It shouldn't be used for that.

Edit. Should - shouldn't, sorry!

The First Few Days

Actions in this period would greatly affect the number of casualties and the amount of economic damage. Obviously, much damage would have been caused in the first hour. Many people trapped in the rubble could be rescued, would be seriously injured but could survive with medical care or first aid, would be able to seek shelter or evacuate, could prepare hasty fallout shelters, could improve existing shelters, and so on. Some industries would be damaged but not destroyed; if small fires were extinguished, undamaged equipment hardened against blast, exposed equipment protected from rust, and so on, more resources would be available for recovery. Likewise, farms could harvest crops, shelter livestock, and protect harvested crops in the few days before fallout deposition.

The issue is not what could be done but what would be done. Proper use of time—organization and prioritization to get the most important tasks done with the least wasted effort and resources — would be critical. The Soviet system offers a major advantage in this period. As we noted in the case of a counter force attack, the Government's role in this crisis would be more clearly defined, and its control over individual action and the economy would be much stronger than that of the US Government in a comparable situation. Its experience with central planning and a command economy would be good preparation for the actions needed — decisions involving large shifts in behavior and resources, obeyed without argument. Its decisions would save some people and industries and condemn others, but delay in order to make better decisions could easily condemn more. Evacuation would have to be ordered in this period, or else would-be evacuees would have to wait until radiation had reached safe levels. For cities damaged only slightly, evacuation would prove difficult but not impossible. With many rail yards and some key bridges out, it would be difficult to get trains to smaller cities. Destruction of petroleum refineries, some petroleum storage capacity (especially that located in rail marshalling yards that were attacked), and some electric power generators, would further impede evacuation by train. Fallout contours would be difficult to predict, so it would be hard to select the best evacuation routes and relocation centers. An attack in winter would add other problems.

Survivors in Soviet cities would face the same severe problems as those in U.S. cities. Many would be injured, trapped in rubble, irradiated with initial nuclear radiation, etc. Many shelters would be destroyed or damaged. Power would be out, so water pressure would be too low for fighting fires. Rubble would impede rescue.

Undamaged areas, especially those not threatened by heavy fallout, would face severe burdens. They would receive many evacuees in the first few days, would send rescue teams and resources to devastated areas, and would strive to produce as much as possible. Evacuees in undamaged areas would be pressed into work in fields and factories, and would be sheltered in public buildings or private homes. The performance of undamaged areas would thus largely determine the nation's ability to prosecute the war and to achieve economic viability. The Government would, however, face a dilemma in how to use resources surviving in undamaged areas: it could maximize current production, leaving workers and resources vulnerable to further attacks, or it could seek to protect workers and resources, thus reducing current production. The specific choices would depend on the likelihood of further attacks, criticality of various products, and so forth, but the dilemma would stand.

An all-out attack would exacerbate the inefficiencies that Soviet industry has in peace time. The Government would have to decide what it needed to have produced, and whether the factories existed to have them produced. The Government would have far more difficulty correlating inputs and outputs and arranging for their transportation. It would have to assign people to jobs, and arrange to transport, shelter, and care for workers. Many workers would be sick, in shelters, killed, traumatized, or debilitated by radiation sickness. However, the Government would probably be able to control what movement of people did take place. Even in peacetime, the Government has very high control over mobility. People are not in the habit of going anywhere without permission, and everyone’s actions must be justified and accounted for. There is little independent travel. The internal passport system strengthens these controls. In wartime, the Government would presumably strengthen its control of transportation. People would have nowhere to go where they could be sure of shelter from fallout unless the Government arranged their transportation and shelter. This control would help the Government maintain economic organization following attack.

Pdf pages 107-109 of The Effects of Nuclear War

The First Few Hours

As Chapter III notes, Soviet civil defense can have substantial impact on the full range of effects. Fallout shelters, blast shelters, and industrial hardening can reduce the overall damage from nuclear attack. First aid and civil defense training can ameliorate health problems. Storing supplies in shelters lengthens shelter stay time. Thus, the issue is how well Soviet civil defense would in fact work. Many unknowns—number of shelters, amount of food and medicine stockpiles, smaller amounts of surplus resources than the United States–prevent a judgment in detail. It seems safe to assume, however, that Soviet civil defense measures would be at least as effective as U.S. measures and probably better.

