Threads

A woman, who has just survived a nuclear bomb, holding her child, who hasn't.

"In an urban society, everything connects. Each person's needs are fed by the skills of many others. Our lives are woven together in a fabric. But the connections that make society strong, also make it vulnerable."

—Opening narration

"People will not have seen a film like this before. A lot of people saw The Day After but they could dissociate from it because it portrayed an American experience. The War Game was good but it is out of date now."

—Barry Hines, screenwriter

Threads, a 1984 docudrama produced by The BBC, is the United Kingdom's answer to America's The Day After (which came a year earlier). Britain has quite the history of post-apocalyptic fiction on its DVD and book shelves, and Threads is among the most disturbing.

The film depicts the terrifying consequences of nuclear warfare upon an unsuspecting world. Set mainly in Sheffield during the height of the Cold War, Threads follows two families, the Becketts and the Kemps, as they deal with the absolute destruction of their society as a result of nuclear war with the Soviet Union (which at the time of release was somewhat more likely than it is today) The film is ultimately hopeless and pessimistic, ending with a dystopian world where children are undereducated savages, the ozone layer is depleted to dangerous levels, capital punishment is law and Survival Of The Fittest is the only way to get by.

To any would-be viewers: if you're looking for a story with a happy or hopeful ending this movie is not the way to go, and a strong stomach is pretty much mandatory.

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Tropes used in Threads include:

• Anyone Can Die: Played brutally straight; most do. Though it's not always clear who dies, which probably is intentional. Jimmy's sister Allison may be the young blonde woman glimpsed at an internment camp for looting suspects several weeks later. Jimmy himself may be seen near the end of the movie with a scarred face. We just don't know.
• Apocalypse How: The movie ends somewhere between Class 1 and Class 2. Although the human population of the UK is reduced to medieval levels and the nuclear winter, fallout, and loss of modern infrastructure and technology has made sustaining a viable population extremely difficult, they still retain some technologies. A montage of photos suggests that after about ten years post-war Britain is capable of generating some electricity, and is able to manufacture and maintain steam-era technology. It's hinted that conditions may worsen into a Class 4, due to the effects of nuclear winter.
  • Threads was in production at the time Carl Sagan, one of the film's advisers, published The Cold and The Dark: The World After Nuclear War (expanding on his pamphlet The Nuclear Winter from 1983)--because of that, Threads takes nuclear winter into account, while The Day After (which was in production when these studies were either not conducted or not publicly available) doesn't.
• Auto Erotica: A backseat makeout session with Jimmy and a girl he's picked up at the pub is suddenly interrupted by the movement of tanks past their car.
  • And earlier, Jimmy's and Ruth's baby apparently was conceived in a car.
• Away in a Manger: Ruth gives birth in a stable on Christmas Day, unable to reach the farmhouse because there was a guard dog in the way.
• Blooper: Despite having been born after the attacks and having spent her whole life in the primitive postwar "society," Ruth's daughter Jane has a tooth filling and pierced ears for ladies earrings. It's nice to know that, even in a post-nuclear apocalypse world, no girl or woman goes out without some sort of jewelry adorning them.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: An antique steam traction engine is seen being used for farming.
• Bring My Brown Pants: When the first mushroom cloud rises, a woman wets herself.
• British Accents: Sheffield specifically.
• Cold War: The film was set and released during the height of the Cold War. It's deliberately left unclear as to who launched the first attack (although narration stating that the Soviets make their attack "when it's around 2AM in Washington, when the President is asleep and Western response will be slowest" implies the Soviets may have launched first). Television announcements in the background state that the Soviets invaded Iran, and that this led to some sort of escalation from each side using tactical nuclear weapons on bases in the Middle-East to eventually a full-scale strategic nuclear exchange.
• Crapsack World: And how. Basically, from the moment the bomb drops, nothing good happens.
• Cycle of Revenge: The escalation scenario that leads to Armageddon in the first place. After a coup in Iran, the Soviet Union invades to gain a toehold in the Middle East. The Americans send in paratroopers and set a deadline for withdrawal, and when the Soviets don't back down they send bombers after their main staging base in Iran. The Soviets destroy most of the aircraft with a nuclear-tipped air defense missile. The Americans then destroy the base with a single battlefield nuke. In return the Soviets nuke the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, the Americans blockade Cuba, and after that it gets kind of hazy...
• Dead Hand Shot: Numerous bodies sticking out of rubble, many burned beyond recognition.
• Death by Irony: Ruth's parents are in an excellent position to survive the war. They take shelter in the basement of their sturdily built house, which is fairly far from the epicenter of the nearest blast, and they have ample provisions. But then a group of looters break into their house and murder them.
• Death Trap: As soon as things start looking hairy, the Sheffield emergency council meets in the converted basement of the town hall. It's stocked with food, water, comm equipment and an emergency generator - pity that A-bomb had to knock down the entire building on top of the exit. The ceiling^[1] holds and they can give^[2] orders via phone and radio, but they're trapped with limited food, water and air. Four weeks later, a squad of soldiers finally dig their way to the bodies.
• Depopulation Bomb: People born after the attack are often mutated. People born before the attack don't last long in general.
• Death From Above: The modus operandi of ICBMs.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Averted very soundly.
• Doomed Protagonist: Let's just say, try not to get too attached to anyone.
• Downer Ending: At any given point after the attack, it's hard to imagine that things could get much worse. Until they do. So, just as humanity seems to have limped along into an early industrial age era, narrowly avoiding the complete annihilation of the species, we are given a glimpse of the second generation of post-war babies, which decidedly quells any lingering hope viewers may have been desperately clinging to.
• Dystopia: The world after doomsday. Clearly, somebody is trying to enforce some semblance of order but due to the extreme nature of life on the planet, it proves difficult to do so without crossing over numerous moral boundaries, and most people are too concerned with their own safety to worry about the rest of the world anyway.
• Dumb Struck: Most of the country, and presumably the rest of the world, too. The traumatized survivors of the attacks in the aftermath of the Nuclear Winter are hardly ever seen to talk.
  • Jimmy Kemp's coworker, Bob, exemplifies this during the nuclear exchange. When he first sees the mushroom cloud over RAF Finningley, all he can do is bite his thumb in shock.

