Some deep thoughts on Threads (1984)

51 min readMay 3, 2025

What we need to say about Threads.

This is the third and concluding essay of some sort of a trilogy:

UK 1984–1985: analysis of the fuel crisis and societal collapse in Threads (1984) : a reconstruction of the events of the first year in the film leading up to a major societal collapse
UK 1985–1994: explaining the narrative jump in Threads (1984) : an attempt to reconstruct the decade between the scenes at the end of the first year, which describe total chaos, and the scenes ten years later, which show a country that has regained the necessary stability
Some deep thoughts on Threads (1984) : a summary of the previous two articles, and more general thoughts on the problematic aspects of the film (and more generally, films and scientific studies on this subject) from a moral and ethical point of view.

In the light of an interesting discussion I got outside this subreddit, I’m sharing with you today some of the insights that guided my previous works (and will guide the nexts) on the movie. This is an excerpt. As a reminder, I had the opportunity to write two articles related to the BBC docudrama Threads (1984) in the past few months :

UK 1984–1985 : analysis of the fuel crisis and societal collapse in Threads (1984) to discuss what could have been the reasons for the catastrophic governance failure depicted in the movie following a nuclear exchange
UK 1985–1994 : explaining the narrative jump in Threads (1984) to address what is never articulated in the movie (the famous 10 years jump) : how, why and where societies ultimately transform from agricultural production to governance following severe disruption

We can debate for decades, even centuries, about what is possible (or not) in a post-nuclear war or post-catastrophe world. The fact remains that through careful examination, the entire film can only be transformed.

Nothing was inevitable. Nothing was impossible either. But a lot was needed. Several realities matter from an agricultural and historical point of view.

Table of contents :

· On collapse, human action and political failure
· On agricultural transformation
· The East of England: an inevitable choice
· The only way: continuity
· On human dignity
· Resilience against all odds
· My personal vision

On collapse, human action and political failure

First, societies do not disappear even after serious disruptions: they are transformed by mergers, new organizations, communities, migrations, etc.… This reality applies everywhere: Soviet Union, Roman Empire, Sumer…

Upon careful analysis, the breakdown of governance in the film Threads had little to do with simple resource constraints, nuclear winter, and even atomic bombs; but only with poor policy choices: “What could have been the justification for the “work-for-food” program? A few answers are possible. The fact is that the real extent of the destruction was probably underestimated by the contingency plan. When authorities discovered the scale of the situation in the days following the attack, choices were extremely limited, as implementing a traditional rationing system was difficult. A classic rationing system would have required the distribution, before the attack, of ration cards/books to people. Something that hasn’t been done. Could this still have been organized in the context? From my point of view, yes, even if it was difficult. The fact is that the implementation of the “work-for-food” program was probably decided not because of logistical or ideological constraints, but because the authorities (unfortunately, as in many historical cases during serious disruptions) were more concerned with keeping order and people under control, and because they believed that it was the best solution to maintain the pre-war economic, agricultural and societal systems. The authorities were actually reluctant to admit that the best solution was to adapt to post-nuclear war realities, not to match those realities to pre-war expectations. Something impossible, because all systems of the past depended on depleting resources (like gasoline) or destroyed infrastructure. The best example is the use of fuel to maintain highly mechanized agriculture, when authorities should have moved as quickly as possible towards more resilient and sustainable systems. »

The “work-for-food” program is not an invention. The concept is introduced by the film itself at the start of the reconstruction. Narrator’s voice:

…Money has had no meaning since the attack. The only viable currency is food, given as reward for work or withheld as punishment. In the grim economics of the aftermath, there are two harsh realities. A survivor who can work gets more food than one who can’t and the more who die, the more food is left for the rest…

The way everything is described is typical of the alternate reality of the movie Threads: don’t call a spade a spade, present it as inevitable, present this fact as if it were inconsequential to the social contract, absolve the authorities and never expand on its implications during the collapse the year after the attack. The typical way the film works: never exploring its own premise from start to finish.

Especially when this information provides the “cement” to understand the breakdown of governance. In a fair system, fewer resources could have been shared/updated (like the food ration). In a transactional system where people are competitors, this is impossible. I used this formula in a previous work: “ It was of course impossible to put food in stores for people to buy, but a “classic” rationing system might have been a better solution. Everyone receives food, even in very small quantities (especially the weakest such as newborns, children, the elderly, etc.) and those who work can receive a supplement. The social contract could have survived, because with a rationing system, food will always be a means to survival and not an end. But with the imposition of forced labor, the social contract disappeared. When something as basic as survival is linked to forced labor, we open the door to the unknown. The mechanism introduced by the narrator clearly resembles a coercive and transactional system. In such an environment there is no room for cooperation, because the new economy is about giving more food to survivors when more people die. The “wealth” of survivors is now linked to the death of their loved ones. Trust erodes and inevitably creates antagonism between people themselves and between people and authorities. This system can work as long as the authorities are able to provide food or use violent means, but when the food runs out, everything collapses..”. While the harvests harvested in 1984 could probably have fed everyone even if they had declined, it was the “new social contract” that could not be actualized. And in a context of complete erosion of total social cohesion and trust between citizens themselves and the authorities, the disappearance of all centralized governance was the only possible outcome.

The best proof of the very existence of the “work-for-food” program is the film itself. It shows on screen something that has nothing to do with ideology but the inevitable consequences of a system where people are interchangeable productive units. During the harvest between September and December 1984 in the film, people die in the fields (no one bothers to help them), working with their bare hands and with some vehicles and under military guard. Ruth, who was pregnant, was forced to work in the fields and collapsed, abandoned by everyone, and gave birth alone. A testimony of a system focused on simple survival strategies and productive goals, where all components of fundamental human solidarity and dignity have disappeared. A system that receives the blessing of filmmakers, and presented as the unique (and rational) choice in the face of adversity.

The following scene typically describes what is explained above (but not articulated in the film): “ The scene from Threads begins with a telex indicating that it is 10 months after the attack. The scene begins with several close-ups of wheat stocks and a soldier inside a barn monitoring the harvest, then you hear gunshots, Ruth and other people run away with grain, you can hear a soldier from a helicopter asking people to come back and shoot, then you see Ruth crying and desperately trying to crush grain to feed her baby. “. The situation has nothing to do with scarcity (the food is there), but with the obvious collapse of the entire distribution/processing system due to the breakdown of governance to keep the food distribution system afloat. Without this information, this scene and the collapse during the first year after the attack make no sense.

The mechanism described by the narrator does not resemble a classic rationing system. This is a rather worrying description. We will call this mechanism “work-for-food”. The conceptual framework proposed by the film is strange to say the least. We are talking about a food rationing system which operates according to these principles:

Money has no meaning since the attack
The only viable currency is food
[Used as] reward for work or withholding as punishment.
A survivor who can work receives more food than one who cannot
The more people die, the more food there is for others…

In my opinion, it is important to be very honest about this mechanism: it in no way resembles classic rationing. We are in a configuration that is more reminiscent of a concentration camp. Should we understand this description as proof of cynicism on the part of the narrator (and the film) or as a tangible reality in the world of the film ? Since Threads never provides an explanation of its premises: we must consider this as a tangible reality in its universe. And this will be evidenced by the scenes in the film itself.

