone to alert me. M.A.D.
You should be! If this ever happens it's the end. I grew up in the 80s and this was a terrible threat hanging over us, it went away and I hoped it would never come back, but it has. I hope your courage doesn't crumble. 😢
01:52 in this video ... Quote "Four people were killed today on the M6 motorway in Staffordshire When their car was in collision with a heavy tanker"... End quote THEY DON'T KNOW HOW LUCKY THEY WERE.
Sadly, the young actress giving birth in the end died a few years after the movie in a car accident. Her name was Victoria O'Keefe, she has her own page on Wikipedia.
Nukes do not exist, 10 to 20 kilotons bombs only, like the moab bomb, it was a fear weapon only, the footage of supposed bombs was dynamite stacked up and blown up, Plenty of footage of the stacking of tnt.
The scariest thing is there were more warheads than ever in the mid-1980s. Sure present-day weapons are way more powerful, which means their effects impact an entire country. But atmospherical pressures create winds that may blow fallout back towards the origin of the warhead. Does anyone in the comments who happens to be an expert in science, physics or weather agree with my opinion, or do they have a different approach to it ? If so, may they feel free to let me know
I still remember the permanent fear - living 30km from the west/east german boarder - and the words my grandfather said "If something happens, promise me you don`t seek shelter because the people who are been killed direcktly are the lucky ones."
Threads really affected me. Never before had I felt the inevitable weight of people's hubris, ignorance and callous disregard to life by those who easily commit readily to war - and the dreadful hopelessness, despair and reprehensible consequences as a result. We have all witnessed the same rhetoric, the same escalation and the same dismissal of human life and livelihoods as depicted in this clip here. Sometimes I despair, when I realise those in charge of and have power over our destiny have the minds of children in adult bodies, playing games like children, thinking childish thoughts, never seeing the solutions behind those immediately presented, never seeing the incalculable suffering as a result of their actions.
Well said. In the USA context: It is just jaw-dropping the attitude of those who waggle the flag even more fiercely b/c the sociopath @ the top labels themselves a 'Democrat'. Saint Obama comes to mind. These people will take pride in their analytical prowess & make sure you know they have it, yet it's not on used/applied for the last coupla years or so.
Watching in June 2024, I had rather wished that such potential horror had been put behind us but with current conflicts in Ukraine and the middle east and every chance of escalation it would seem the nightmare scenario is still possible..it doesn't help that we appear to have psychopaths in government...
@@yvonneplant9434 I lived through and during the height of the Cold War. I honestly don't think we were as in danger so much as the governmental hype around things made us think we were. Today? Yeah, today, we are skating on a knife-edge of "peace" much more so than during the Cold War, IMO. None of us in modern developed countries seem to have learned ANY lessons from the Cold War whatsoever, either. Humans have really poor memories as a species and a real talent for destruction.
@@GamingBrickClips The changes that have happened since 1984 have reduced the scale of a nuclear disaster: from about 66 000 nuclear warheads to around 16 000 in 2022 and command systems less likely to unleash a nuclear strike without confirmation a nuclear attack is occurring. That said, the UK is highly likely to suffer dreadful consequences, particularly if ground strikes follow first wave air burst attack. The horrors depicted in Threads warn us today that all nations should relinquish the possession and any use of nuclear weapons. Their possession and use would eclipse the Holocaust for unimaginable deaths and suffering.
@@danyoutube7491 Europe would be ravaged, and the UK probably would be destroyed. The mid-west USA would be blasted and heavily contaminated. Russia would lose virtually all its urban centres and known military facilities. China, India etc... dunno. There probably are not sufficient weapons to devastate any nations outside NATO+Russia.
Purchased Threads on DVD a few days ago having not seen it for whats coming up to 40 years, imagine a 14 year old watching this in a time when tensions between East and West were so bad. I wonder how today's young people would view this if it were done in a similar fashion only with a more modern environment they can relate too
@WaleedHiggins maybe there's simply no appetite for that much..... real. As I said what with video games that look almost real and 24hr news war isn't as scary as it was to those of us who lived and remember the cold War and the fear that instilled
@@WaleedHiggins I don't see it as strange, because the purpose of these films was propaganda that ceased to be relevant. The Soviets were losing the cold war, their system was crumbling, they couldn't' feed their people yet they were pouring billions into nuclear weapons. These films (Threads, Day After) were made by communist sympathizers in the arts to undermine the will and strength of the West. Once the Soviets did collapse a couple of years later, the point of this propaganda disappeared.
@@WaleedHiggins It's not closer in actuality, it's just defined that way by vested interests. The world is being run by woke governments who need to keep people under the thumb by scaring them. But anyone who was alive in the 1980s would laugh at the idea that things are tense these days.
