Apocalypse Imminent: A Warning from the Past

One Sunday night in September 1984, between championship darts and the news with Jan Leeming, the BBC broadcast one of its bravest, most devastating commissions. This was Threads, a two-hour documentary-style drama exploring a hypothetical event deeply feared at the time and also somehow unthinkable: what would happen if a nuclear bomb dropped on a British city.

Made by British director Mick Jackson, with writer Barry Hines, and set in Sheffield, it begins with a young couple, working-class Jimmy and middle-class Ruth, dealing with her unexpected pregnancy in familiar kitchen-sink drama surroundings. International tensions build slowly in the background as the minutes tick by, bursting in through newspaper headlines, radio and TV news, and the ominous words of narrator Paul Vaughan, known then as a presenter of BBC science series Horizon.

Then come CND protests; council officers being summoned to an emergency bunker; and animated films on TV instructing people how to survive. Forty-seven minutes in, a nuclear bomb drops. The film ends more than a decade later with Jimmy and Ruth’s baby, Jane, now an adolescent, giving birth in a world devastated by nuclear winter.

Bringing horror into the homes, shops, and streets of a very ordinary world, Threads is a brilliant, terrifying film, and for anyone who has seen it (I watched it in 1999 on a dusty VHS), its effects will have been long-lasting. To mark the film’s 40th anniversary, I have examined its creation and legacy for a forthcoming radio documentary, Archive on 4: Reweaving Threads, 40 Years On, digging into the BBC vaults to show how the film has influenced writers, politicians, and fans (including Jim Jupp of the brilliant Ghost Box record label, who has created an exclusive soundtrack for the programme).

Directed by a science documentary-maker in his early career, Jackson joined the BBC in 1966, soon after the corporation decided to ban another film it had commissioned about the effects of a nuclear bomb: Peter Watkins’s The War Game. Blending documentary, newsy vox pops, and a cast of amateur actors and extras, it was dropped from the schedules following advice from the Home Office, but later won the 1967 best documentary Oscar after a cinema release.

By the early 1980s, the atmosphere was more confident. A 1980 Panorama episode, If the Bomb Drops…, presented by a young Jeremy Paxman, leaked a series of government films, Protect and Survive, made in secret in the mid-1970s for broadcast if the worst happened. Producer David Darlow convinced a local government commissioner to show them to him, despite their status as state secrets, and editor Roger Bolton took the gamble to include them.

The films became instantly – and chillingly – notorious for how hopelessly ineffective their advice was. Using simple, childlike illustrations, they instruct the public how to make shelters out of mattresses and bury family members outside in the event of a nuclear attack. One of these films plays in Threads on Jimmy and Ruth’s TV as they try to decorate their new flat, the first in a swathe of government responses that are simply not enough.

Inspired by this Panorama, Jackson buried himself in textbooks, papers, and conferences, finding out in rigorous scientific detail what could happen in the advent of nuclear war at a time when cold war tensions were ramping up. In 1982 – the year a tactical missile wing was opened at RAF Greenham Common – he made a successful documentary on the subject, A Guide to Armageddon, for the BBC science show QED – but knew that drama would help propel messages to the public more effectively.

Jackson recruited Barry Hines to write the screenplay. His radio producer, Leonie Thomas, found archive footage of Hines talking on Pebble Mill at One about his first meeting with Jackson. “I considered it very seriously,” he says, in his soft South Yorkshire accent. “And because I write about contemporary social issues, I thought I ought to have a go at this because it’s the most important of them all.”

Hines, who died in 2016, grew up in Hoyland, near Sheffield, which appealed to Jackson for a location. Why? “Because it was an industrial centre, a Nato base,” says Jackson, “and, excuse the phrase, bang in the middle of Britain.” It helped that the leftwing city council, then run by David Blunkett, was amenable to the BBC’s crew. The area was also a hotbed of CND activism and had local people more than willing to be extras.

Threads was made in only 17 days in early 1984 with a budget of £250,000. By setting it in Sheffield, Jackson provided viewers with a familiar, relatable backdrop. When I saw it, by which time it had the status of a cult film, it reminded me of my home town, Swansea – similarly rebuilt after the second world war. I recognised the people drinking in dimly lit pubs, panic-buying in familiar corner shops, running amok outside Debenhams and Woolworths as sirens wailed their four-minute warning.

This scene takes place in Sheffield’s the Moor, still a shopping district, and still largely unchanged. I recently visited that spot, standing where an image of a mushroom cloud appears in the city centre sky. The same mid-century concrete buildings and church in the distance frame that view.

For Jackson, the message of Threads comes down to something very simple: trusting people with the truth. “That’s what I wanted to get across,” he says. “That there’s no going back, that this happens. You can’t go back and press replay.”

Conclusion

Threads, 40 years on, remains a powerful and haunting reminder of the consequences of nuclear war. As tensions escalate globally, it is more crucial than ever to re-examine the devastating effects of such an event. The film’s legacy continues to resonate with audiences, and its message remains as relevant today as it was in 1984.

FAQs

Q: What is the 40th anniversary of Threads?
A: The 40th anniversary of Threads is in 2024.

Q: How was Threads made?
A: Threads was made by British director Mick Jackson, with writer Barry Hines, and set in Sheffield, in 1984.

Q: What is the story of Threads?
A: The story of Threads is a hypothetical event of a nuclear bomb dropping on a British city, and its devastating consequences.

Q: What is the message of Threads?
A: The message of Threads is to trust people with the truth, and to never forget the consequences of nuclear war.