From a purely historical point of view, it is possible that the British government could have made arrangements to temporarily replace the currency with a temporary barter system. This hypothesis is described in the 1982 work War Plan UK by Duncan Campbell. But clearly, the reading of the passages seems selective to us.

Thus on page 127: “At the same time, planners have not lost sight of their fundamental values. In the most remarkable circular of all to local authorities, Briefing Material Jor Wartime Controllers (53/76) the Home Office offered its views on a post-nuclear economy:

Collapse of the monetary economy

14. A large scale nuclear attack on this country would completely disrupt the banking system on which the whole monetary economy is based. Even a small scale attack on London and the location of the major facilities of the big clearing banks would have a similar effect… Money in its present form would cease to have any significance.

The circular proposed that barter and, for the government, release of food or clothing, would quite rapidly replace the use of money ‘as a means of purchasing goods or rewarding services.

It then stressed that:

15. It would be an essential part of the policy for national recovery to re-establish a new monetary system as soon as possible. This might take a year or more, depending on the scale of the attack, and it could not be assumed that the old currency would be redeemed, except possibly at a considerable devaluation of its earlier purchasing power (Author’s emphasis).”

Personally, the fact that the currency is compromised does not shock me. The mechanism is, however, presented in this work as a moral and ethical aberration, while emphasizing that plans were known to return to normal. The author of the book seems not to see the problem of the subject and writes this comment devoid of seriousness in our opinion: “These glimpses of official priorities for a post-nuclear future contrast strangely with the paucity of thought in other areas. On subjects like law and order, however, plans are well developed.”

The author does not seem to know (or understand) that a contingency plan is made to keep a society “upright”. Money (an essential basis of any modern society) is a problem that any contingency plan must raise, just like the rest: rationing, agriculture, order, etc. The film makes for a particularly problematic reading.

And on page 153 I quote: “Of course many peacetime ‘crimes’ would have ceased to matter,“at a time when the paramount aim would be survival’. The problem of non-capital penalties after a nuclear attack is quite ticklish, and the Home Office suggests forced labour — ‘communal labour’; starvation — ‘restricted rations; and the old, medieval stocks -‘exposure to public disapproval. Firing squads are mentioned somewhat circuitously in paragraph 6 of

Briefing Material:

Provision for appropriate penalties not normally available to courts might be made under emergency regulations and Regional Commissioners, acting through their Commissioners of Justice, would be empowered to impose such penalties as they thought fit in the light of circumstances and conditions at the time.”

Although speaking of fairly exceptional methods (even if objectively little different from other historical periods) this passage deals with crimes and misdemeanors. It does not make it possible to establish a link — made by the film — between a rationing system and an economy of death described by the narrator, in a concentration camp mode. What is presented on the screen seems to us to have much more serious implications than urgent measures decreed by the authorities. We are still talking about a system where death almost becomes a sought-after advantage with this terrible sentence. “…the more people die, the more food there is left for the others…”

Being obliged to mention the author’s bias on his own subject, in the summary is the best proof: ““Secret civil defence plans stress sealing off roads against refugees, interning protestor and pacifists, and impounding food and fuel supplies. There will be no rescue and no medical aid for the trapped and dying in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. Millions will die in nuclear target areas as a direct result of government civil defence policies.””

An imprudent postulate when the book itself evokes with force and detail the intensive discussions of the government of the time on all subjects, however difficult they may be and the condition of collective survival. But the most glaring irony for the author is his conspiratorial postulate of a government which would seek to organize a disguised genocide in the event of a nuclear conflict, under the cover of contingency plans, while devoting more than 400 pages to demonstrating quite the opposite, since the British government seemed capable of discussing all the subjects. The fact that difficult subjects are raised (such as the need to control refugee flows, for example so as not to compromise harvests, as can be assumed in the film) is in fact an obligation to guarantee the common good.

Our fear: that the film followed this pattern. The rationing system introduced by the film contrasts sharply with common sense and the government’s actions in the days before the attack:

Evacuation of hospitals to treat the injured after the attack
Moving emergency vehicles to safety
Broadcast of “Protect and Survive” television spots
Control of priority axes across the country to facilitate transport
Sending necessary instructions to local authorities
Arrest of political agitators (A necessity in the event of a serious crisis, France had arrested sympathizers of the German-Soviet pact in 1940 before the Battle of France, England had placed Oswald Mosley under house arrest during the Second World War… realities far from the conspiratorial ideas of Duncan Campbell)

However, the mystery remains as to the exact motivations which led the directors to introduce such a distorted vision of a mechanism necessary for collective survival.

Note that the film is in denial of the realities of governance that were nevertheless evident on screen during the first year. The film wants to convey a message of total helplessness which is not compatible with the elements visible on the screen: combine harvester, plane passing over the columns of refugees, helicopter from which a soldier shoots Ruth…. Remember the famous scene of the soldier in the barn who brings a jerrycan to fill a tractor: this cannot exist without an organizational and logistical structure in a realistic mode. This soldier is not walking with a jerry can from Exeter to the Sheffield area. The film is in denial, however: this soldier, in a realistic context, probably has a truck with jerrycans, a map and a list of farms where to deposit his fuel; and he is asked to make regular rounds (which is arguably even more true in the context of the harvest shown on screen). Whether this is coordinated at the national, regional or even county level.

Our exercise on gasoline — which constituted the basis of the article “UK 1984–1985: analysis of the fuel crisis and societal collapse in Threads (1984)” — is interesting in this respect because it allows us to conceptualize the logistical and organizational universe (including the choices discussed on the allocation of gasoline) necessary for the existence of the first year on screen. It doesn’t matter whether the figures are true (500, 250 or 50 generators, 40,000, 10,000 or 5,000 agricultural vehicles, 50,000, 25,000 even 2,500 transport vehicles, 40,000 or even 15,000 barrels per day…): if it weren’t for that (gasoline, organization, cooperation…), no more nothing would have been functional for a long time already on the screen.

And when we know this: we can only be more skeptical of the rationing program implemented in the film.

On agricultural transformation

Second, an agricultural system is necessary regardless of the tools available. The question is no longer what is most effective, but what is available. An agricultural system or nothing. The hoe or the famine. A subject never mentioned by the film itself, even though it is a crucial point.

Hence the need to discuss the most judicious crops. And where they are available (or not). Decades — even a century — of of grain cultivation designed for mechanized agriculture cannot be immediately adapted to manual labor. On the contrary, root/tuber crops are the best assets to obtain food quickly, in quantity and through manual labor, while working regularly on other crops. All this information means that the process can never be linear or universal: hence the geographical inequalities. Some regions are suitable for these crops, others are not. All these points are addressed openly and frankly in all my works: agricultural geography, possible soil contamination, remediation efforts, etc.

Last scene before the 10 year jump. Resilience and adaptation underway. The requirement of the film’s ending scenes. People working together with simple tools to till the soil. The “hoe or famine” paradigm. Unfortunately for us and the people on screen, the scene appears to take place in the pastoral landscape of the Peak District National Park. The worst place to do this: the soil is not fertile and rocky. It would have been much happier for them (and for me) if such a scene had occurred further east. But hey, things are moving forward :)

In short: “The fact remains that, from a purely agricultural point of view, attempting to maintain monoculture cereal production over vast areas is not realistic without mechanization in such a context; wherever survivors lived in the UK.»

In a longer way: “The agricultural recovery is most likely to have taken place in areas where roots/tubers/legumes are produced: they are relatively easy to grow, produce and store, are rich in calories and good for nutritional needs, and are the best choice for rapid food production (even with minimal effort, comfortable yields can be expected), while the rebound of cereal production on large scale was slower because of the obvious challenges in our context (resumption of animal traction, lack of vehicles, etc.). Cereals are of course important, but producing high yields in a fragmented agricultural landscape with diminished mechanised farming is implausible in the short term. Cereals require a great deal of knowledge, coordination, work and processing that is not guaranteed in our context. What makes more sense is to give priority from the outset to “profitable” crops (high yields with fewer tools) and gradually improve cereal yields.”

But by simply assessing the plausibility of the final scenes using agricultural and coal maps of the UK, we have provided the glue necessary for their existence: food and coal. Otherwise, the film is unrealistic, contrary to what the filmmakers claimed. But we also dismantled the famine/extinction narrative in the final scenes. Everyone knows that even the smallest and most inefficient field of potatoes, turnips and carrots can feed an entire family and more for a year. And food is the basis of any organized activity not related to immediate survival. Regardless of the exact number of hectares and volume produced (and regardless of the exact impact of the nuclear winter depicted in the film, which affected all agricultural products), and even if the process of agricultural reconstruction lasted a decade and was uneven: the fact that it logically could have existed (and should exist for the final scenes) by focusing first on “low complexity” calories (roots/tubers/vegetables) while progressively increasing cereals yields, refutes the main message of the film and its story of endless regression. Because what we are discussing is common sense given the constraints shown in the film. And common sense: it is already adaptation and the ability to reason. The first seeds of resilience: people once again having the capacity to act. The opposite of being passive and helpless. The final scenes are no longer simply plausible today, they are the inevitable result of applied geography. Thing illustrated by this map in the previous part on the narrative jump:

The three regions around Edinburgh, East of England and North of Newport are best suited. This is where the United Kingdom has always produced cereals, and especially roots and tubers. These three regions are close to coal mines. The East of England seems the most logical despite the challenges linked to potential contamination for several reasons explained in my previous post: “The critical value of this agricultural land in the East of England (the “granary” of the United Kingdom, almost “gold” for the central authorities and then the survivors) could have led in the short term to a large concentration of people, food, seeds, soldiers and civil servants for the management of the harvests organized by the central authorities in 1984. Efforts, whatever the exact levels and patterns of contamination, to clear and improve the land were not just a necessity but a matter of life and death given the agricultural value of this land. lands. Even if minimal given the constraints (fuel rationing, exodus from cities, etc.). For the British government and the RSG, sacrificing the best land for their desperate harvests between September and December 1984 and for probably planned agricultural projects would have been utter nonsense despite the enormous possible challenges. Similar efforts were probably made in the identified agricultural region of Scotland. Perhaps also in the south of England, although it is less important. Depending on the level of radiation, soil quality could have improved naturally over the decade. The fact is also that previous efforts under the direction of central authorities could have been continued given the greater presence of survivors of past institutions (military, civil servants, farmers…) and people (either former inhabitants or city dwellers): soil cleaning, crop selection, improved food processing… All these things do not require central planning but institutional resilience. »

To put it with humor: it’s a bit as if the filmmakers decided to only show the worst place to re-develop an agricultural system (the West of England, notably the Buxton region); while by turning the camera slightly towards the East, we could have seen another result (difficult, but undoubtedly much more plausible). An interesting comparison between two agricultural landscapes, Bakewell (Derbyshire; pastures, low fertility soil and small enclosed fields) and Billinghay (Lincolnshire; flat, fertile, open soils), only 100 kilometers apart.

The East of England was therefore clearly the region most suited to the fictional grain harvest, the most obvious setting for the agricultural reconstruction required for the final scenes (whatever the possible challenges), and the most logical setting for the final scenes; even with a different and fragmented agricultural landscape. Remember Jane’s barn at the end of the movie?

The barn is located at this position: 53.248074, -1.552125 (Clodhall Ln, Chesterfield, England). On the border between the Peak District National Park and the Eastern plains. The “granary” of the United Kingdom. Was the least capable person according to the film going in the right direction after all? The mystery remains 🙂

This problem with the location of the scenes — and therefore the agricultural incoherence of the film — is demonstrated by cross-referencing this map of British soils from 1985 with the approximate location of the scenes after the attack and 10 years later (i.e. the least suitable territories in the UK):

Soil map : Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Wales Office Agriculture Department; 1985

More importantly, it is the film itself that creates the constraint of a viable agricultural system. The film itself mentions the existence of a population ten years later of between 4 and 10 million inhabitants. Moreover, the United Kingdom did not exist in the Middle Ages and the first unified statistics (demographic/agricultural) date mainly from 1801. This fact implies several obligatory things described at length in the previous essays.

The film cannot, therefore, ignore the configuration of the United Kingdom and the impossibility of primitive subsistence farming given the level of population claimed. This is particularly true of agricultural yields :

“The estimated yields for wheat and barley [a probable minimum of 1 tonne per hectare] align with historical rates in 1700s-1800s England alone, when the population was between 5–10 million people. Far below these rates (like 0.4–0.7 tons per hectare), what is probably sustainable is a population below 4–5 million people, for historical England.”

Realism dictates, in particular, the use of land that is already arable and the use of draught animals for ploughing given the demographic figures. As explained at length :

“This last point forces us to discuss the viability of basic subsistence farming in the UK (as we understand it today). It doesn’t seem viable to us for the geographical and physical reasons mentioned above with the maps : the country’s configuration limits diversified agricultural development in many parts of the country, a necessity in a context where the survivors will have to leverage agricultural production to bounce back.

The UK in the 1980s was not as agricultural as it had been in the past : regional specialization, a relatively small workforce and low weight in the economy. The modern agricultural landscape is nothing like that of the past. In the past, farming was done everywhere for obvious reasons, as with the Scottish runrig, but this was no longer the case in the 1980s (and even today). To achieve this, you’d have to move tools, animals and seeds to unsuitable or long-unexploited regions, which wouldn’t make sense. We’d even have to move land, or even build new irrigation systems in regions with little or no agriculture — an unthinkable constraint in our context. We’re going to have to use farmland as it is : where it’s fertile, where the crops, tools, skills and livestock are.

For us, There is also confusion between labor-intensive agriculture (our case here) and subsistence farming. For centuries in Europe, agriculture was not highly mechanized, but was largely beyond the subsistence stage. Subsistence farming is perfectly suited to specific agrarian contexts where the model is historical (even cultural), but as its name suggests, it’s all about subsistence : everyone makes it with the fruit of their own field. With a population between 4 and 10 million people living in the UK in the movie, the physical constraints of the territory and the presence of non-agricultural activities on the screen, we need to think in terms of a labor-intensive model.”