I remember my parents talking about the cold war in this period and how we would take off to our cabin in the mountains if anything happened. It was on the back of peoples minds with the nuclear arms race back then, hence these films being made. Now history is repeating itself, and I think this is more dangerous now.
agreed, its 30 seconds to midnight at the moment, taking off to the mountains would only prolong your suffering though, an entirely human instinct (my plan was to head to the old nuclear bunker about half a mile from me) but the reality is survive the first few weeks, survive the blast, fall out etc, youd die of starvation, or civil unrest or most likely cancer, and as for what youd see, imagine the psychological effect of survival nah if there was a 4 minute warning id go and stand in the garden, the effect of the blast is quicker than the time it rtakes for your nerves to register the pain cheery stuff, have a great day🤣👍
@@utrapzab Yeah, I agree with you there. I wouldn't want to live through this kind of thing. Thankfully, I likely wouldn't since I live very near the US Navy nuclear sub base ordnance storage depot where the nuclear warheads are kept and maintained. My area of the country is already ringed in military bases of all sorts so we're a pretty high profile target and would likely go in the first wave of attack.
To be frank, I highly doubt anyone in the US would care. We're more obsessed with fanning the flames of our own internal divisions to pay attention to something like this and its ramifications. We're also more obsessed with social media and the size of Kim Kardashian's ass than to pay attention to the very real danger that this is going to happen. I think it WILL happen eventually. Maybe not in our lifetimes, maybe next week, who knows, but it's going to happen. At some point, a leader is going to decide it's in everyone's best interests to start nuking the enemy (on whatever side things are on) and it'll be game on and game over for Humanity. I wouldn't want to survive it either. It'll be a brutal struggle to merely survive and billions will die; some from radiation sickness, some from being murdered over resources, others because they're in someone else's way, some from illnesses we will no longer have medicines to treat, and from starvation during the nuclear winter as our plants and animals will also have a massive die-off, too. Even with that, people seem to think "oh, it won't happen to me" so they don't pay attention. It's horrifying the amount of apathy to things like this there is in the US.
It's too crooked and they no longer value your survival. 😂 Think about the last few years. Write it all down like a list on a piece of paper. Then add it together.
@robambrose4199 my older brother told me that Jaws lived in the toilet after I saw it when I was 4 or 5. Think I ended up nearly hospitalised, terrified to go for a shite.
"[Iran's] independence, irrespective of current Iranian hostility toward the United States, acts as a barrier to any long-term Russian threat to American interests in the Persian Gulf region." - Zbigniew Brzezinski (former National Security Advisor under Carter, and advisor to LBJ, Reagan, Bush 41, and Obama), "The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives" (1998)
The predecessor is THE WAR GAME and very gruesome too. A family burning in a car, burnt people killed wirh mercy shots, eyeballs melting... was silenced 20 yrs in Britain. 1965
Guns don't grow food - Farmers do that and killing people would simply mean less people to work out the infinite number of problems you would have to solve to survive in a world blown to pieces.
The teenage daughter studying while listening to classical music on her headphones is about to have her future ripped apart by something totally out of her control….. The dark side of being a teenager in the 80’s……
I was 14 when I watched this in 1985 , fortunately by then , the late , great Mikhail Gorbachev grandually swept out the paranoid hardline old guard & it was the beginning of the end of the Cold War.
Thank you for putting this together. I watched Threads I think 2 or 3 times, but the last time was maybe 5 years ago. It is haunting, but actually the terrifying part I find is the leadup which is this first segment you have made. The news reportage in this first pieces does make it seem very real (obviously the filmmakers effect) but to hear the radio and TV showing events in the Middle East has an uneasy echo with today 2024.... I also liked the pub scene they did 6:20 onwards - its very effective - when people watch the TV news and listen - it quitens down with the sobering news - then the pub owner switches the channel and then the pepole want to watch the news again!
I remember watching this as it was broadcast in the 80s. I heard our local warning system being tested one day while out with friends and didn't know if it was for real or not. I've never ran home as fast.
The best horror movie ever made because it is almost a reality that never happened but could still happen. The 3 words that send a shudder down my spine are when Bob, played by Ashley Barker utters the immortal line "they've done it" when he sees the mushroom cloud above Sheffield, awesome awesome film.
In the time this movie was made (and the same goes for "The Day After") people lived under the nuclear threat. Now we realize that that world was far more predictable and stable than the one we live in today. Beyond their war rethorics, world leaders were much more responsible and there was a sort of "gentlemen´s agreement" between them. Today most leaders are little more than street gangsters, anyone may have a nuke and anyone may push the button.
