Threads

For other uses, see Thread (disambiguation).

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

Threads is a British television drama produced by the BBC in 1984. Written by Barry Hines and directed by Mick Jackson, it is a documentary-style account of a nuclear war and its effects on the city of Sheffield in northern England.

Filmed in late 1983 and early 1984, the primary plot centres on two families, the Kemps and the Becketts, as an international crisis between the United States and the Soviet Union erupts and escalates. As the United Kingdom prepares for war, the members of each family deal with their own personal crises. Meanwhile, a secondary plot centered upon Clive J. Sutton, the Chief Executive of Sheffield City Council serves to illustrate for the viewer the United Kingdom government's then-current continuity of government arrangements. As open warfare between NATO and the USSR-led Warsaw Pact begins, the harrowing details of the characters' struggle to survive the attacks is dramatically depicted. The balance of the film details the fate of each family as the characters face the medical, economic, social, and environmental consequences of a nuclear war.

Plot

Young lovers Ruth Beckett (Karen Meagher) and Jimmy Kemp (Reece Dinsdale) decide to marry due to an unplanned pregnancy. As they and their families are introduced into the plot, news reports over the course of several weeks indicate that the Soviet Union has invaded Iran following a coup, and that the United States military, with British support, has intervened. As the situation escalates and events transpire, Sheffield City Council is directed by the Home Office to assemble an emergency operations team, which establishes itself in a makeshift bomb shelter in the basement of the Town Hall.

The crisis deepens as the Soviets deploy a nuclear warhead, delivered by a surface-to-air missile, to destroy incoming American B-52 bombers attacking a Soviet-occupied airbase in Mashhad; the Americans respond by detonating a 'battlefield nuclear weapon' at the airbase, ceasing all hostilities there. Britain is gripped by fear: as supplies and food run low, some retailers resort to profiteering, with looting and rioting erupting. 'Known subversives' (including peace activists and some trade unionists) are arrested and interned.

At 8:30am (3:30am in Washington, D.C.) on 26 May, Attack Warning Red is transmitted, sending the emergency operations team into frantic action. The city's air raid sirens sound, and Sheffield erupts into panic, prompting Jimmy and his workmate Bob to take cover under their van. A warhead detonates over the North Sea, creating an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) that disrupts power and communications over the region; minutes later a nuclear weapon strikes RAF Finningley, a NATO base 20 miles (32 km) from Sheffield. Despite the distance, the flash and mushroom cloud from this groundburst are visible in Sheffield, adding to the panic. In shock, one woman wets herself as she sees the mushroom cloud grow. People caught in the open are injured by flying debris as the blast blows out windows across the city. As the blast wave passes, Jimmy and Bob clamber out and Jimmy runs to his car, shouting that he is going to try and reach Ruth. The car will not start (due to the EMP) so he sets off on foot through the chaos; he is never seen again. The Becketts hurry to their basement while the Kemps (Jimmy's parents) desperately rush to finish a shelter they were preparing out of mattresses, bags and doors. Jimmy's younger sister, Alison, was sent to the shops minutes before the attack and is not seen again. Mrs. Kemp is seen shielding her youngest son, Michael, as a blast blows in the front windows of the house. Minutes later, Michael is seen crying in the aviary, where he still is when a nuclear warhead directly impacts Sheffield.

As 'the exchanges escalate', Sheffield and nearby Rotherham are struck by nuclear weapons, instantly vaporizing thousands of people and ravaging everything with fire. In total, 210 megatons of nuclear force fall on the United Kingdom, with a total of 3,000 megatons falling worldwide. 2/3 of all homes are destroyed by blast or fire, and immediate deaths are between 17 and 30 million. Nuclear fallout keeps rescuers from fighting fires or rescuing those trapped in the debris. A montage shows milk bottles melting, animals writhing amid the flames and human corpses burning. The emergency operations team is alive (excepting one member killed by falling debris) but they are trapped beneath the rubble of the Town Hall, which has collapsed on top of them. Initially, they are able to contact what remains of local fire and police services by radio. It is not possible for rescue teams to reach them, since radiation levels are too high and all approaches are blocked.

Within hours, fallout from a groundburst at Crewe begins descending upon Sheffield. As their severely damaged home offers little protection, the Kemps suffer from radiation sickness, and Mrs. Kemp is also severely burned (the narrator points out: "the symptoms of radiation sickness and panic are identical"). A day after the attack, they stumble outside to search for Michael, looking in horror at the devastation and fires around them. They find Michael, dead, under a pile of wreckage in the front garden. The Becketts are better protected in their cellar, but Ruth's grandmother (who had been sent to live with them as hospitals were cleared for expected casualties) dies. After helping to move her body to the front room, Ruth leaves the cellar and wanders through the devastated city. Little has been left standing; bodies are everywhere, along with dazed, traumatised and injured survivors. Eventually, she arrives at a hospital in Buxton, twenty miles from Sheffield. There is no electricity, no running water, and no sanitation; drugs and medical supplies have long since run out. Crowds of people await treatment: floors are covered with blood, pillowcases are being torn up into makeshift bandages, shrapnel is being extracted from injured people, and a man screams, through the rag he has been given to bite on, as his leg is amputated without anaesthetic. The voice-over points out that the entire peacetime resources of the National Health Service would be unable to cope with just the one bomb that has hit Sheffield. In the aftermath of a full-scale nuclear attack, 'as a source of help or comfort he [a doctor] is little better equipped than the nearest survivor.'