The East of England: an inevitable choice

The critical value of this agricultural land in the East of England (the “granary” of the United Kingdom, almost “gold” for the central authorities and then the survivors) could have led in the short term to a large concentration of people, food, seeds, soldiers and civil servants for the management of the harvests organized by the central authorities in 1984. Efforts, whatever the exact levels and patterns of contamination, to clear and improve the land were not just a necessity but a matter of life and death given the agricultural value of this land. lands. Even if minimal given the constraints (fuel rationing, exodus from cities, etc.). For the British government and the RSG, sacrificing the best land for their desperate harvests between September and December 1984 and for probably planned agricultural projects would have been utter nonsense despite the enormous possible challenges. Similar efforts were probably made in the identified agricultural region of Scotland. Perhaps also in the south of England, although less important. Depending on the level of radiation, soil quality could have improved naturally over the decade. The fact is also that previous efforts under the direction of central authorities could have been continued given the greater presence of survivors of past institutions (military, civil servants, farmers…) and people (either former inhabitants or city dwellers): soil cleaning, crop selection, improved food processing… All these things do not require central planning but institutional resilience.

The fact remains that the Eastern agricultural region is irreplaceable given British geography. That this region had to be prioritized naturally. It is therefore in these regions that a large number of critical actors were able to concentrate: soldiers, civil servants, farmers, survivors, agricultural experts… The film depicts a collapse 10 to 12 months after the attack (famine, military violence, de-mechanization, etc.) but clear signs of reorganization a decade later with the obligatory combination of agriculture (an obligation for non-agricultural activities) and coal (a prerequisite for electricity). The pattern that emerges from these narrative, agricultural, logistical, societal and organizational realities never articulated (nor understood) in the film is that:

A considerable human, agricultural and material effort in the East of England in the first year, particularly during the harvest in 1984
An incomparable human/organizational/agricultural advantage and density allowing us to get through the difficult period between March-May 1985 and move forward; even with the transition to more manual agriculture
A reconstruction of a coherent and adapted agricultural system over a decade, then allowing the reactivation of infrastructures and coal extraction on an industrial scale allowing the emergence of the infrastructures visible at the end of the film

For the sake of transparency, here is a simplified diagram of the possible bombings across the UK in Threads on the day of May 26 (with civilian, military targets and agricultural areas potentially affected; something that was never discussed or shown in the film itself and yet crucial):

Although potentially seriously affected, a simple fact remains about the East of England (and perhaps also the agricultural area of Scotland near Edinburgh), as the map above explains: radiation concerns would not outweigh the preservation of the East of England’s agricultural capacity, as they are a top national security priority. And for several compelling reasons:

The East of England agricultural region represents an irreplaceable national food production capacity
Authorities would prioritize these areas precisely because of the contamination risks, not in spite of them
The case of Belarus demonstrates that a country affected by radiation cannot get rid of all its agricultural land (which could be worse than the radiation)

Although I have no information on what exactly might have been the British authorities’ objectives regarding this region in a real case (and what products might or might not have been saved), I do not think they would have abandoned the East of England. Because :

Starvation has a 100% mortality risk
Radiation poses more of a long-term health risk
The UK’s ‘granary’ cannot be replaced or moved
Technical remediation methods exist
For historical information: the subject is discussed in the film The Day After (1983), where towards the end of the film we see government representatives with farmers in order to select crops and abrade part of the soil if necessary — beyond the difficulties that this may pose of course, it is nonetheless possible
Food production is the basis of any recovery effort

And finally, the film itself showed us that the fictional government was ready to push all of its remaining forces into agriculture in the last broadcast heard in the film:

…If we are to survive these difficult early months and establish a firm base for the redevelopment of our country, then we must concentrate all our energies on agricultural production… (Wartime Broadcasting Service broadcasts)

And in the context of the British Isles: this cannot imply anything other than the “granary” of the United Kingdom or the wider East of England. The simple fact that in the film the harvest scene depicts a combine harvester and grain clearly indicates that the authorities are putting a lot of effort into these areas and in specific regions (even if this is not articulated or understood by the film). And more importantly, their “work-for-food” program requires agricultural products. The internal coherence of the film therefore requires that massive agricultural and organizational efforts be directed towards these regions.

The harvest scene involving a combine harvester, and therefore cereals, must therefore logically take place in the East of the United Kingdom. Here is a map which shows where the majority of cereal crops are grown (wheat on the left and barley on the right) in the United Kingdom (maps of Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board) :

The scene could therefore logically imply a migration of Ruth from Buxton towards the east of the country, the Buxton region being solely dedicated to pastures.

The “why” of this area is clearly important to understanding what could have realistically happened in the film’s later scenes: the re-development of a critical agricultural area over a decade. Because this is where food is grown in the UK and will be grown in the future, although challenges exist. If nothing was done in the film’s universe regarding the East of England: there would not be the end scenes of the film.

The only way: continuity

Third, the fact is that a future is inevitable, no matter how great the catastrophe. Aside from perhaps the Biblical Flood that I explored during my Bible studies, the fact is that even after a serious demographic/societal/agricultural collapse, life inevitably goes on. It is inevitable that people will rebuild in one way or another.

But at this point, the fact is that we’re not talking about the movie anymore. All these discussions/attempts have nothing to do with whether or not the ending scenes of the film were made. We have gone well beyond the scope of the film. The fact is that Threads can’t elicit any more scares once you understand what everything on the screen means at every stage of the film. When we know that many things were avoidable. When we know that several paths exist and are available. The necessary transition from passive consumption to lucid understanding. After careful examination, the only conclusion is that Threads is no longer a definitive depiction on nuclear war, but little more than a simple doorway for further exploration of several topics.

All the problems revolve around the problematic framing of political failure as inevitable in the year following the attack, and the denial (against all odds and even to the detriment of logic) of the inevitable adaptation process required for the final scenes. The perverse effect of the film is that it attempts to present the required resilience/adaptation as regression, and the failure to adapt as progress. The cinematic logic and philosophical intentions of the film are seriously problematic from an ethical and moral point of view. Examples:

Forcing a pregnant woman to work in the fields and abandoning her once exhausted during the harvest in 1984: normal in a functioning society?
Teaching children the basics of English a decade later, with the obvious collective efforts required after the collapse: disgusting?

I’m perplexed that no one has questioned the film’s internal logic and unethical assumptions in decades. For context: I’m not even English but French. The film was never released in France. So I’m the last person who should have watched the movie and put a lot of work into it to understand/decipher its internal logic and assumptions.

I’m also perplexed by the extent to which some fans of the film Threads (and also institutions that have celebrated the film’s realism without questioning its internal coherence) tend to cling to the film’s problematic depiction of societal/agricultural disruption by applying this kind of reasoning when confronted with contrary evidence: “You exposed an inherent contradiction in the film, so that means the film wasn’t harsh enough, when it was supposed to be the most unflinching depiction of nuclear war.” “. But that’s all. The contradiction in the film’s narrative is obvious, and the only way to resolve it is to recognize that the film is telling the wrong story. A story of inevitable degradation and terminal decline, while everything on screen speaks of institutional failure and then resilience.

