The Day After v. Threads and When the Wind Blows

[Queequeg]

There's an entire afterwards to Threads about Britain returning to early 19th Century GNP, while the last scene of the movie is Lithgow asking the radio if anyone is alive. Most of the characters are visibly dying of radiation sickness.

[Razgovory]

There's an entire afterwards to Threads about Britain returning to early 19th Century GNP, while the last scene of the movie is Lithgow asking the radio if anyone is alive. Most of the characters are visibly dying of radiation sickness.

Eh, there were government guys coming in giving farmers advice and shooting looters. 

[Eddie Teach]

Back in the day, before your fucked up no-attention-span generation arrived, television networks had this thing called "a major television event", and The Day After was one of them.  Hyped to the max.  When there were only three networks making them, people had no choice but to pay attention, and it was on a topical issue.

Cause being forced to watch whatever crap some tv execs decide to air is AWESOME.

[Syt]

Watched The Day After when I was a kid in the 80s - it was gut wrenching to me then and it is now. That said, it's happy fun land compared to the far more depressing Threads.

Watched When the Wind Blows a long time ago, but I recall it being rather heart rending to watch the elderly couple trying to "keep calm and carry on" in the aftermath of a nuclear war without really understanding what's going on around them. That it's done in cute animated form doesn't help.

[Tamas]

I saw The Day After in the early 90s, had a big impact on me.

Of course, as Syt said, it is a Disney cartoon about happy bunnies compared to Threads, which is totally depressing. NOT recommended for people near suicide.

[Martinus]

Didn't watch either. From the sound of it, it does not seem like fun.

[Tamas]

Didn't watch either. From the sound of it, it does not seem like fun.

You really should watch Threads. It's an experience. Influenced by it, if nucular war comes, I'll probably race to the nearest high-prio target I know of, and camp at it's wall so I get disintegrated at the first  moment, rather than messing with the whole surviving business.

[Richard Hakluyt]

When the wind blows was originally a graphic novel by Raymond Briggs. The elderly couple are supposed to be ultra-ordinary folk, there are millions like them. In many ways Briggs' novel was a response to a much derided government information campaign called Protect and Survive. That campaign would have us making safe areas under the dining room table, with a little stock of food and water, so that we could wait it out till the authorities had sorted everything out. Needless to say there were many mordant jokes about the government campaign and the general plan was not to prolong the suffering by hiding under the table with a packet of biscuits but to go out on the street and face East when the nuclear alert sounded.

I like Briggs' graphic novel a lot but it was written for people like me, there are many details and little jokes that might not amuse someone from a different country or time.........or maybe not, maybe the topic is universal enough to overcome that 

[Syt]

Well, our little town had its own little nuclear arsenal (battlefield nukes for use by artillery), so we had the comfort of knowing we'd have a big bulls-eye painted on our heads.

Of course, after the Cold War, when the more recent Soviet war plans became known it was a bit sobering. It seems there logic was:
- our conventional forces will steamroll NATO conventional forces
- this forces NATO to use nukes
- as this is inevitable we start the war with a large scale use of tactical nukes

According to a newspaper report at the time (a non-tabloid) there were a few dozen targets to be hit in Schleswig-Holstein (including our town), 200+ in Bavaria. There were targets in Austria, too, to prevent use of airfields or bridges by NATO. Two MT nukes were designated for Vienna's Danube bridges alone.

[Legbiter]

Threads is available on Youtube. The most grim of those mentioned IMO. Britain takes about 250 MT's worth of nukes, loses 90% plus of it's pre-war population and ekes out a medieval existence afterwards, that looks fairly rosy to me. The most chilling part for me is the Sheffield city council trying to enact the continuity of government protocols and what happens to those plans once the nukes land.

[Brazen]

The original series of Survivors and the serialised Day Of The Triffids were the post-apocalyptic UK TV series of choice in the 70s - both were merely a metaphor for nuclear war rather than specifically about it.

I think the first post-nuclear documentary was The War Game which was recorded in the 60s but deemed too horrifying for TV until the 80s. We were shown some at school and it scared the shit out of me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Game

"In the 1980s The War Game was followed by such similarly themed films as The Day After (US ABC,TV film, 1983) and Threads (BBC, 1984), the latter of which particularly evoked Peter Watkins' style and delivery. The War Game itself finally saw television broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC2 on 31 July 1985, as part of a special season of programming entitled After the Bomb (which was also Watkins' original working title for The War Game). After the Bomb commemorated the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The broadcast was preceded by an introduction from British journalist Ludovic Kennedy."

[CountDeMoney]

Back in the day, before your fucked up no-attention-span generation arrived, television networks had this thing called "a major television event", and The Day After was one of them.  Hyped to the max.  When there were only three networks making them, people had no choice but to pay attention, and it was on a topical issue.

Cause being forced to watch whatever crap some tv execs decide to air is AWESOME.

It was either "a major television event" or "a very special episode of", and you liked it.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Back in the day, before your fucked up no-attention-span generation arrived, television networks had this thing called "a major television event", and The Day After was one of them.  Hyped to the max.  When there were only three networks making them, people had no choice but to pay attention, and it was on a topical issue.

Cause being forced to watch whatever crap some tv execs decide to air is AWESOME.

It was either "a major television event" or "a very special episode of", and you liked it.

It's a major award. I won it!

[Queequeg]

Threads is available on Youtube. The most grim of those mentioned IMO. Britain takes about 250 MT's worth of nukes, loses 90% plus of it's pre-war population and ekes out a medieval existence afterwards, that looks fairly rosy to me. The most chilling part for me is the Sheffield city council trying to enact the continuity of government protocols and what happens to those plans once the nukes land.

I can see why you'd say that, but When the Wind Blows might have been the saddest viewing experience I've ever had. A perfectly normal, nice Greatest Generation couple, not particularly bright, that tries to treat Nuclear winter like the Blitz:something to be endured.

[Syt]

At the very least, When The Wind Blows is one of the most depressing animated movies I know, together with Grave Of The Fireflies (two children starve to death in WW2 Japan).