Threads (1984 film)

For other uses, see Thread.

Threads
Directed by	Mick Jackson
Written by	Barry Hines
Produced by	Mick Jackson, Graham Massey, John Purdie, Peter Wolfes
Starring	Karen Meagher, Reece Dinsdale
Distributed by	BBC
Release date	1984
Running time	110 minutes
Language	English

Threads is a 1984 BBC television play depicting the effects of a nuclear war on the United Kingdom and its aftermath. Written by Barry Hines and directed by Mick Jackson, Threads was filmed in late 1983 and early 1984. The premise of Threads was to hypothesise the effects of a nuclear war on the United Kingdom after an exchange between the Soviet Union and the United States escalates to include the UK.

Plot

The story begins nearly three months before the attack, which happens on Thursday, 26 May, though the year is unspecified. We watch two families' reactions — the Kemps and the Becketts — first as fighting erupts and escalates, then as the UK places itself on a war footing, and eventually as strategic bombing commences. We then follow family members as they face and eventually die of the medical, economic, social, and environmental consequences of a nuclear war. The play concludes thirteen years after the attack, showing a shattered civilisation and children speaking broken English. Both the plot and the atmosphere of the play are extremely bleak.

The story begins with the two families becoming linked by the engagement of young Ruth Beckett and Jimmy Kemp due to an unplanned pregnancy. The couple buy a flat and Jimmy argues with his parents over having a baby during the recession. In the background, ignored by the characters at first, the Soviet Union has invaded Iran following a coup, and the United States military, with British support, has intervened. A third plot thread follows the chief executive of Sheffield City Council, who is directed by the Home Office to assemble his pre-prepared team according to the council's "War Book". The team establishes itself in a makeshift bomb shelter in the basement of the Town Hall and goes about making what preparations it can for the city — actions, which are in essence, transitions to war. The international tension escalates with several military clashes, Warsaw Pact troops on the border between East and West Germany, the government taking control of British Airways and restricting use of the motorways for official purposes. Large protests against British involvement in the crisis are seen in Sheffield. Soon Britain is gripped by fear, with panic buying and a mass exodus from the city as reports come in of tactical nuclear weapons being used in Iran. Protect and Survive films about how to cope with a nuclear attack are shown on UK television.

The first nuclear weapons of the conflict are used when a squadron of American B-52s bomb a Soviet airbase in Iran with conventional weapons, but then the Soviets use a nuclear-tipped warhead on a surface-to-air missile to destroy the bombers. The Americans respond to this by detonating a nuclear missile over the airbase. The on-screen caption notes "Exchange Stops" at this point.

On 26 May, at 8:30 A.M. BST — 3:30 A.M. in Washington, DC — Sheffield is going about its normal business. The narrator informs us that this moment is advantageous for a first strike given that the U.S. President and his chief advisors would have had little rest over the previous several days and thus are likely asleep, meaning that the Western response will be at its slowest. Jimmy and his mate Bob are at work, arguing with people trying to buy timber to make shelters. At home with her family, Ruth complains that she feels too ill from morning sickness to go to work; when Mrs Beckett tries to phone her daughter's workplace, she fails to get through because all non-essential phone-lines have been cut. The Kemps are arguing over taking down doors to use for an improvised fallout shelter. The chief executive's team is discussing the ongoing problems they're having locating and securing all of the supplies that will be needed by the city in the aftermath of an attack.

Suddenly the air-raid warning sounds (known officially as an Attack Warning: Red and is heard in the council's HQ) and Sheffield erupts into panic. At 8:35, a warhead detonates high over the North Sea, creating an electromagnetic pulse that disrupts power and communications. Jimmy and Bob scramble under their truck, while the Kemps rush to finish their shelter. At 8:37, a second missile strike hits RAF Finningley, a NATO base near Sheffield, shattering windows and increasing panic. Jimmy and Bob emerge from under the truck to see a mushroom cloud rising over the city. Jimmy then flees through Sheffield to try to reach Ruth. (This is the last we see of him, save for a later flashback.) The Beckett's hurry to their basement with Ruth's frail grandmother, while Jimmy's parents quickly prepare a shelter out of mattresses, bags and doors. Ruth rushes outside the house, but her father catches her and brings her back just before a strike hits Sheffield (the map in the council bomb-shelter later reveals the ground-zero to be north and east of the city on the M1 near junction 34).