The fact is that many scenarios can perfectly explain the film’s narrative (famine 10–12 months after the attack, reconstruction a decade later) if we study it as a subject worthy of analytical rigor. But all these scenarios will go in the same direction: subsistence agriculture, agricultural adaptation, crop selection, geography (need for agricultural land, specific crops and coal), gradual emergence of governance (agricultural communities or broader organizations like the “rump state”), transfer of knowledge, food stability, reconstruction of the social fabric…

Otherwise, the final scenes are metaphorical and absurd, and thus the film. This is why the film must be analyzed with our current knowledge of agriculture, society and governance. Not the opposite. Especially when the film holds the title of most “realistic” ever made. It’s every right to question the assumptions of this film, especially when they’re flawed, unethical, and simplistic. Whether it is agriculture, human dignity, resilience, collapse, governance, etc.

On human dignity

To borrow a poetic phrase from a previous article: “we open the door to the unknown” when we talk about resilience as degradation and survivors as “human wreckage” (see “human debris”). Once this kind of reasoning is admitted about even a fictitious or hypothetical situation (nuclear war in our case), there is no way to prevent this kind of reasoning from extending to other cases of serious disturbances. And this is typically what the filmmakers did with Threads. Although the film is stuck in its “psychosis”, and the directors show against all odds what they refuse to admit: society is transformed in their own film.

Excerpt from a previous post: “The final scene of Year 1 in Threads shows people working in the fields with the sun’s rays returning after the effect of nuclear winter has diluted into the atmosphere. Three things are striking about the harvests of September-December 1984: people work with tools, even protective glasses for some, but no tractor. No soldiers in sight either. When we think back to the harvest scene in 1984, it’s another world: people dying in the fields, working with their bare hands and a few vehicles and under military surveillance. I won’t say things are better of course (the people in that last scene before the time jump are exhausted), but it seems more peaceful in a way, like the scene 10 years later before Ruth collapses in the fields. […] Noting that before she died, Ruth was put in a bed with a blanket: something very simple in fact, but also a testimony of a certain concern for a weak person, something that desperate, brutal and foolish people would not have done. And thinking back to the harvest scene in 1984, something more astonishing given that Ruth, who was pregnant, was forced to work in the fields and collapsed, abandoned by everyone, and gave birth alone. From a societal point of view, society therefore seems more “benevolent” than when there was centralized governance. This has nothing to do with a utopia, but with the fact that more intimate human communities are generally more sustainable and resilient in a world of scarcity.»

Regarding the idea of treating the survivors as “human wrecks”, what the filmmakers did (or tried to do) with the character of Jane is not acceptable. A young girl working and coordinating with others (working in the fields, recycling clothes as part of a coordinated activity — instructions, collective work, dexterity — stealing food, looking for a hospital, etc.), is presented as if her brain had potentially “melted” under the effect of radiation. This poses a major problem for us, regardless of the character’s age, whether or not they are fictional, or their gender. What is at stake here is a whole way of conceiving a person’s humanity. A problem in a classic work of fiction, an unacceptable fact in a movie with academic and scientific credentials that claims to be realistic.

Jane’s behavior in the film sums up the whole problem of Threads: telling the opposite of what is shown on screen. It’s quite simple. Concerning her: on screen, nothing indicates a mental deficiency.

The childbirth scene at the end of the film was produced with this perverse and dubious aim: to transform a relatively vulnerable young girl (very young, having lost her mother and without loved ones, in a relatively complex environment) into proof of the terminal decline of humanity, in a pre-war town with a hospital and public lighting in certain streets. A fictional young girl — according to the images in the film itself — perfectly normal, hardworking and capable, but silent and discreet, who must amount to only one thing according to the filmmakers (despite all the visual evidence in their film): a non-person, something worthless, a piece of human debris, an incapacitated uterus.

The fact is that science is against the film on this point:

Firstly, the one who should not have given birth to a live child in the film is Ruth (she was probably irradiated during the bombing of Sheffield; the pattern would have matched our knowledge of pregnant women in Hiroshima after the bombing of the city).
Second, women are considered most likely to have a child between the ages of 20 and 30, not 13 (Jane’s age at the end of the film).

But what matters even more than the representation of the character in the film is that everyone feels authorized to describe her as a “human wreck”: mute, mentally deficient due to radiation, symbol of the terminal decline of humanity, illiterate, cold… The fact that she is a fictional character changes nothing. While we should at least show compassion or empathy towards his character, we don’t. But the “nuclear war is bad” effect allows everything: even total disregard for the most fundamental human dignity, with academic and media support.

To conclude on this point, these discussions around the fictional character of Jane have nothing to do with sentimentality, pity or anthropology. It has only to do with the need for overall coherence in the internal logic of a film celebrated for its realism. The film owes us an explanation, but lives in denial of its own reality. Jane’s character probably poses the most problems for the film for the following two chronological reasons:

Firstly, it should have been acknowledged that someone was willing to open the door for Ruth and her baby in the months following the famine scenes between March and May 1985, because to think otherwise is absurd: a single woman with a baby could not have survived on her own without being welcomed somewhere in such a context
It would have been necessary to acknowledge that Jane had been fed for a decade, even if the first few years could have been complicated given the constraints on the farming system, which would have meant talking about the agricultural reconstruction mentioned above, since it was necessary to go beyond primitive subsistence farming

The cause of the film’s schizophrenia with regard to this character is therefore probably to be found in its logical inconsistencies.

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And if we are not capable of it with regard to a fictional character on the pretext that the political/ideological message of the film goes beyond the fundamental respect due to the human person, I do not believe that we are capable of it in general. The same can also be said of other children. Or even the “invisibles” who work in the fields, without whom the very existence of these people would be impossible.

And also soldiers; remains of a prestigious institution of a once great nation. The film doesn’t conceptualize it, but without them, what the film shows (school, hospital, coal mining…) would probably not be possible from a purely organizational point of view. Not that agrarian communities are incompetent, but these infrastructures require the coordination of different actors. Something that only people with strong organizational background could coordinate in the absence of traditional state forms. The film turns them into indistinct, anonymous shadows that shoot through the dark night, or people entering a makeshift building for no reason. A sort of survivalist enclave. The truth is that brutal and unintelligent survivalists do not organize a school for children or even a health clinic. It is probably thanks to these people (former soldiers or civil servants, etc.) that many people were able to survive until 1994–1997 in the film.

This scene at the end of the film is illustrative of Threads’ total perversity when it comes to human dignity. We see the soldiers entering their makeshift shelter with lights and radio, then Jane integrates the scene in less than a few seconds. The film, in its delirious psychosis, persists in thinking of the survival of these 4–10 million people (the film’s own figures) in isolated pockets (meaningless survivalism). Everything we see on screen can only be the fruit of a collective, human effort. We could have had a short dialogue between Jane and these soldiers (even a simple “Where are you going?”/”What are you doing here”; something that would have happened in real life) but the film persists in its psychosis.

If the treatment imposed on the fictional character of Jane is the most problematic, it is just as problematic for the others. By denying them all humanity, dignity, resilience, and collective and individual capacities to promote dubious ideological objectives — a goal which also turns against the film itself when the latter is analyzed seriously — it is ultimately our humanity, resilience, dignity, and collective and individual capacities which are denied and criminalized because they call into question the narrative of the film.

