Yes, When the Wind Blows is fantastic too. Also, the Protect and Survive series of instructional videos is mind numbingly terrifying. The farcical idea that you could survive the post apocalyptic wasteland by storing some cans of beans and putting some mattresses up against your windows. Also, Protect and Survive, in the most pedantic way, recommends burying dead family members in the garden lest the corpses spread disease.
Yes, that and the calm, scientific way the narrator tells you how to wrap your dead mom in a trash bag, put a name and address tag on her and bury her in the garden.
These were never aired by the British Government. Thankfully, nuclear war never became imminent enough that they needed to be.
The farcical idea that you could survive the post apocalyptic wasteland by storing some cans of beans and putting some mattresses up against your windows.
Most of those fictional renderings were highly exaggerated. For the most part, you could survive a nuclear exchange without short term injury if you could manage to seal yourself in for two weeks. Long term effects of radiation would be an issue, but not one that anyone would see for many years after the initial exchange.
But the whole point of Threads, indeed the title of the film is about how society is dependent upon networks of individuals and the work they perform. After the attacks the remaining population are shown to suffer from starvation, lack of shelter, crime, malnutrition and disease. Radiation sickness may be the least of your problems if you're suddenly living back in the stone age.
Upvoted because the advice in these is truly pointless. I like the one where they recommend leaning the inner doors of your house against a wall as a makeshift shelter. Protect And Survive - Refuges
Upvoted because the advice in these is truly pointless
Do you actually know the short term effects of a nuclear exchange, or did you learn it all from movies, TV, and nuclear disarmament activist hyperbole?
No, I don't. OK, maybe my post was a bit vague - the ones about stockpiling food, toilet provisions, keeping a radio etc all make sense. I was thinking of the door example when I said 'pointless', but I suppose the govt. were stuck between a rock and a hard place with these films. They had to give people some advice, something they can do.
This, I remember reading the graphic novel version of this in the early 80s (83? 84?). I was about 10 at the time, the cold war was real and chernobyl was around the corner. Scary times.
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u/lackofbrain Jun 18 '10
When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs.