Other than a trip to the Pee Dee State Farmers Market (more on that this Saturday), I spent most of Saturday playing Civilization VI and watching horror movies on Shudder.
Just when I think I’ve exhausted Shudder’s extensive offerings (seriously, I watch it so much, I find myself rewatching movies I’ve already seen, sometimes multiple times), they throw me a total curveball and deliver up something fresh—and genuinely unsettling.
A side effect of watching a ton of horror movies is that one becomes desensitized to them fairly quickly. I’m still not a fan of gore-for-the-sake of gore, but I’m accustomed to it. As such, I like horror that is unsettling, and there’s not much of that these days. A lot of modern horror is snarkily self-referential, and Shudder seems to love to show lots of feminist horror. Some of that is actually okay, but does every horror movie have to be about the loss of personal identity when a mother raises children? Come now.
So it was refreshing to watch the made-for-television film Threads (1984), a stark depiction of the aftermath of a series of atomic detonations in England.
Most horror is easy to ignore because it’s not real—or it’s so far-fetched, it’s not actually scary in a practical sense. I believe in demons (and angels, praise the Lord!), so possession-based films are quite scary in a real sense, but they’ve become so Hollywoodified that there’s a note of unreality to most of those films, too.
So the best—or, at least, the most unsettling—horror is that which stares you directly in the face and says, “this situation could easily be reality.” In that regard, the best horror is like the best science fiction, in that it confronts us with a very stark, very real, very unsettling possible present or future.
Such is the case with Threads. Never have I seen a more realistic depiction of what life after a massive nuclear war would be like. Earlier this summer I praised the film Oppenheimer (2023; you should definitely see it) and, by extension, the titular protagonist. I called Dr. Oppenheimer a “national hero,” which drew some irate criticism from some readers. After watching Threads, I understand why.
We all know—intellectually, abstractly—what would happen if a massive exchange of warheads were to occur between the armed nuclear powers (in 1984, that would have been between the United States and its NATO allies on one side against the Soviets and the Warsaw Pact nations on the other): catastrophically high casualties; the total destruction of infrastructure; widespread radiation poisoning and cancers; nuclear winter. Yet these are all abstractions, vague ideas of the absolute horror and deprivations that would come after such a large-scale exchange of nuclear weapons. We understand only so far as our vivid imaginations can take us, but we don’t truly know what it would be like.
Threads offers a compelling vision of the aftermath of such an exchange, and does so in a way that personalizes it. That, more than anything, makes this movie absolutely terrifying. I understand why so many Boomers were worried about a nuclear holocaust.
The film opens about a week before nuclear war breaks out between the United States and the Soviet Union. There are tensions growing in Iran, with both the United States and the Soviet Union provoking one another in various diplomatic and military ways. However, all of this conflict is taking place in the background as the people of Sheffield go about their lives. A young couple plan to marry after finding out the girlfriend is pregnant; young people flirt and enjoy drinks at the pub; little kids play electronic sports games; people watch television, often flicking away from the news. Most people think that the situation is Iran is distant and inconsequential; only a handful of the older Brits really bother to keep up with the news.
As the week progresses, however, tensions worsen, and more people begin to take notice. Panic buying soon follows, and prices on everyday goods soar (although it’s humorous to look at the prices from 1984 and note that what was considered “price gouging” at the time would be deep discounts in today’s pounds). Still, there is a sense that “they” wouldn’t really do “it”—right?
Well, “they” do, and when a bomb hits a Royal Air Force base outside of Sheffield, it’s truly terrifying. People see the blast and panic. The shockwaves explode glass, blinding and wounding people who catch shrapnel. A second bomb follows (I think; it’s a little hard to tell in all the panic), which eradicates people where they stand. A mother with a face turned to a window suffers extreme radiation burns on one side of her face. The boyfriend of the pregnant woman is destroyed during the second blast, as he runs frantically to be with his girlfriend. The kid son of a couple (the burnt woman) dies amid the rubble.
The film takes its time to get to that first blast. It gives the viewer time to get to know the characters: the young couple optimistic for their future and that of their baby; the bickering but loving family; the boyfriend’s caddish best friend, ladding it up. We can all identify with these characters, and the depictions of grandparents struggling down stairs into makeshift bomb shelters and people hoarding canned goods is all-too-relatable.
The aftermath is brutal. Local government works frantically from underground with spotty communications, rationing out severely limited food and goods to a desperate group of survivors. The economy becomes entirely focused on food, with money becoming utterly meaningless. The remnants of the British government devolve into a heavy-handed police state, with nervous military and police officers gunning down protestors and food thieves in cold blood. Even with these draconian lifeboat ethics in play—only the able-bodied get anything close to proper nutrition, and that’s only 1000 calories a day so they can work—central authority is a joke, as lawlessness grips a decimated and desperate people. A quasi-feudal system emerges, as survivors tend the dark fields in forced labor gangs.
Weeks, months, and years pass. Rachel, the aforementioned pregnant girlfriend, gives birth, alone, in a barn to a surprisingly healthy daughter. Ten years pass, and that daughter sees her mother—barely in her thirties, but aged like a woman in her eighties—drift away from this hard life. The film ends with Rachel’s daughter giving birth to her own child a few years later, screaming in terror at the sight of her child. We’re not shown the baby, but the implication is that it is severely deformed due to radiation poisoning.
This flick was, at times, hard to watch, but I couldn’t turn away. I was playing a long-running game of Civilization VI while I watched, and I would constantly take my focus off the game to watch the brutal depictions of nuclear holocaust.
Geopolitically, I think that nuclear armament has been a net positive for humanity. The vast destructiveness of these weapons have served, in some ways, as the ultimate deterrent against their use, but also against warfare generally. There are certainly still conventional wars fought, such as the current conflict in Ukraine, but the use of nuclear weapons has not occurred since 1945. So far, our global leaders have wielded these arsenals soberly.
But as anyone who has played Civilization VI or similar games knows, once you get a nuke (usually very late in the game), it’s hard not to use it. Granted, a video game is one thing—talk about an abstraction!—and we play games so we can indulge in these destructive fantasies—to see the carnage—in a way that is safe and even productive. And for some regimes, the temptation to drop a couple of nukes—tactically and limited, of course!—must be overwhelming. Factor in all of the ways in which humans miscommunicate and disagree, and it’s little wonder people were—and are!—so afraid of nuclear holocaust.
I don’t know if I agree with nuclear disarmament, but I can only pray that, as long as these weapons exist, they continue to serve as the ultimate deterrent against warfare, not as the ultimate temptation for the wicked.