The very first television advert for the new Apple Macintosh stated that 1984 would not be like 1984. George Orwell's novel portrayed a static, totalitarian world divided into three warring unions, fighting an artificial, self-perpetuating war in order to reinforce the power of State.

Threads posits a world in which two of the blocs took the war seriously. Produced for the BBC in 1984, it was Britain's answer to The Day After, an American television movie which imagined the course of the World War Three. Nowadays nobody remembers World War Three. It didn't happen, but it sat at the backs of people's minds for forty years. Such a huge thing.

Threads was made for BBC television in 1984. It was repeated the year after and that was that, apart from a small-scale video release in 1987. For over a decade existed in most people's minds as a shadowy, half-remembered moment of anxiety. It was the film that supposedly had traffic policemen shooting looters; the film that had milk bottles melting in a nuclear blast, and Sheffield on fire; the film that our parents forbade us to watch. At the time, I was into science fiction, and I assumed from the trailers that it was an adventure film. There was mention of something called The War Game, which made me think of WarGames, but my parents told me that Threads wouldn't be very nice and I forgot about it.

So my imagination went to work. Living, as I did, a hundred yards from an RAF munitions dump and a few miles from the UK Land Forces HQ in Wilton, the prospect of nuclear war didn't concern me a great deal - even at eight years of age, I knew that I probably wouldn't be around to seem most of it. But for others, up and down the country - and especially in Sheffield - I can imagine the nightmares Threads must have caused.

In 1984 the prospect of nuclear war looked more likely that it had for years. Four days after my seventh birthday, in 1983, Ronald Reagan had committed the United States to a 'Star Wars' missile shield, an ambition far removed from John F. Kennedy's dream of sending a man to the moon. The idea that Reagan's military advisors were trying to make nuclear war 'winnable' annoyed Sting and left-wing commentators worldwide, especially so in the UK, where the strong American military presence has always been met with a mixture of emotions. Would the missile shield extend to the UK, or would we be left out in the cold? Was it worth housing American airbases if it meant that we would be a nuclear target? What if it the Americans, safe behind their shield, embarked on a pre-emptive strike against the USSR, or a state that the USSR supported, such as Cuba? What if, provoked by 'Star Wars', the Russians triggered a pre-pre-emptive nuclear war?

Threads was the BBC's answer to all this. The threat of nuclear war produced a wave of nuclear-themed films and computer games, from the sublime (Edge of Darkness, By Dawn's Early Light) to the ridiculous (Red Dawn, Raid over Moscow). Threads was generally regarded as being the bleakest and most graphic. The year before, American television had produced The Day After, with Jason Robards and Steve Guttenberg, but that film - which I have not seen - attracted some derision for being overly sentimental. Threads, on the other hand, seemed determined to go to the other extreme, and showed us the worst of all worlds, extended to the potential extermination of all humanity. It projected contemporary fears of a 'nuclear winter' - clouds of dust and debris thrown up into the air, blocking the sunlight and destroying the ozone layer - thirteen years into the future, to a generation born after the holocaust. A generation which, as far as Threads was concerned, would be better off dead.

In 2000 the film was released on home video and, shortly afterwards, on DVD. It was a timely release.

The DVD
The DVD presentation is disappointing, although the old film grain and bleached colour add to the grim effect, and fits its 'forbidden' nature. There are no extras at all, and only a slip of a menu. The sound is mono, because televisions were mono in 1984, unless you were watching MTV and had wired your television to the stereo. The makers of the DVD have made a valiant effort at selling it - the packaging is nicely done, complete with the taglines 'The end of the world as we know it' and 'The closest you'll ever want to come to nuclear war' (there's one black mark - the back of the box gives the impression that it's widescreen, but it isn't) - but it'll trickle off the shelves. Future generations will discover it at the back of the DVD shelf, under a pile of other things, or at the bottom of a suitcase in the basement.


The Real World
In 1984 Britain's Conservative Party were on a roll, despite the IRA's attempt to blow up Margaret Thatcher at the Grand Hotel in Brighton. The Falklands War had put some fire back into the nation's heart and the miner's strike was proving counterproductive, driving more people towards Thatcher's dislike of unions. The Labour Party were led by Neil Kinnock, an unknown, who had replaced the aged Michael Foot a year earlier. The party suffered from a perception that it was inflexible, incompetent and extremist, and the brand-new SDP seemed like a much more viable prospect. Labour were still in favour of leaving the EU, expelling American troops from British soil, and dismantling Britain's nuclear arsenal.