Still do have nuclear air defence missiles, and nuclear torpedoes in submarines and nuclear artillery shells and pretty much anything else you can fire off into the air or across land or into the ocean
The BBC did a film called The War Game in 1966. The top bosses said it would be too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting, but it was shown at a few selected cinema`s. 1985/19 years later it finally ended up on TV
Going to hell in a handbasket. I like how the film repeatedly focuses on the daily lives of the people, such as groceries, pubs, newspapers, getting to work. I was in high school in the early 1980s, I watched the Day After and many other nuclear war films (even Special Bulletin), but this was not on where I lived.
I remember this ,the bbc put out a news briefing and then showed threads .I. Live in N.Ireland and the troubles were still going strong. They made a an awful cartoon showing 2 elderly people being reduced to ash this was truly an awful time. Government leaflets came through our doors recommended to get under tables. After hearing an alarm.
'When the Wind Blows', from the same guy (Raymond Briggs) who wrote Fungus the Bogeyman and The Snowman. Except that WTWB was most definitely *not* suitable for small children!
You know, I think we're closer to nuclear war today than we ever were during the Cold War. I grew up during the Cold War and remember doing the nuclear attack exercises mandated in public schools here in the US (useless as we all now know them to be) and my parents didn't really shelter us kids from the exigencies of what was going on. They believed in educating us in the Cold War plus the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, both proxy wars between the US and USSR at the time. We are engaged again in a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine now, as well, but the stakes are higher since it isn't just the US and Russia who have nuclear weapons and who may choose to use them once the first shot is fired (nuclear shot that is). I truly think it's really only a matter of time before someone or an advisory committee thinks it'll be a good idea to actually use these weapons on "the enemy", whomever that may be, and I really do think it'll be game on around the world as countries settle differences or try to acquire territory. Civilians, as usual, will pay the heaviest price but that's war in general. Back then, there seemed to be a sort of unspoken agreement that weapons like this, although we had them, shouldn't actually be used. Sure, there was saber rattling and still is but today the rhetoric is sharper and much more aggressive and our leaders much different kinds of people than back in the Cold War. It doesn't help that politically unstable countries are also nuclear countries now and are kind of unknown players should a nuclear war break out. It's a genie we humans will NEVER put back into its bottle.
The only silver lining is communications/distancing is better and nuclear ICBMs are.. ironically cleaner The old Soviet nukes I think it was estimated at least 60% of them or more are prone to fail because of age, or are slow enough that they can be shot down Laser weapons have also come on a long way, meaning it's possible for lasers to "snipe" nuclear warheads before hitting at vastly more cost effective ranges The ones you have to watch out for are supersonic nuclear missiles, which the major powers are.. investing in Algae farms have also been put forward as the means of feeding a population in the case of a nuclear war, where it's estimated 90% of food supply will fail Assuming there's enough oil reserves and order/population tolerance, it's possible I would say for humans now to survive a WW3 with what we've learned, though the casualty rate will be beyond measure and countries will never be the same again Generally it's assumed though Russia will not have as much sway with nukes as they did long ago with China, because the Chinese have more to lose than the Russians (condensed cities, farmland, military being nepotistic), and total MAD can only work if there's no victor, if there is a victor (in the sense say, China survives but Russia does not) then there is no incentive to do MAD, because then the Chinese will just conquer the irradiated Russians. I'd expect in a WW3 scenario there'd be a lot of side changing right before the button moment. In fact I'd go so far as to say nowadays given that Mao is long gone and the Sino-Russian pact is no more the Chinese will just abstain with an alliance only good on paper and would gladly let the Russians nuke themselves into oblivion with the West. Which means a cratered Russia and a majority death toll in one Western continent either Europe or America.
I have very clear memories of watching this programme, and the timing was absolutely spot-on. Prior to this, it was only CND's The War Game (frequently shown at rallies and anarchist punk gigs) but nothing came close to Threads for the impact it had on EVERYONE. Incredible filmmaking, combined with actual newsreel footage showing numerous Cold War escalations from around the world. We've become acclimatised to the 'mockumentary' and 'reality t.v' format since this was made, but in 1984 it was very much in its infancy. The impression it left has never been surpassed in my opinion. Many thanks for posting.
I work in a city and like a few days after I watched this movie with it still on my mind, an air raid siren went off. Think they were just testing it as there was a news article on it afterwards, my heart literally sank when I heard it.
@@mc5869 @mc5869 I have to disagree. Maybe in a span of few hours as a peak danger - yes, it was then. But now we're on the months-long standstill. Far, FAR more dangerous than Cuban crisis in general.
YES!!!! If things keep happening with Putin and King Trump getting their Communist, Terrorist and Nazi evil hands on a: Biological, Chemical, and NUCLEAR weapons??? Plus, used it at US????!!!!! Then, it's the end of the world as we know it!!!! Plus, in the words of Einstein about weapons of World War IV (4)???? Sticks and Stones!!!!!