The city is devastated by the blast with many fires started. Jimmy Kemp is never seen again and his mother severely burned. The body of her younger son Michael is later found under the rubble of the aviary where Jimmy kept his birds. Their daughter Alison, having gone to the shops beforehand, is not seen during the attack scene. One of the chief executive's team dies from falling rubble in the bunker. The emergency planners soon realize that they are trapped beneath the rubble of the Town Hall, and they are only able to communicate with the other surviving authorities by radio. On-screen text tells us that 210 megatons have fallen on the United Kingdom (with 3,000 megatons total falling around the world), that two-thirds of houses are in fire zones, and that immediate deaths are between 17 and 30 million. In addition, the threat from fallout means no attempt is made to fight the fires or rescue those trapped by the flames. Accompanying these grim statistics is a sequence which not only shows milk bottles melting in the heat but also human corpses burning.

Within an hour and 25 minutes after the bombs explode (10:00), radioactive fallout begins to fall on Sheffield from the groundburst at Crewe, brought by the wind. The Kemp's suffer from prompt radiation sickness, their house is partially demolished and their shelter gives them no protection from the irradiated dust. The Becketts suffer more from panic and fear, their house has survived intact and has not burned. Ruth, however, fears the radiation she has been exposed to will leave her unborn child "ugly and deformed." Ruth's mother tries to convince her that Jimmy might still be alive, but Ruth says she knows Jimmy is dead. Ruth later leaves the cellar and wanders through the devastated city, going to a hospital inundated with the injured and dying. In a particularly gruesome scene, we see a man having his leg amputated with only a rag in his mouth for succour. Jimmy's mother eventually dies from a combination of radiation sickness, burns and shock and her husband leaves their shelter. Ruth goes to the Kemp home, finds Jimmy's mother's body and takes one of his books from the ruins of the home as a keepsake. Ruth's grandmother dies in her sleep, and her parents are murdered shortly afterwards by looters, who are then caught by soldiers; one of the looters is shot dead trying to escape. Jimmy's father joins the protest to get food from a nearby warehouse, guarded by soldiers. The food isn't to be distributed for two weeks — and the soldiers use tear gas to disperse an angry crowd and gun down one man who climbs the fence to get in.

Tensions rise among the chief executive's team as it becomes increasingly clear that they are not going to be rescued and that the situation outside the bunker is beyond their control. Although they are in radio contact with survivors in other cities, none can send aid to the others given the dire situation throughout the country. Very quickly they find they are unable to provide food, shelter, rescue or any other essentials to the survivors on the surface.

Jimmy's father is seen with another man swapping cigarettes for Scotch, but he quickly vomits it up. He then turns on Michael's hand-held video game, which still works. They sit around a fire in a graveyard and he cries as he watches the game. Jimmy's father is then seen in a still black-and-white photograph as one among the dead. A caption states that no efforts are made to bury the dead as the majority of the surviving population is too weak for physical labour. Burning the bodies is considered a waste of what little fuel remains, as is using fuel to power bulldozers in order to dig mass graves. Thus, millions of bodies are left unburied throughout the UK, which leads to the outbreak of diseases such as cholera and typhus.

Alison Kemp, Jimmy's sister, is the last survivor of the Kemp family, although she is only seen briefly through the fence of a tennis court being used as a detention centre (although it is open to interpratation whether it is her, the published version of the film doesn't specify). The government authorises the use of capital punishment and courts are given wide-ranging powers.

When authorities see that food stocks are dwindling, they cut rations to 1,000 calories per day for those who can work and 500 calories per day for those who cannot. The commentary of the film states that there are two harsh realities for survivors, those who work get more food than those who don't and the more people die, the more food there is for the rest. Yet after four weeks, when the Town Hall rubble is finally reached by soldiers the entire local government team is dead.

Meanwhile, due to the millions of tons of soot, smoke, and dust that have been blown into the upper atmosphere by the explosions, a global 'nuclear winter' develops. In Britain, sunlight remains at twilight level even at midday. The nation's crops, already threatened by radioactive fallout, are also damaged by a lack of sunlight, a problem further exacerbated by the fact that the war happened in spring, when plants are just beginning to grow. Two months after the war, a radio message is issued saying that Britain must concentrate her energies on agricultural production in order to rebuild. The narrator informs us, however, that temperatures in the central United States and Soviet Union have fallen to 25 degrees below normal. Also the resources needed for modern farming - chemicals, fertiliser and fuel - are in short supply. Ruth and other refugees are relocated by the authorities to a house in nearby Buxton, which was undamaged by the attack. The owner of the house, George Langley, is forced to take them in under the Emergency Powers Act but soon throws all the temporary residents out as soon as the police leave. Ruth finds Jimmy's friend Bob at a feeding station. Later, they find a dead sheep on the moors and eat it raw, despite dangers of it being contaminated from fall-out. Ruth is then found later working on a farm. Eventually, Ruth gives birth alone in a farm out-building. The child, a girl, is neither stillborn nor obviously deformed, but Ruth has to cut the umbilical cord by biting it. She is named as Jane in the credits to Threads and in the published play. She is seen later, staring vacantly as the baby cries, with a group of people around a fire on Christmas Day.