Against this background Margaret Thatcher called a general election in May of 1984, and won a famous victory that kept the party in power until 1997, long after Thatcher herself had gone. By 1997 the Labour Party had purged its left-wing roots, synthesised elements of the SDLP and Thatcher's Conservatives, and, through the unfortunate death of Kinnock's replacement, John Smith, had gained an impressive new leader. All talk of leaving the EU, expelling etc, had been forgotten.

In 1984, however, the right wing was triumphant on both sides of the Atlantic. With the blessing of the UN, Britain had recently reasserted its ownership of the Falklands Island against an Argentine invasion, whilst in 1984 America invaded Grenada in order to rescue some students. Thatcher had no great love for the armed forces, but Reagan pinned part of his country's economic hopes on increased military spending. For in the forest there was a dangerous bear.

The Soviet Union appeared, from the outside, to be its old, mysterious self. Its armed forces no longer matched those of the West in terms of quality, but with a massive numerical and logistical advantage - their front line did not require trans-Atlantic resupply - the Soviets could afford a little slack. After the death of Brezhnev in 1982, one-time head of the KGB Yuri Andropov became the Soviet leader, but in February 1984, he also died, but not before being immortalised in the video for Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Two Tribes. He was replaced by a man called Konstantin Chernenko who was king of half the world for a year and a month, before he too died, having made the world neither better nor worse. The spelling checker in Word recognises 'Andropov' but not 'Chernenko', and yet he was a man who could have ended it all.

Chernenko was replaced by the healthy, 54-year-old Mikhail Gorbachev, a loyal communist but also a pragmatist, a man who was both strong and weak. Andropov and Chernenko looked as if they had signed death warrants, whilst Gorbachev - and the stylish, and sadly now departed, Raisa - looked as if they had managed the local pastry shop. Four years later, 'Gorby' called a halt to the whole silly game, lost control of the aftermath and, along with Reagan and Thatcher, slid off into history.

For my generation the above cast are larger-than-life; Reagan, Thatcher and Gorbachev were the world leaders we grew up with, they had personalities and knew how to work an audience, they were in Spitting Image, they were entertaining. Their successors were terrible; George Bush and John Major were grey men, and Boris Yeltsin spoiled his moments of glory - standing on a tank, berating Gorbachev and forcing him to denounced the Communist Party - by becoming Fat Elvis.

In the pop charts in 1984 were The Smiths and Duran Duran; great films included Beverly Hills Cop and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Elite, the computer game, was released. Peter Davison was Dr Who. Britney Spears was three years old. Television news footage looked rough; the logo for the Six O'Clock News was a shredded circle.


Protect and Survive
In 1978 the British Government had released a famous leaflet, Protect and Survive, which attempted to assuage contemporary fears over nuclear war and the rise of punk by showing the people of Britain how to construct an impregnable shelter from a door and some bin-bags. 'When your radio gives the all-clear, it is safe to resume normal duties', it said, leaving readers to ponder on the likelihood of the radio ever coming to life again, and whether burying relatives was a normal activity. In the UK.

The late 1970s were a worrying time, and the threat of nuclear war simmered under the surface, at the backs of people's minds. Although we now remember him for Watergate, Nixon had removed American troops from Vietnam and, with the help of the Scrabble-tastic Zbigniew Brzezinski, had helped to calm the cold war down. Nixon's replacement, Gerald Ford, did nothing of note, and Ford's replacement, Jimmy Carter, didn't seem to be too hot at international diplomacy, or anything much at all except for spreading doom and gloom over the environment. With the SALTII arms talks breaking down around him, Iran had undergone an Islamic revolution, and, on Christmas Day, 1979, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, in order to prop up the pro-Soviet government against an outcropping of the same Islamic revolution.

Subsequent events in the Middle East were extremely confused, and involved our side helping Iran and Iraq to fight each other and also helping Israel and the Afghan militia to fight Syria in Beirut and the Russians respectively. In the area only Israel had nuclear weapons, although Iraq came close to having them, had not Israel bombed Iraq's French-built nuclear reactor.


Threads
The first half of Threads is a soap opera with some odd undercurrents, and lots of shots of televisions carrying news about Soviet troop movements in the middle east. It appears as if the Soviets have decided to invade Iran, although this backstory never comes to the surface - Threads focusses on a group of ordinary people living in Sheffield, steel town and home of the Human League.