Bob: Jesus Christ, they've done it! ... ... They've done it ... !

• • Both Bob and Ruth exemplify this trait when they run into each other a few weeks after the attack. They share a meal - a rotting dead sheep - but say little, and soon go their separate ways.
• Dying Like Animals
  • Mrs. Kemp is a Bat. Prior to the outbreak of hostilities, she's aloof to the reason for the panic buying at local shops. She fusses over Mr. Kemp's building a shelter, wanting to know something "more definite" before he goes "ripping this place to pieces." Even though the government's passed an Emergency Powers Act, schools are closed, and the only programme broadcasting is "Protect and Survive."
  • Bob (Jimmy Kemp's coworker) is a Butterfly; his attitude at the pub says it all. "Of course it bloody scares me, but there's naught we can do about it, is there? Might as well enjoy ourselves as much as we can, eh?"
  • The Kemps' next-door neighbors, the Stothards, are Chickens; before the exchange they head to Lincolnshire in hopes of riding out the nukes.
  • George Langley is a Wolf. He doesn't care one whit about helping other survivors; even when ordered to lend some of his spare bedrooms by the Buxton police, he forces the new tenants out with a shotgun.
• Emergency Broadcast: The constant runnings of "Protect And Survive" are somewhat like this.
• Empathy Doll Shot: Michael's handheld video game. However, Michael's body is shown earlier in a Dead Hand Shot.
• Everybody's Dead, Dave: Not even remotely funny in its execution. In fact, those who were killed instantly during the first nuclear attack got lucky.
• Cute Kitten: ...except that the kitty in question is shown writhing in agony as it suffocates/burns to death in the massive firestorm following the first bomb detonation.
  • "There was the skeleton of...a cat! A cat's...skeleton!"
• Fate Worse Than Death: So, you survived the initial bombing? Too bad for you.
• Ignored Vital News Reports: In the opening scene Jimmy skips past a report of the Soviet invasion of Iran while trying to find a football match on the car radio.
• Incurable Cough of Death: Sort of. A family member trading cigarettes for alcohol in the aftermath of the bombing shows the first signs of the radiation sickness that will soon kill him.
• It Got Worse: Go to YouTube and you'll probably find the movie in sections. Look down the related features stills on the right side of the screen, section by section. Hint: the images do not get cheerier as you go.
• Just Before the End: Post-nuclear Earth doesn't have a whole lot going for it.
• Man On Fire: Mrs. Kemp catches fire during the montage of shots after Sheffield is hit by a nuke.
• Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering: The Sheffield emergency council falls to this after the bombs drop. They spend more time shouting and yelling at each other than they do trying to pick up the pieces.
• Oh Crap: As the first mushroom cloud rises, the whole country goes into outright panic, and one woman in particular is overcome with fear to the point of wetting herself.
  • During production, a smoke bomb was used to simulate the mushroom, actually (But accidentally) causing panic in the area near the set
• Potty Failure: This happens in a memorable shot, as noted above.
• Public Service Announcement: The film was made disturbingly realistic by using genuine public information films. During the 1970s, these films would have been publicly disseminated in anticipation of national emergency, concerning what measures to take in the event of nuclear war. Threads demonstrated in horrific detail how fatally ineffective they'd be.
• Reduced to Ratburgers: In one of the post-nuclear war scenes, juxtaposed against a Standard Life insurance company ad for Irony. To make matters worse, Ruth apparently traded sexual favors for a few dead rats.
