Threads: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02kgkkg via @bbciplayer Mick Jackson Remembers... Threads: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0023sxq via @bbciplayer Sat and watched it last night. I remember watching it in the 80's when it was first released. The special effects are typical 80's but the story is still as gritty and grim as it was.
Ooh I remember this first time around, it was pretty terrifying at the time. Might give it a watch again.
Brilliantly done and on a shoe string. I watched the directors comments when it was on BBC 4 a few weeks back and he said every detail was researched and accurately portrayed. I think we are probably less prepared now than were were then.
Until recently, the likelihood of nuclear war had pretty much faded to next to nothing. With the war in Ukraine and Israel shaking their fists at all their neighbours, I'm not so sure now.
I remember the 80s as being a massively threatening time (I still have the 'how to build a nuclear shelter in your garden' book) and yet looking at the Doomsday Clock, we're in a more dangerous situation now. Madness.
Letter to my Dad, dated November 1980, accompanying the book, about building your own nuclear shelter!
I remember watching it, my takeaway was that local councils, smug in the knowledge that they had a pass to the local nuclear bunker, hadn't thought through the reality that they would actually be buried alive down there, under the wreckage of a large Victorian town hall. Earlier this year we visited Hiroshima, and their museum of melted things and distressing photos, all avidly documented by the Americans, who wanted to find out what happens when you use one of these monstrosities for real. There is an argument that the reason we never encounter visitors from other worlds, is that before a civilisation develops the technology to bridge the ridiculous distances involved, it has inevitably (the laws of physics being universal) already discovered how to make nuclear bombs and inevitably, given enough time, destroyed itself.
When I worked for South Wales Electricity Board we had the maintenance responsibility to test the civil warning sirens on top of strategically placed telegraph poles in towns and cities, the ones that sounded a sinister wailing like a WW2 air raid siren. I don't think they even exist now, as it's probably assumed people will receive notification by phone or Internet. Which would probably be the first civil service that any hostile agent will hack and take down first?!
Just getting around to watching it on iplayer. "when you hear the attack warning, you and your family must take cover at once." Bloody hell, hearing those words, that voice.... the 80s were a scary time in a lot of ways (although when I wasn't worrying about nuclear war, they were much fun too!)
Ha.. we used to install and test the local sirens.. In the 90s.. Spun one up.. For around a minute.. In a densely populated district... Proper howling... Sounded awesome... UNTIL.. The complaints made it to the local radio and news paper..! We got dragged over the coals for that... People thought the end was near.. Still funny..