Even more shocking for us is the disrespect regarding the dignity of the dead. The film indulges in its morbid fantasy of a society that offers no burial — or at least dignity — to its dead, either by burying them or by gathering their bodies somewhere, making unacceptable use of historical photographs — used out of context — of mass graves. A disturbing fantasy with few historical precedents, and little sense either, for obvious reasons linked to the risk of spreading disease and infection.

Finally, to conclude this section, the film completely overlooks what is happening in its own world: the UK and its people are innocent of any wrongdoing. The film makes it clear that it was clearly the Soviet Union that decided to launch its murderous and indiscriminate attack on the UK. The film, celebrated for its realism, nevertheless draws the logical and ethical conclusion that an entire country has committed a total moral wrongdoing by being the victim of an indiscriminate and extremely brutal attack. In the film’s logic:

A country must die because the country is the victim of an attack that it never initiated
Any logical reconstruction is interpreted as a crime against humanity
The fault is hereditary through all the descendants of the survivors

We must conclude that the film does not seem designed to warn of the consequences of a nuclear conflict. The film is designed to say that being a victim of nuclear conflict (or any other major disaster/violent event) is a moral fault in itself, insofar as nuclear weapons are the ultimate social taboo for the film’s directors and consultants. By extension, therefore, the film considers that an actual victim of genocide, a major climate/ecological disaster, famine or mass violence is morally at fault for the simple reason that the commission of an unacceptable act by another results in the logical transmission of blame onto the victims.

Resilience against all odds

To conclude on the framework necessary to understand the film: we never tried to make the film true from the beginning. It is the film that must correspond to our agricultural, historical, societal and demographic knowledge. Threads is not reality. It’s Threads who has to accept reality. And when it’s done, the whole meaning is transformed.

Discussing at length the requirements of the film’s final scenes and what inevitably should have happened during the narrative leap: agricultural reconstruction, crop selection, reconstruction of the social fabric, coal production, emergence of governance… We meanwhile questioned the film’s depiction of total regression. The functional society depicted at the end of the film cannot exist without a functional agricultural system, even if the film presents it as a simple regression. While ultimately this is what should undoubtedly have been done from the start by the central authorities: choosing more resilient modes of production. The narrative contradiction inherent in Threads is total: you cannot describe/show in your own film a functioning society (coal, agriculture, education…) and consider the underlying requirements allowing the very existence of these scenes framed as terminal decline.

The resilience narrative, ironically, is something that flows naturally and inevitably from the film itself. People had to eat during the 10-year narrative jump. People had to work together to produce food, improve their techniques, and ultimately produce surpluses. Also organize a basic education system, governance and coal mining. A declining and powerless society does not teach its children given these constraints. Order does not emerge by itself: it is a construction. From my point of view:

Either I’m totally wrong and what I wrote makes no sense. Everything we see on screen is metaphorical. So the meaning of the film. An aesthetic of despair. Not a realistic film.
Either I’m right and what I wrote makes sense. The film depicts, against the grain of its own narrative, the light at the end of the tunnel. Without recognizing these scenes as such.

The fact remains that the film Threads, unanimously celebrated for its realism, cannot have both:

Either you are realistic and you accept what you depict on the screen: the lowest point of recovery after a decade of agricultural recovery.
Either the film is no longer realistic

What we see at the end of the film could correspond to the result of what could have possibly been achieved by the characters on screen in the last scenes: a decade of agricultural reconstruction, from simple products (roots/tubers/vegetables) to cereals, to the start of a resumption of industrial production (coal, electricity…); something that could only realistically have happened with:

Specific agricultural regions historically known for their relatively “easy” to grow products and close to coal deposits (East of England, Scotland, etc.)
People who have re-learned to work and think together, but also able to take care of each other and anticipate
A required pool of specialists with past expertise in governance, planning and organization (“the rump state” composed of ex-soldiers/civil servants/agricultural experts) to gradually coordinate, increase agricultural production and put in place the required framework to gradually coordinate different activities over a large area
The rebuilding of trust between the valuable remnants of past authorities and the surviving agricultural communities; a need to gradually amplify all efforts leading to the final scenes, and most difficult for the founders of the “rump state”
The reason why the founders of the “fragment-state” were probably extremely complex people, both harsh (hanging looters, militaristic, shooting on sight if the law is broken…) and generous (hospital, educational program for children, probably the leaders behind all the required agricultural improvements, able to share knowledge…); beings stuck between the harsh realities of the new world and their sincere desire to advance themselves and others, while sharing the difficulties of the population in general (the famous scene where the soldiers enter a makeshift house at the end of the film)

No magic is at play here. Everything was written based on the agricultural and mining realities of the United Kingdom. And also agricultural: the logical transition towards “low complexity” agricultural products (which can be easily produced with manual labor) at the beginning while developing cereals. The “why” that explains why certain regions were better adapted than others. The “why” also these scenes at the end of the could not have happened anywhere in what remains of the United Kingdom. Hence the following map (the crucial missing link between an agricultural system, society and the coal production needed for the final scenes):

Whether this may have been perfectly true (or not) from a simple agricultural and societal point of view (we have no evidence in history of such a radical change), does not change the fact that this reality seems to exist in what is considered the most realistic film of all time on the subject. It was not contrarian to question his assumptions. Is this plausible? If yes, where and how? The thing is, this was probably never conceptualized by the filmmakers. But ironically, the possibility emerges naturally because of the natural makeup of the UK’s agricultural and mining landscape.

The best and most suitable agricultural regions for growing roots/tubers/vegetables are in the East of England (notably the region from East Anglia to Hull) and the coalfields naturally coexist in this part of the country. If what was on the screen should have been true, the map tells us that it would have been not only logical, but inevitable in the East of England. Individuals and society rebuild themselves with available resources adapted to their tools and abilities. The obvious geographic composition of resources matters much more than millimetric realities in the study of geographic and human development. Given the geography, you have crucial farmland and coal side by side. That’s all it takes.

In-depth research on every crop, on every seed, on every square centimeter, would lead to the absurdity of conforming to the Royal Agricultural Society of England asking me to provide all existing protocols required for my hypothetical post-nuclear agricultural analysis of 1990s East Anglia:

Protocols for manual extraction and storage of carrot seeds for non-mechanized agriculture (Volume 6 and Section 9)
Guide to good agricultural practices using post-nuclear hoe (Spring 1995 n°234; communes of Rutland)
Complete Inventory of Post-Nuclear Potato Plants: Volume 1 (Norfolk Region)
County-by-county Turnip Yield Projections with Soil pH Variance Tables (Appendix A)
Historical data for post-nuclear livestock and poultry shows (Tyne and Wear; 1989–1992; ducks and guineafowls)
Methodologies for processing manually extracted sugar under primitive conditions (Section 3.b)
Manual control of Jerusalem artichoke pests in post-nuclear Sussex (Volumes 9 and 19)
…

Something that wasn’t my responsibility in the first place :)

Whether it could have taken a decade like in the movie or more, like 20 or 40 years, doesn’t change anything. This would inevitably have happened. An agricultural region is likely to remain so, even through crop replacement. The same goes for the coalfields: they will not suddenly change place. The geography of the UK is unforgiving. And once the two meet, the coal could have burned.