• Scenery Gorn: Much of the harrowing atmosphere of the film comes from the devastated urban landscapes and barren, frozen countryside.
• Screaming Birth: Subverted horrifically at the end with Jane's stillborn, mutated child.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog
• Shown Their Work: Thanks to the army of scientific advisers (including Carl Sagan) listed in the end credits. The only really dodgy bit of science is the implied permanent destruction of the ozone layer as a result of the nuclear exchange (it should regenerate itself over time in the absence of pollutants), but even this is something that scientists aren't 100% sure on.
• Somebody Else's Problem: Most Britons response to the potential of attack. One character openly says there's nothing they can do about it. An obviously angry protest not far from the Kemps' couple's house is brushed off as "the pubs letting out". They know that's not the case, but...
• Spiritual Successor : To the very similar 1965 Docu Drama The War Game-though that movie wasn't shown on TV until a year after Threads because the BBC refused to broadcast it back when it was made.
• Spot of Tea: Mugs of tea proliferate in the council bunker; entirely justified given that this is Britain and the characters are under great stress.
• Story-Boarding the Apocalypse: The world's narrated degeneration into chaos.
  • Also the teletype-style printed reports. "80 megatons fall on UK."
• The Eighties: Very much a reflection of the early 1980s fear of nuclear war.
• This Is Not a Drill: The nuclear attack warning sirens sounding over the United Kingdom. The phrase itself comes from a boy rushing to tell his mother that they need to go home right freaking now. A similar one happens when the Sheffield emergency council hears an alarm from the HANDEL Warning Console.

HANDEL Warning Console: Attack warning RED! Attack warning RED!
Food Officer (Roger Fisher): Is it for real?
Accommodation Officer: Attack warning's for bloody real!
Clive Sutton: Right, get to your stations!

• Twenty Minutes Into the Future: Intended for the 1980s, this particular scenario seemed very likely right up until the ending of the Cold War.
  • This article ^{[dead link]} by Colonel Sam Gardiner details how escalation and counter-escalation similar to what happened in Threads could result in an India-Pakistan nuclear war. Fortunately, after the crisis in 2002 both sides seem to respect the gravity of the situation a bit more.
• You No Take Candle: The speech we hear from the post-war children is broken and uneducated; very little effort is spent on trying to educate the new generations. (A few children are seen watching dodgy recordings of Words and Pictures educational videos, and others are getting some sort of vocational training in clothing repair, but that's about as far as it seems to go). This is a doubly tragic occurrence, as the lack of education for future generations suggests that Earth will never be able to recover on any level.
  • Considering these kids have almost certainly suffered brain damage from early childhood malnutrition, the picture becomes even bleaker.
    • Not to mention all of the kids who likely suffered brain damage because of radiation doses received in utero.
  • The English we do hear consists of two boys asking Ruth's daughter for food by saying "Gi's it" over and over again, as well as Ruth's daughter crying out "Babby, coming!" as she goes into labour. The only grammatical English we see anyone trying to speak is a very aged-looking woman reciting the lines from Words and Pictures off by heart.

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