When Ruth returns to Sheffield, she goes first to the Kemps' house and finds Mrs. Kemp's body in their shelter; Mr. Kemp has left, and dies some time later from radiation sickness. She then returns to her own home, where her grandmother's body is decaying under a blanket. The cellar is full of flies and vermin, and she realises her parents, if they are there, must be dead. In fact, as a previous scene has shown, they have been murdered by looters, one of whom is himself shot by soldiers who chance upon the gang leaving the house. By this time order has dissolved and 'starving mobs' (in the words an emergency operations team member) are seeking food in many places around the city. Mr. Kemp is among a rioting crowd at a food storage depot who are dispersed by tear gas. One month after the attack, soldiers force their way into the town hall basement and find the bodies of the emergency operations team members, who have all died of suffocation.

No efforts are made to bury the dead as the surviving population is too weak for manual labour. Burning the bodies is considered a waste of what little fuel remains. Millions are left unburied, which leads to the outbreak of diseases such as cholera and typhoid. The government authorises the use of capital punishment and special courts are given wide-ranging powers to shoot prisoners. As food stocks dwindle, rations are reduced to 500–1000 calories per day. Those who work get more food than those who do not. Workers who die off slightly increase the average daily food rations to the survivors.

Due to the millions of tons of soot, smoke, and dust that have been blown into the upper atmosphere by the explosions, a 'nuclear winter' develops. Ruth is later working on a farm (having defied official advice and fled the city), eventually giving birth alone in a farm out-building to her daughter, Jane. With nobody to help, Ruth is forced to cut the umbilical cord with her teeth.

A year after the war, sunlight begins to return, but harvests produce few returns due to the lack of proper equipment, fertilisers and fuel. Damage to the ozone layer also means this sunlight is heavy with ultraviolet radiation; cataracts and cancer are much more common. The few remaining survivors are weakened from illness and hunger, and more die with the onset of winter.

A few years on, Britain's population falls to medieval levels and numbers: an estimated four to eleven million. The country has managed only very little recovery; survivors, including Ruth and her daughter Jane, work in the fields, the country's only industry. Children born since the attacks are educationally stunted and speak a broken form of English, due to the effects of radiation poisoning, which has resulted in women giving to birth to children suffering from mental retardation and/or physical deformities. Prematurely aged and blind with cataracts, Ruth dies, survived by her 10-year-old daughter Jane (Victoria O'Keefe).

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, and they end up having what the script describes as "crude intercourse". Months later, she is seen stumbling through the rubble of a city, pregnant and at full-term. Finding a makeshift hospital, she attempts to get help, but to no avail. The final scene shows Jane giving birth, and the film ends just as she is about to scream in horror as she looks upon her baby.

Themes

Like The War Game, which was made in 1965 and dealt with similar subject matter, Threads mixes conventional narrative with documentary-style text screens and narration, in this case 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 story opens with alternating shots of a spider weaving its web and of power lines 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, probably due to large-scale posttraumatic stress at what they have endured. Eventually, even language, a fundamental building block of human society, has degenerated.

Threads has been compared to The Day After, a 1983 U.S. television film depicting a similar scenario in the United States. (One review of both films said, "Threads makes The Day After look like A Day at the Races.")

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 television screening of The War Game (which had been deemed too disturbing for television in the 20 years since it had been made). Threads was not shown again on British screens until the digital channel BBC Four broadcast it in October 2003.

Threads was broadcast in the USA on cable network Superstation TBS on 13 January 1985, followed by a panel discussion on nuclear war. It was also shown on PBS stations as part of fund raising drives.

Threads was broadcast in Australia on the Nine Network on 19 June 1985. Unusually for a commercial network, it broadcast the film without commercial breaks.

Awards

Threads was nominated for seven BAFTA awards in 1985. It won for Best Design, Best Film Cameraman, Best Film Editor, and Best Single Drama. Its other nominations were for Best Costume Design, Best Make-Up, and Best Film Sound.

Video and DVD releases

Threads was originally released by BBC Video (on VHS and, for a very short period, Betamax) in 1987 (catalogue number BBCV4071) in the United Kingdom but soon went out of print and became a much sought-after item in the 1990s.

The film was re-released on both VHS and DVD in 2000 on the Revelation label, followed by a new DVD only edition in 2005.

Due to licensing difficulties the 1987 release replaced Chuck Berry's recording of his song "Johnny B. Goode" with an alternative recording of the song.

See also

• Nuclear weapons and the United Kingdom
• Protect and Survive, the 1970s British government information films on nuclear war.
• Square Leg, a 1980 British government home defence exercise that assessed the effects of a Soviet nuclear attack.
• The War Game, a 1960s BBC docudrama about the effects of nuclear war that was not broadcast until the 1980s
• The Day After, an American made-for-television film which also portrays the buildup to and the after-effects of large-scale nuclear war
• List of nuclear holocaust fiction
• Nuclear weapons in popular culture

External links

• Threads complete movie at Google Videos
• Plot outline with screenshots
• Threads at AllRovi
• Threads in pictures BBC South Yorkshire
• Threads at the BFI's Screenonline
• Threads at the Internet Movie Database