As I said above, I believe a 15 year time frame until the final scenes would have been more realistic, especially for the signs that the great power grid was necessary in pre-war urban cities to have street lighting, something from the past probably much less essential a decade later for any survivors.

As I wrote: “For the people we studied, everyday food is probably this kind of loop: bread, potatoes, turnips, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, soup, potatoes, beets, beans, apples, peas, bread, meat, potatoes, turnips, rutabagas, pumpkins… it’s not something very fun and recreational. No pizza, sushi, bananas, Italian pasta or avocados… But that’s not what matters. What matters is that we are able to properly feed ourselves and others with what we can have and produce. And once we are sufficiently sure of our ability to produce collectively again, we can gradually and slowly move on to other subjects not linked to food: a school, a dispensary, the valorization of textile products, the extraction of coal for a steam engine…»

What is misleading is to think that the survivors in the context of the film Threads “win” the nuclear war against the Soviet Union if they rebuild something meaningful, when in reality they are simply rebuilding their world destroyed by military and political decisions in which they had no say.

To put it more philosophically: the dead, even if we owe them a duty of memory (especially during massive human tragedies), must never preempt the living. The idea that survivors can “dance on the dead” is an aberration: we are all doing it, right now. This reality applies both to the domain of fiction and to very real human dramas.

In conclusion, and from a psychological point of view, Threads seems like a “confusing” case to say the least. Someone living in their own crazy reality and probably barely understanding their own crazy world. The “why” we should definitely not let ourselves indulge in its hypotheses. From the consequences of the “work-for-food” program to the necessary resumption of agriculture a decade later, the internal logic of Threads is a dead end. The realistic scenario is that of a collapse after a political failure followed by a long transformation, a reconstruction of agriculture, the social fabric, trust, cooperation and governance. In the crazy world of the movie Threads, the scenes at 10–12 months are just unimportant food shortages, the mechanics of the “work-for-food” program are intentionally omitted, and society has regressed to a primitive state a decade later, albeit reintroducing coal and electricity. This is why negotiating with the alternate reality of Threads is dangerous: it requires us to deny everything we know about governance, society, human history, and agriculture. Threads is only realistic when we respect its worldview.

So let’s call it what Threads is: an abandonment of human intelligence, resilience and ingenuity in the face of adversity to realize an incoherent narrative of total extinction belied by its own images. What remains of Threads and films of this type whose reasoning is unfortunately intellectual and scientific dead ends? The opposite of what these films purported to do: create a more responsible audience. There is nothing worse than seeing a film benefiting from a guarantee of scientific realism collapse when we confront its internal logic with our agrarian, geographical, historical knowledge… The film Threads stops functioning normally when we leave the domain of emotion to think about systems, agriculture, governance, society… And this is unbearable for many people. The communities that revolve around these films are often worrying: nihilism, total absence of empathy, survivalist fantasies… Here are some examples with a chatbot developed (and since closed) by the community surrounding the film Threads.

The most vulnerable character in the film (and ironically the most capable in the end when we dissociate the narrative objective of the film and what the film actually shows us about Jane) presented in degrading and humiliating postures. A crazy portrait of England that doesn’t even match the images in the film (we’re talking about people living in tunnels, not eating… the opposite of the imagery of the film itself). Incoherent and disgusting survivalist fantasies. An intellectual impasse comparable (or even equal) to that of the eponymous film.

In this area, and to conclude, the defenders of the abolition of nuclear weapons are in the same intellectual and moral impasse. Whether or not you abolish nuclear weapons: you must die in the name of their ideology. Nugget:

Two publications from “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists”. Above the promise of certain and definitive death in the event of a nuclear conflict: nowhere to hide to survive. Below, the need to continue the apocalyptic discourse at the cost of logic and even basic dignity: abolishing nuclear weapons now becomes the ultimate threat to combat. Nuclear weapons kill even when they are not there. The height of absurdism. Proof of the ideological nonsense of these people. All this proves that these discussions, films and academic studies absolutely lack the purported moral purpose. These people are so addicted to fear that they cannot live without it.Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists”if there were no more nuclear weapons?

If I had to say something about atomic weapons (even if it’s not the subject of this article) : I’m not condemning their existence, but the bureaucratic and mathematical logics linked to their existence. Logics that are never debated in countries with nuclear weapons and are often ignored by the most active (and sometimes the most problematic) activists. A logic that can be summed up in this terrible mathematical schema (the existence of which is tacitly accepted by the countries that possess atomic weapons, and even by some outspoken opponents of nuclear weapons whose life is based exclusively on the fear/ignorance of the general public on this subject) :

The real issue with nuclear weapons is to stop presenting them as “doomsday” weapons. They are weapons that have been perfectly rationalised in political/military circles. That’s why we need to stop the narratives of fear, impotence and total extinction : nuclear weapons exist in a rational world. Therefore, rational solutions exist to save people — and our British people in the context of Threads — from the consequences of “the aftermath” : the only thing we can really do anything about, especially because these people hold not responsibilities in such of an event.

There is something ironic in this form of intellectual “hamster wheel” developed in academic circles on major catastrophes (nuclear war or others): the ultimately very Christian idea of a form of inheritance of faults from generation to generation without any real possibility of remission or forgiveness. A dogma presented as infallible. An irony for an environment that claims to be largely secularized. The film Threads is the perfect illustration of this. The UK made a “mistake” by being involved in a nuclear war. Therefore no one must be saved. Nothing is possible. The fault must therefore also be perpetuated from generation to generation, from Ruth to Jane. A theology that Paul of Tarsus would not have denied: “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, so death has come to all men, because all have sinned.” (Epistle to the Romans 5). Nor do some Christians with the concept of “predestination”: the idea that we have always been saved or condemned, regardless of what we do, believe or undertake. The culture that has emerged around this film is nonsense. What moral values inspire the film ? Very few, and not the ones the filmmakers had hoped for, especially when you see how much filmgoers are invested in the morbid. The film no longer delivers the moral lesson it was originally intended to, instead becoming a space (like other films in the style of The Road) for wallowing in base instincts. There’s not much left of it, with the exception of the policeman with his face covered by a bandage. A far cry from the profound debates on the place of nuclear power that the directors and extras (many of them members of the CND — Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) wanted to create. Selection:

My personal vision

After all that, why not make a flag? Having visited a field of potatoes, leeks, carrots or whatever it is in the “rump state” somewhere in the middle of what used to be England, people complained that this winter we’d be a bit short on carrots and turnips. Are we being taken for a ride? I’d seen that in a vague BBC film about nuclear war released in 1984. I was a bit annoyed. So to calm everyone down, I thought: why not a giant carrot in the middle of a flag? I made a few drawings. Some hypotheses. A bit “light” though, isn’t it? We’ve just opened the world’s first university chair in post-nuclear agronomy and we’re doing this? Let’s try to think a little more broadly: 1/3 for coal, 2/3 for fields, three ears of wheat, even if we’re only just starting to produce more. Not bad, eh? That’s French 🙂

Because no one is immune to prejudice, and to be transparent: my personal religious background probably influenced me a lot in interpreting the film Threads. I come from Protestantism with a more recent interest in Judaism. Both traditions have no interest in sterile dogmas, nihilism, and “apocalyptic high priests.”