Eerie coincidence that James Cameron made the same mistake when me made the Terminator. 'Thursday' May 12th 1984 is the day Kyle Reese arrives from the future. (Which also depicts a nuclear holocaust)
"You do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes." James 4:14 (NIV)
Who is here that has been through the Cold War Era when we had AIR RAID SIRENS and AIR RAID DRILLS? Especially during the COLD WAR ERA? Do you remember DUCK AND COVER under your desks? Do any of you remember THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS and President Kennedys speech on NATIONAL TELEVISION. AN APPROPRIATE RETALIATORY RESPONSE.?
All world goverment leaders should watch this film and see what could happen if they all press that nuclear button. It's the only war this world has never had and it could happen any time!
What gives, OP? Did you have to cut the dramatic elements? Mick Jackson did superbly with a totally unknown cast. There's no doubt that Threads had a huge impact on UK consciousness of nuclear conflict and Reagan himself watched it.
They should show this again on all TV stations in the UK. One of the most incredible anti-ear movies EVER made. The US did their own, "The Day After," but it was nowhere near as horrific.
Shortly after ww2 Churchill had proposed a plan that was codenamed'operation unthinkable' The plan was for Great Britain, USA and what was left of the German army and invade the Soviet Union and spark ww3 to bring down communism. Even before the end of ww2 Churchill knew just how evil Marshall Stalin was.
I think this was made because of Able Archer in 1983. My father said that we would all go upstairs lay on the bed and hold hands. We really did come close, if wasn't for the Russian who refused to push the button. A very chilling time as a child.
Me and my father watched that movie going way back I was 10 years old when The First I watched it it was on Cable Channel Superstation WTBS and a year later I watched it on KDNL-TV 30.
Do you know what shocked me most about the dock your film is the advanced looking jet aircraft that they’re using Even in 2023 they don’t look amiss, I remember as a 3year old kid being scared shitless by low flying jets from raf Driffield in 1972!
Not that it's particularly relevant to the subject of this film, but Sheffield; the U.K's fourth largest city - really?! I know that comparing 'like' with 'like' when it comes to comparing statistics of this kind is notoriously difficult, cf, is one comparing what is within the official city boundary, the entire 'built - up' area, the metropolitan area, what? and what of contiguous towns, like in this instance, Rotherham? And so on; but still - fourth? I think all can agree that she comes behind London, Birmingham and Manchester, and though I don't know what the census figures are, I should have thought she was comparable with Liverpool and Bristol, but bigger than Leeds or Glasgow? No, I just can't see it...
The premise is preposterous. At the height of the Iran-Iraq war neither the Soviets nor Americans would have sent combat troops into Iran to "protect" oil fields nor anything else. Meanwhile, the Soviets already had their hands full in Afghanistan. British steel mills as a priority target? Preposterous.
I guess the BBC at the time ignored those facts in History. Just wanted to show only the consequences of the ultimate doomsday scenario. The fact that they didn’t factor in Iraq or the Afghan Mujahideen kind of shows this as more of a fantasy scenario.
Kirov class sustaining damage from the collision with a destroyer 😂 nice story, bro but the mass difference is ranging between 7 and 20 times between those two.
What is worrying..... This all sounds very familiar, building in the exact same way, and ANY sane leaders with sense.... would step away from the parapet and engage in talks not war. But you have Russia, that wants back the old 'USSR' You have Ukraine saying ''You won't take our land'' You have Putin saying, ''lets talk peace but we keep what we have taken'' You have NATO telling Ukraine ''Say no'' Ukraine closing down peace talks with Russia Putin saying ''don't escalate things further And NATO basically saying ''F Off'' So with a bunch of ego maniacs in charge, how the hell can the situation in Ukraine, not come too this?
It's funny how history has a habit of repeating itself. The current situation with the West facing off against Russia and China is similar to when the West faced off against Germany and Japan, except now they all have nukes.
In the same way that it didn't over Korea, or Vietnam, or Afghanistan. Or when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary or Czechoslovakia and many more. Neither side actually wants this to happen. Winning in Ukraine isn't worth guaranteeing their own destruction. Even for Putin and Russia.
These were some of the films of my childhood. Another is When the Wind Blows and The Day After - we grew up in the shadow of the Soviet bomb. Maybe these films should be shown to the current crop of clowns in the Russian government as they seem to freely throw around nuclear threats every day as if somehow they can win a nuclear war. Maybe they've forgotten what thermo nuclear war would mean for Russia....
I have this drama on DVD in German dubbing. It's frightening how actual this topic is, and all because there is an insane, power-hungry, fascist dictator in the Kremlin who seems to have his finger on the button every day.
