Okay - this film is 35 years old and runs for just over 46 minutes yet it still puts the fear into you. It's austere in its black and white production and the narration is that clipped Pathe News style. I found it pretty hard hitting even today.
One simile in particular made me feel chilled "the sound of the blast from a thermo-nuclear bomb has been likened to that of an enormous door slamming in the depths of hell." Cripes.
Any one else seen this film?
Check out Threads. Scare the shit out of me
I think I saw it twenty or even thirty years ago, can't remember much about it now.
it was always touted as a 'film they don't want you to see' when I was a teenager (a long time ago) and shown at student events and the like.
It's probably available for all on Youtube now and thus has lost any subversive attraction it might otherwise have had.
I've seen Threads several times. It is an amazing piece of film making. And yes - it does scare the shite out of me.
For some reason, the Beeb saw fit to consult the Home Office and MoD on the suitability of The War Game for broadcast. As a result, it wasn't shown on public television until 1985.
I watched it on Youtube.
It was shown at school, which looking back was not a great idea.
Threads on GoogleVids:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2023790698427111488&ei=y3n0SMudGIewiALElbzOAg&q=threads#
Now read The Road to finish yourself off... 
Threads scared the crap out of me, no such thing as a survivable nuclear war. What chilled my blood further was reading "Dark Sun" by Richard Rhodes which is a good history of the fusion bomb program and cold war. The American Military regularly flew their bombers past the point of no return into Soviet airpace in an attempt to trigger WW3. This was pre ICBM and the septic's truly believed they could win with the acceptable loss of Europe and a few US cities.
I believe the maker was commissioned by the Beeb to make a documentry style film ( I think for Panarama ) based on the bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the fire storms from 'normal' bombing of Dresden and Frankfurt (?) from WWII.
The resulting programme was stunning and the Beeb simply said they couldn't transmit it. That was what I was told when I saw it in ~ 1973ish.
Cold light of dawn stuff.......
Q
It's one of the films I've always wanted to see.
I've seen Threads and thought it was very good.
I saw When the Wind Blows as a play once. Very moving to see Jim Bloggs' trusting naivety at close quarters.
My Father In Law was a firefighter in Liverpool at the height of the Cold War and was telling me about the dispersal plans for emergency services in the event of it all going off. Also met a few V-Force pilots at RAF Coningsby amazing how prosaic they all were about the job.
and of course we still have enough nuclear weapons to blast the earth to pieces a few thousand times over
now where did i put that spare door
Utterly terrifying film, armed traffic wardens and all.
Armed traffic wardens ?
You'd think with the threat of a Russian invasion they'd have better things to do than shoot people for parking on double yellow lines.
The armed traffic wardens aren't sorting out traffic... they're shooting starving people that are too ill to work from radiation poisoning and so aren't given any food.
Threads and the war game are properly scary. Managed to get hold of both of them... fantastic films.
The armed traffic wardens aren't sorting out traffic...
It's a deeply disturbing moment, in an already very scary film - and entirely believable. The kind of thing the BBC used to do so well.
The scene in the hospital...
TOCSIN BANG!
First Strike - This ones pretty chilling, lots of authentic exercise footage in it makes it very realistic, most chilling for the message the programme portrays as an advert for the MX system
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlPEBROvR9w&feature=related
This ones a masterpiece - Countdown to looking glass:
And then of course, the one, the only, Dr Strangelove
Shooting starving people ?
So who is sorting out the traffic then ?
You can't have people thinking they can get away with parking in disabled bays just because there's a war on.
So who is sorting out the traffic then ?
The Home Guard. 
When we moved offices a few years back we had a clear out of old Secret docs, some scary sh!t:
I grew up about 5 miles from this X-SiteRhydymwyn Valley Works it was quite key to the British Atom Bomb project until the Yanks hijacked it! Even now it still has a really erie aura.
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