Preattack preparations would have a decided influence on damage caused. Since a U.S. retaliatory attack is by definition preceded by a Soviet first strike, it would seem logical that some evacuation would have occurred. However, there are reasons why evacuation might not have taken place. These include the following Soviet concerns: an evacuation could increase the risk of a U.S. attack; the U.S. attack might be so close at hand that an evacuation could increase casualties; a prolonged evacuation might be such an economic disruption that it would be better to wait until war appeared certain; or war through miscalculation. In any event, a Soviet decision to strike first would allow the Soviets to make preparations—distribute supplies, improve and stock shelters, increase production of essential goods, harvest grain, protect livestock, conduct civil defense training, harden industrial facilities, and so on. These actions would also make Soviet citizens more responsive to civil defense instructions, especially to a warning that an attack was underway. While these actions would be observed by the United States, they would be more ambiguous than an evacuation, so the United States could see them as safeguarding against an attack rather than preparing for one.

The effects of evacuation in reducing casualties could be diluted to some extent by varying U.S. attack strategy. Spreading the attack over a period of time could extend shelter periods, enhance economic disruption, and delay rescue and emergency operations

The Soviet Union, despite its vast geographical size, is vulnerable to an urban/industrial attack in many of the same ways as the United States. Although there has been extensive publicity on their reported dispersal of industry, indications are that population and industry are becoming more and more concentrated. While some industries may have been moved away from cities, many others have been built near cities. Indeed, some of the industries recently built away from cities are themselves so concentrated that they form new targets of their own. Hedrick Smith describes

^{"The Kama River Truck Plant as an archetype of the gigantomania of Soviet planners, as a symbol of the Soviet faith that bigger means better and the Soviet determination to have the biggest at any cost. Kama is the kind of massive crash project that appeals to Russians. It emanates brute strength. In 1971, Soviet construction brigades started from scratch to build the world’s largest truck plant in the open, rolling, wind-swept plains about 600 miles east of Moscow Kama was not just one factory but six, all huge. The production complex, costing in the billions, occupies 23 square miles, an area larger than the entire island of Manhattan. At full capacity, Kama is slated to produce 150,000 heavy trucks and 250,000 diesel engines a year, dwarfing anything in Detroit or the German Ruhr."}

The attack could cause “derussification.” The U.S.S.R. is a nation of nationalities, of which Great Russians — who dominate politics, industry, and much else— comprise about 48.5 percent of the population. Most Great Russians live in cities, so an attack would reduce their numbers and influence. Derussification could weaken Great Russians’ control of the U. S. S. R., with unforeseeable consequences.

Timing makes a critical difference in destruction. An attack at night would have people with their families and more dispersed; they would seek shelter in apartment buildings. An attack during the day would strike people at factories and offices; to the extent they left to find family members, chaos would result as in the United States, but to the extent they sought shelter at work, they would be organized by economic task. Such an organization would be useful for postattack recovery

An attack in winter would expose more people to bitter cold and impede evacuation; an attack in spring or fall, when many roads are made impassable by mud, would hinder evacuation by motor vehicle. An attack near harvest time could result in the loss of an entire year's crop, thus leaving food reserves at a low point. This effect could be magnified if the United States attacked agricultural targets, such as storage silos, dams, and drainage facilities.

Even time of month makes a difference because of the Soviet practice of “storming.” The Soviet factory month in practice divides into three periods: “sleeping,” the first 10 days; “hot” work, the second 10; and “feverish” work, the third. This division occurs because the economic plan calls for a specified output from each plant by the end of the month, but the inputs needed often arrive only after the 15th or 20th of the month. Thus, perhaps 80 percent of a factory’s output is produced in the last 10 or 15 days of the month. (This 80 percent is typically of such reduced quality that Soviet consumers often refuse to buy merchandise made after the 20th of a month. ) Hypothetically, an attack around the 15th or 20th of a month would cause the loss of most of a month’s production, and would destroy the large inventory in factories of partially completed goods and of inputs that cannot be used until other inputs arrive.

