Tuesday 15 December 2009

1984.......what could of been....


if i say the year 1984 what do you remember...?
im 38 now so i was only 12 and heading to start high school after a hot summer of bmxing,
other things i remember are scaletrix,rubik cubes,spectrum zx computers,the young ones...



while music in the charts was, frankie goes to hollywood,duran duran,wham,and band aid where xmas no1.... though i was listening to hawkwind,ac/dc,dead kennedys,tangerine dream,kraftwerk,stranglers and the damned...do you remember CND?,i do and i remember having a badge with the symbol just as rick wore on his jacket in the young ones- that really is a classic brilliant series...!
but do you remember a bbc play drama documentry called "threads"..?
you may remember as i do the 1983 US film "the day after" of a nuclear strike on the US...well "threads" came out a year later and even by todays standards is still pretty realistic,grim and factual...
well someone has uploaded it onto youtube lately.i watched it once before a few years ago and was left thinking "thank god it never happend...




Threads is a 1984 BBC television play depicting the effects of a nuclear war on UK soil and the 13 year aftermath..the play was Written by Barry Hines and was directed by Mick Jackson,based loosly on a young sheffield couple (ruth & jimmy) and there familys,the sheffield rotary control bunker,and the post attack breakdown of emergency services,society,and ultimatily the slow death of millions and battle of survival as disease,famine,and anarchey take over...if this all sounds grim its because it is...heres a taster trailer someone made of the docu-drama...



now if you just didnt like that then you proberly will not want to watch the complete film which can be watched on youtube in 12 parts..starting here with pt1 of 12...



things really start happening around Pt5 when the sirens start,then by Pt9 after the attack the fallout winter sets in and survival gets a bit grim after this..even ray mears would struggle to cook up some good grub in this...
so whats the attraction to this?,well if like me you`ve ever been down inside a nuclear rotary bunker or ROC observer bunker then you really do get a sense to how serious the threat of nuclear war was...how close it came to nearly happening and how different things could of turned out..

3 comments:

  1. Do you remember When the Wind Blows? At the time I just took for granted that it was a children's book. About the nuclear holocaust, no less. That one certainly gave my nights an edge for a while!

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  2. no i havent read that so just orderd it from amazon,thanks,i think most of us would be pretty screwed if it had happend!

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  3. "When I was a boy there's a dream that I had
    That a war if it's fought was for good against bad
    And I woke up to find that the world had gone mad"

    http://www.youtube.com/user/officialultravox#p/u/6/6a-DiKhT4Uo

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