One year after the war, sunlight begins to return, but the Earth's protective ozone layer has been severely depleted by the nuclear exchange, letting in much more ultraviolet light and prompting harvesters to don improvised protective clothing. Subsequent harvests produce even lesser returns due to the lack of proper equipment, fertilizers and fuel. The few remaining survivors are weakened from illness and hunger, and virtually no one is ever heard to speak. Even more die with the onset of winter due to the shortage of food, shelter, warm clothing, and heating.

Three to eight years after the war, Britain's population has fallen to medieval levels of some 4 to 11 million. The country has managed only very minor recovery. We see depictions of a steam engine, predating the use of oil. The use of electricity has been re-established on a very small scale. The survivors, including Ruth and her daughter, are at work the fields ten years after the war. Ruth collapses. In their living space, Ruth, prematurely aged and with cataracts, finally dies. Her daughter, Jane, tries to rouse her and reveals her lack of language. Ruth's daughter seems unfazed by her mother's death and leaves her. She takes a few of Ruth's remaining possessions but Jimmy's bird-book is left behind.

The post-war generation are educationally stunted. They speak in a distorted, simplified version of English, using simple speech formed from the regional dialect. The children are seen watching a videotape of the BBC children's programme Words and Pictures as an old woman mouths along with the presenter's dialogue. Young children, including Ruth's daughter are put to work salvaging threads from old clothing.

Three years after Ruth's death, Jane and two boys her age are caught stealing food. When they try to escape, one boy is shot dead as they flee. She and the other boy wrestle for the food; she is then overpowered, and they have "rough sex" according to the screenplay. Later, she is seen stumbling through the rubble of a city, heavily pregnant. Bodies hang from gallows and the ruined urban landscape is fearful.

She finds a makeshift hospital which has basic electric lighting. The play ends with Ruth's daughter giving birth to a stillborn and deformed baby. The film freezes just as she opens her mouth to scream.

Themes

Like The War Game, which dealt with similar subject matter, Threads mixes conventional narrative with documentary-style text screens and narration by BBC journalist Paul Vaughan. One of the key elements of the play is that much of the reportage of world events leading up to the war is in the background, with few people paying attention until it becomes clear that war is imminent

A common theme is the importance of interdependence in society, and how a nuclear war can unravel these connections. The play opens with alternating shots of a spider weaving its web and of powerlines running over Sheffield, as the narrator points out how interconnected humans' lives are in modern urban society (thus the title of the play). In the initial salvo of the war we see command and control centres disrupted, followed by the destruction of cities as more missiles hit. Law and order breaks down, then people apparently stop caring for each other. Eventually, even language, the fundamental building block of human interaction, is degraded beyond something we can recognise.

Threads is also unique in that it was (and remains) the only nuclear apocalypse film to depict a nuclear winter, which was a very new theory at the time of its making.

Broadcast and release history

Broadcast

Threads was first broadcast on BBC Two on 23 September 1984. It was repeated on BBC One on 1 August 1985 as part of a week of programmes marking the fortieth anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which also saw the first screening of The War Game. Threads was not shown again on British screens until digital channel BBC Four broadcast it on 29 October 2003, and repeated two days later.

Threads was also broadcast in the USA. In 1985, it was shown on PBS stations as part of fund raising drives. It was also syndicated in the US to commercial television stations, as well as Superstation TBS; the latter followed the play with a panel discussion on nuclear war.

Video and DVD releases

Threads was originally released by BBC Video on VHS in 1987 (catalogue number BBCV4071) in the UK but soon went out of print and became a much sought-after item in the 1990s.

A DVD release appeared in the UK in 2000 on the Revelation label followed by a re-release in 2005.

See also

• Nuclear weapons and the United Kingdom
• Protect and Survive, the 1970s British government information films on nuclear war.
• List of nuclear holocaust fiction
• Nuclear weapons in popular culture
• The Day After, an American made-for-television film which also portrays the buildup to and the after-effects of large-scale nuclear war