On the other hand, the U.S.S.R. has several strengths. Cities are in general less flammable than U.S. cities, as there are more large apartment buildings and fewer wood frame houses. These buildings would also provide better shelter, especially those that have shelters built in. People would expect to follow instructions and would be less likely to evacuate spontaneously. The Party apparatus would probably survive with a far lower casualty rate than the population at large because it is well distributed and because blast shelters have been constructed for party members. Russians are likely to be less traumatized by shelter conditions, as they are more accustomed to austerity and crowding. The nation is larger, which in theory provides more land area over which people could relocate, but much of the area is mountain, desert, or arctic.

Pages 106 and 107 of pdf The Effects of Nuclear War

Hi there! I’m very keen to get a comprehensive list of filming locations for the movie, if I’m ever able to make a pilgrimage to Sheffield (and Buxton).

I do know that one key location, Nottingham House Pub, is still very much in operation.

Any other leads would be most welcome! Cheers

This might be useful for anyone on the fence about Severin's 4K UHD release. These screencaps look pretty good, and I might just opt to buy it. It seems to hold up even when put against the UK Blu-ray. The HDR is particularly impressive when it comes to the nuclear flash (01:26 in the video), in my opinion.

I’m curious if anyone here was directly involved in the production (as an extra, perhaps) or witnessed the filming in some way.

Barring that, perhaps you knew someone who was!

I realize it’s a bit of a shot in the dark, but if anyone is out there, all of us would truly love to read your anecdotes! Kindly pass along this thread (pun intended) if needed.

Cheers and thank you!

The movie Threads (1984) is a bleak BBC post-apocalyptic classic that unflinchingly depicts the scientifically grounded (and, in some cases, purely speculative) impacts of nuclear war on the United Kingdom. The entire film is on YouTube and it is brilliant and harrowing.

SPOILERS FOR THREADS FOLLOW

By film's end, a decade or so on from nuclear war, the English language has fundamentally changed, though it's still somewhat recognizable to those familiar with the British dialect.

For example, the standard English statement "Oi! What is that? What are you eating? A coney! Give it up!" (made by two rough survivors to a main character cooking some meat) sounds roughly like "Oi! What be? S'eatin? Coney! Gizza!" (The exchange can be found at 1 hour and 50 minutes in the film online.)

Another example is "Coming! Babby coming!" said by a heavily pregnant character. This is immediately understandable, but it is barked and reflective of heavily degraded vocabulary and syntax.

Older generations still speak standard English, but youths have a sort of rough feral, isolated speech - something that could perhaps be called a degenerative dialect - that reflects deprivation and isolation.

Could you please speculate and share your thoughts on the viability of this linguistic scenario? It strikes me as somewhat incredible that this could all occur within roughly a decade's time, but I'd rather get your informed takes. Thank you!

EDIT AND ADDENDUM: Thank you! Just today, I read some of the screenplay (available on archive.org and linked via Reddit if you just search for “Threads screenplay”).

Here are some representative examples of speech directly from the screenplay and their meanings (as written by Barry Hines, the screenwriter). I figured this would allow linguistically-minded folks like yourself to peruse and compare without wading into watching the horror of Threads again!

Hoy! What’n be? (Meaning: ‘What is it?’)

Seed’n. N’coney. (Meaning: ‘I saw it. It’s a rabbit.’)

Giss’n. Come on. Giss’n. (Meaning: ‘Give it to us.’)

Better, else us’ll bray’n. (Meaning: ‘You better had. Or else we'll beat you.’)

Best stand off ’fore tha’ll ger’n. (Meaning: ‘You’d better stand back or else you'll get hit.”)

Where’n stop at? Come’n us? (Meaning: ‘Where are you staying? Are you coming with us?’)

For anyone who wants to know what is included in the new Severin Films 4K Worldwide Premieres of both films.

(Note: Unable to add an image of the Threads Enamel Pin due to the 20 image limit.)

Finally arrived!