Threads appears to take place in a parallel world in which the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was entirely successful, although this is never stated. In the nuclear scenario presented by Threads, the Soviets, presumably buoyed up by this success, decide to end the threat of Islamic fundamentalism by invading Iran. At the time, Iran was not in America's good books - having held American diplomats hostage for a year after deposing the pro-Western Shah - and we can assume that the Soviets in Threads must have believed that America would thank them, or at least not intervene.

However, the prospect of the Soviets dominating the Middle Eastern oilfields - probably not for the oil itself, but to deny oil to the West - obviously did not go down too well in the Pentagon, for, after harassment and minor skirmishes between ships in the Gulf, America sends in the marines. In real life, it's likely that things would have stopped here, perhaps with a partitioned Iran, in which case Threads would have been unsettling enough.

Britain's local councils are put on a war footing. After some skirmishes, America B-52s bomb a Soviet base with conventional weapons; the Russians using a nuclear-tipped SAM to defend the base, annihilating the bombers; in retaliation, America destroys the base with a tactical nuclear weapon. People start panic-buying. The American carrier Kitty Hawk is sunk. People start to flee cities to go and live in Wales, a sure sign of desperation. The television carries reports of two nuclear explosions in Iran, but has no further details.

Council officials retreat to their bunkers, and things become calm for a short while. All radio and television stations are given over to emergency broadcasts. People start to build shelters, and then there's a nuclear war.

People looked different on television, back in 1984. Some of the actors in Threads are unattractive, and old. Threads is not a sexy film. The cast is not carefully chosen so as to present a cross-section of Britain's most fashionable ethnic and social groups. There's hardly any lesbian sex and very little swearing, apart from 'shit' and 'piss' and a couple of 'fucks'. Threads is neither a crime drama nor a comedy, thus making it unusual for the BBC.

Seventeen years later, Threads is still extremely impressive, and I can't imagine how scared people must have been in 1984. Whilst the effects probably didn't look too convincing back then - stock footage abounds - the editing and treatment of the eventual nuclear strike is extremely well done. Statistics bombard the screen whilst a series of brief, silent sequences show us milk bottles melting, a house exploding into fire, and the burning remains of what might have been a person. Despite the latter emphasis on gore and misery, Threads is a remarkably restrained film. There's no music beyond environmental sounds, and the acting is naturalistic from a cast of non-stars. The editing generally cuts away from the nastiness - although it is still quite graphic. The end result is a quick-fire accumulation of details, one on top of the other.

After the initial strikes on military bases, cities are next, and Sheffield doesn't fare very well. The aforementioned local officials are trapped in their bunker, with no-one to dig them out, the emergency services are immediately overwhelmed, whilst people on the surface are burned to a crisp (the character we expected to be the 'hero' runs off to get help and is never seen again). One hour and twenty-five minutes later, the fallout settles, and people start to breathe in radioactive dust, which is filtered from the blood by the liver and lymph nodes, where it remains, killing nearby cells.

Threads isn't about a partial nuclear strike or an accident or a single bomb on Sheffield, it's about all-out thermonuclear war in the multi-megaton range across all the UK and, we are left to support, the northern hemisphere. In this respect it's far removed from anything by Tom Clancy or Larry Bond. After the war, what there was of it, the food supplies are controlled by local government - a bunch of Captain Mainwaring types. Libertarians and fans of Robert A. Heinlein would probably be breaking out their stocks of guns and food by now, ready to reshape the world in their own image. "What's the point of wasting food on people who are going to die anyway?", they argue, applying triage on a grand scale (oddly, despite the fact that they are running out of air, the councillors smoke heavily).

Although grimmest of all, the final quarter of the film is, in a dramatic sense, less interesting. With any form of government a memory, the final breakdown of society has been covered before, in everything from Lord of the Flies to - albeit in romanticised form - 1981's Mad Max 2 and even The Terminator in 1984. Shots of children staring blankly at televisions seem like a cliché, although in Threads the television at least has some electricity. Some of the details seem a little too grim - the salesman selling rats almost seems like a joke.

If anything dulls the horror of the situation depicted in Threads it is the fact that, since 1984, several countries have enacted its socio-economic breakdown for real. There's nothing on the screen that is worse than daily life in parts of Somalia, or the DRC, or Ethiopia, or Belize, or slums throughout South America and South East Asia. The shock comes from the fact that it is happening to us.

