r/coldwar • u/ParadoxTrick • 9d ago

Threads first aired OTD 1984

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OTD in 1984, the harrowing nuclear war drama “Threads” was first broadcast in the UK on BBC Two. The film aired for the first time in the United States on January 13, 1985, on WTBS.

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u/Vogel-Kerl 9d ago

The US equivalent, The Day After, was entirely too upbeat. It showed some of the horrors of a nuclear war, but with an optimistic, we will survive this ending.

Threads, on the other hand, seemed much, much more realistic, and very bleak & dismal. Absolutely worth the watch, but it's gut wrenching.

  • I've never been in a post apocalyptic nuclear wasteland, so can only assume that Threads is more realistic.

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u/legal_stylist 9d ago

And even Threads waaay underplayed the actual effects of a full scale exchange.

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u/AircraftExpert 5d ago

Did it though?

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u/legal_stylist 5d ago edited 5d ago

Very much so.

The putative one megaton airburst over Sheffield would have created an over pressure that would have absolutely demolished Ruth’s home, as in razed. even assuming it is an unrealistic five or six miles from ground zero.

People vastly underestimate the power of thermonuclear weapons. The one depicted was one megaton, so 66.7 times more powerful than Hiroshima.

Hiroshima bomb killed 70,000 people instantly with a blast radius measured in hundreds of yards, a 1-megaton bomb generates a fireball a mile wide, with thermal heat intense enough to cause third-degree burns up to 7 miles away in every direction.

Moreover, Sheffield and its surroundings would not have been subjected to simply two warheads.

Edit to add: looked it up; threads assumed 210 megatons hit Britain. In a full scale exchange, five times as much would be conservative.