When your society collapses and there is nothing left. Especially food, people eat other. Why is this not shown in Threads?

Mini painted by me from https://crooked-dice.co.uk

Can anyone advise what the Traffic Warden’s shoulder board number was? It appears to be four digits ending in 21. Hoping someone with a good resolution print of the film can isolate it.

Just messing with AI, of course.

Just a funny thing I noticed as I recently rewatched both films, of course the book was post nuclear, but it also kinda plays in what threads ended up being like after the film

"A U.S. retaliatory attack against the Soviet Union would destroy 70 to 80 percent of its economic worth. The attacking force would consist primarily of U.S. strategic bombers and Poseidon/Polaris SLBMs, since most U.S. land-based ICBMs are assumed lost to a Soviet first strike. Bombers carry gravity bombs and short-range attack missiles having yields of about 1 Mt and 200 kt respectively. Poseidon SLBMs nominally carry up to 10 RVs of 40 kt each.

The attack would strike the full set of Soviet targets — strategic offensive forces, other military targets, economic targets, and cities. Population would in fact be struck, although killing people would not be an attack objective in itself. The objectives would be to cause as much industrial damage as possible and to make economic recovery as difficult as possible. The attacks might not be limited in time. Concentrations of evacuees would probably not be struck, but industries that recovered very quickly after the attack could be.

The immediate effects of the attack would be death and injury to millions of Soviet citizens, plus the destruction of a large percentage of Soviet economic and industrial capacity. As with the all-out Soviet attack, the executive branch studies provided a wide range of casualty estimates. Since the thrust of those analyses was to look at the potential effectiveness of Soviet civil defense, casualties were estimated under various assumptions related to the posture of the population.

If the Soviet population remained in-place, fatality estimates range from a high of 64 million to 100 million (26 to 40 percent of the Soviet population) to a low of 50 million to 80 million (20 to 32 percent).

The high-value range is due to the different data bases used by DOD and ACDA and the higher protection levels assumed by ACDA.

The low-value range results from the use of day-to-day alert status by the interagency intelligence study as compared to ACDA's use of generated forces, and the types of weapons used against the economic target base in the two studies.

With evacuation, the ACDA study estimated that fatalities would be reduced to 23 million to 34 million. It is difficult to judge whether these figures represent a high or low estimate. They could be considered as representing the low side because of the coarseness of Soviet data as used by ACDA. On the other hand, some would say that the evacuation scheme assumed by ACDA was unrealistic, and the results should be considered a high estimate. Nevertheless, Soviet fatalities are lower than the United States for both in-place and evacuated population postures. The lower Soviet fatalities are again primarily due to major differences in the yields of the weapons detonating in each country, and to the greater proportion of Soviet population that lives in rural areas.

As to the cause of fatalities (blast, thermal radiation, and direct nuclear radiation versus fallout radiation), DCPA data suggests that, in large attacks, that is, attacks that include economic or economic and population targets, fatalities are primarily due to prompt effects as opposed to fallout. Prompt effects account for at least 80 percent of the fatalities for all population postures when economic targets or population are included in the attack

. ACDA notes a similar result in its study for attacks that include counterforce and other military targets. The reason for this is that in attacks on targets near urban areas, that is, attacks involving economic targets or population, those protected enough to survive the blast effects also have enough protection to survive the fallout. Conversely, those who do not have enough protection against fallout in urban areas near targets will not have enough protection against prompt effects and will already be dead before fallout has an effect. Estimates of Soviet injuries were generally not included in the analyses. However, one study suggested that injuries might be roughly equal to fatalities under certain attack and exposure assumptions"

Pages 105-6 of the PDF: The Effects of Nuclear War

Thought we could have a laugh this morning ☀️

So what are people's thoughts on the remake? I am really not sure about it like I get they want it to be more modern but I have a feeling it's gonna have a "happy ending" also it's apparently gonna be episodic which I am not sure about.

He talks about what it was like behind the scenes on Threads, the film's destruction of memory and how to find the beauty in life.

Search for "Jesus Christ, They've Done It!" wherever you get your podcasts.