The War Game
It's worth mentioning The War Game, a film which was shown on television for the first time a year after Threads, and which was released on DVD in 2002. The War Game was Threads most obvious predecessor, made for the BBC in 1966 and never transmitted, although it became a legend nonetheless. Dealing with a single nuclear missile strike on Birmingham, it didn't go down very well with the contemporary government, who instructed the BBC not to show it for fear of demoralising the population. By the early-80s, and prompted by a Panorama episode called 'If the Bomb Drops...', the BBC still refused to show it, arguing that it was now out-of-date(!).

During the week that followed Threads, the BBC showed a documentary entitled On the Eighth Day..., which covered the same ground as Threads but without the drama, and a special edition of Newsnight which, presumably, is locked up in the BBC's archives somewhere. Threads itself was very popular, in the 'lots of people watched it' sense, not in the 'lots of people took it to their hearts' sense.


~
The current nostalgia fad tends to see the past through a prism of happy old children's television shows and BMX bikes, and the thought that, in 1984, a quaint little BBC play could be so unpleasant doesn't seem right. We tend to see the past as a country populated by buffoons, idiots who were unaware of how silly they appear nowadays.

At the time I was a subscriber of 2000AD, Britain's only sci-fi comic, one that brought ultra-violence, cynicism, and new wave sci-fi ideas to the world of Dan Dare and Robot Archie. It had attracted some controversy a year or so beforehand for a long-running Judge Dredd strip called 'The Apocalypse War'. Spanning almost an entire year, it told the tale a nuclear attack by the evil 'Sovblock', against 'Mega-City One' (essentially, the east coast of America). Whilst it was basically a lengthy shoot-em-up, the ending was amazing - after leading a daring mission to capture a Sovblock nuclear silo, Dredd turns the Soviet missiles against 'East-Meg 2', wiping out hundreds of millions of Russians and ending the war.

Threads itself wasn't quite the last word in nuclear angst - the superb Edge of Darkness followed a year later, and added environmental worries to the atomic mix in the guise of a tightly-plotted thriller. With nuclear war pretty much covered, other apocalyptic fads eventually raised their heads. In the mid-90s Richard Preston's The Hot Zone, a book about virulent plagues in Africa, added the word 'Ebola' to the public imagination, whilst Ken Alibek's 1999 Biohazard did much the same for Soviet biological warfare research during the cold war, raising the worry that:
a. Terrorists, armed with Mercedes, cigarettes and dollars, might get their hands on gallons of ex-Soviet Anthrax;
and
b: If the Russians were spending this much time and money on developing super-plagues, what horrors breed in tanks in Wyoming and Oregon, or at Porton Down?

The threat of so-called 'suitcase nukes' seemed overly James Bond, but, even when not detonated, plutonium and uranium are extremely poisonous, dangerous substances. 2000's outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the UK - and it's surely not going to be long before people start blaming it on terrorism or France - illustrated how easy it would be to deliberately disrupt out food.


Closing Thoughts
After its initial impact Threads faded into bad dreams and memory. It was repeated once, a year later, but it was quickly overtaken by events; Mikhail Gorbachev was very different from his bleak predecessors. He was a man we could do business with, in the words of Margaret Thatcher, and five years after Threads' first broadcast, the Soviet Union dissolved. Much bloodshed would follow, but it would not involve nuclear weapons. For all the speculation and all the post-cold war thrillers, there were no rogue nukes, no hijacked Ukrainian ICBMs.

Threads remained a cult, however, and the generation who had been children in 1984 were now consumers, and thus the film was re-released on DVD in mid-2001. I wrote most of the above in August of that year, and in September a non-nuclear terrorist attack on New York stunned and delighted different parts of the world. Since then we have rediscovered our taste for the apocalyptic; television has provided us with the children of Threads, in the form of Gas Attack, Smallpox 2002, The Day Britain Stopped and others.

The bipolar world of Threads is gone. What is now Russia can still erase all organic life on Earth, but is our ally. Yet the world is even more uncertain. Whilst there are fewer nuclear weapons on Earth, more countries have them. In nuclear history, only South Africa willingly disposed of its atomic weapons, before the handover to black rule. Since then India and Pakistan have come close to limited nuclear war, North Korea has announced its possession of nuclear arms, and Iran is in the early stages of a bomb-making capability. Many other nations could make bombs, but choose not to - Japan, Australia, and Germany for three.

And inventions are never uninvented; it is the nature of human history for things to become cheaper, more widespread, less taboo. And mutually assured destruction only works if both sides are frightened of dying.