In both traditions, the primary sources for reflection are scriptures concerning religious subjects (“Sola Scriptura” in Protestantism; Talmud and commentaries also in Judaism). In our context, studies of plausibility and understanding of films like Threads, our “Sola Scriptura” is composed of agricultural/mining maps, governance knowledge, historical patterns of severe disruption… In a way, I treated the film Threads as a kind of “sacred text”. To put it with a bit of humor: a sort of post-nuclear Dead Sea Scroll found in an abandoned bunker of a former RSG.

The film actually shares many characteristics with the Hebrew Bible, notably its fragmentary aspect: almost all the scenes are totally disconnected from each other, many characters barely interact with each other, something is said at a given moment but is not articulated throughout the story, there are numerous plots… A reconstruction was necessary. Unfortunately for the film Threads, the logistics (or rather the management) of the scenes cannot follow the narrative imposed on them. The constraints of the film can be summed up in a system of simple equations:

The “work-for-food” program introduced by the film

Total destruction of the cohesion necessary for reconstruction

England’s most arable and fertile land close to coal mines

East of England

A young girl born in 1984 during a major and unprecedented disaster that left her country in total chaos (no governance, millions of deaths, famine shown on screen, an agricultural system in disarray — not to say year zero -, total destruction of infrastructure, etc.) is still alive in 1994

An underlying society having necessarily rebuilt its agricultural system, re-learned to live in a community, having new forms of governance and having demonstrated resilience

A no-brainer for us. Not in the psyche of the film Threads and its directors. Unfortunately for them. Luckily for us. The final irony for a film considered the successful and total culmination of secularism; and whose worldview, to pursue dubious ideological goals, is the consecration of human indignity? To be less coherent than the most obscure passages of the Hebrew Bible in the face of the most minimal scientific analysis which he has claimed for 40 years, and to see his nihilistic message destroyed as soon as his realism is put into practice using his own images and his own narrative. Against its will (and because it is a prerequisite for it to be at least plausible) Threads demonstrates the persistence of mankind in the face of adversity and our collective capacity to rebuild; even in pain.

Both Protestantism and Judaism emphasize human dignity, life, free will, collective efforts, ethical clarity even in times of collapse, and meaningful professional activities. Agricultural work and cycles too, because they constitute the basis of all past and future society. Working with other people in the fields is indeed a meaningful activity, even if difficult in the context of the film. There is nothing to be ashamed of.

You will note that in wanting to demonstrate the fact that the film had not done any real serious research (the height of it for a film presented as realistic), I did not show any naivety about the difficulties that a society could face in rebuilding itself in such a devastating scenario. On the contrary, we talked about subjects essential to any society facing a major catastrophe (the opposite of what the film claims to have achieved). How can we maintain our agricultural systems? What governance should we imagine? What place for solidarity and human dignity? We did this by studying history, geography, agriculture and talking transparently about all the constraints. Far from technological fantasies (the only ones that matter for the film) disconnected from the need to feed us collectively (an essential thing after such a catastrophe).

As I said: “It would have been more prudent to show fertile fields and simple agrarian communities. A life in the fields, simple and humble. A classroom with a blackboard and chalks. A local council under the supervision of former civil servants and soldiers. Some expeditions to recover coal or exploit a nearby mine. Maybe the North Sea too, if we think it should have happened in the East of England.”

Something simple, necessary, and perhaps much more realistic than the fantasies of the film which imagines that agriculture and the most unproductive lands of its own world will allow the re-emergence of industry and coal: “Unfortunately, the inhospitable and infertile land around Buxton will have to be cultivated. Understand how a television can operate without ever seeing its power source. And turn the lights back on in deserted cities like Sheffield, maybe Birmingham or even Liverpool. A logistical subject unthought of by the directors unfortunately.”

The most realistic film in the world, with all the scientific, academic and intellectual guarantees imaginable; thinks that without a functional and productive agricultural system, without society, and without governance, we can restart a coal-fired power plant. The definitive and formal proof of a film “living in his own delusional reality and probably barely understanding his own delusional world. The “why” we must not indulge in its hypothesis”

If we add to this the fact that the film interprets the existence of a solidarity mechanism as obvious and basic as food rationing as an “economy of death” (the other unthought of the film: ultimately providing us with an alternative mechanism much more explanatory and rational than the abstract consequences of atomic bombs; the death of its main message on the inevitability of collapse after a nuclear war, since human decisions regain control over its own narrative), the film is a failure total on the intellectual, scientific, historical, agrarian and geographical level.

This statement from the narrator is at once terrible, cruel, poorly informed and cynical as it distorts a mechanism that has always enabled collective survival: “…All able-bodied citizens — men, women and children — should report for rebuilding duties, beginning at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow morning…The only viable currency is food, given as a reward for work or withheld as a punishment…A survivor who can work receives more food than one who cannot and the more deaths there are, the more food remains for others…”

As for the final scenes of the film, they illustrate the problematic perversity of the film: the film needs the resilience (even fictional) of the characters on screen, but their denial of any semblance of humanity, while failing to reconcile its message with what the film shows of them on screen. The psychosis of the film.

A work in which I was finally able to express strong personal values. Values undoubtedly linked to Judaism that I deeply admire: a religion which symbolizes for me self-sacrifice in the face of adversity, the pursuit of life, the unshakeable centrality of the Book and the transmission of knowledge. Values deliberately erased by the directors of the film and which nevertheless concern what characterizes our humanity: respect for dignity and human life, the human factor, ingenuity, collaboration, hope even in the most difficult times, respect for agricultural cycles, the logic of renewal despite trials and human continuity.

I also defended my personal conviction — whatever the major tragedies that humanity may face (hypothetical nuclear war, famine, genocide) — that we must implement total, fundamental and obligatory respect for the living — even when the collapse is the most complete and darkest. I also believe that no disaster should become unthinkable. Thought is a duty. A duty for those who survive. For us. For them.

A work undoubtedly also influenced by my favorite films which are very different from Threads:

Urga
The Thin Red Line
25th Hour
The Place Beyond the Pines
Les Misérables (adapted by Claude Lelouch)

Films where human resilience and dignity (and hope too) are at the heart of the action. Things I also explored using Threads as a base material to understand how people might react as a whole in a dire situation.

On the other hand, I have a “definite” disdain for nihilistic and detestable films like The Road. From my point of view, this kind of film isn’t even dark: The Road was probably made to satisfy disgusting fantasies. It cannot be otherwise.

The analysis of the film Threads that we produced leads to the conclusion that:

The film never conceptualized the stewardship required to make its own scenes credible — particularly on an agricultural level
The film ignores the most “primal” geography of the United Kingdom: coal and fertile land are in the East, not in the pastoral meadows of Buxton
The film does not understand that a realistic story must articulate each of its scenes and assertions in a logical sequence — which it fails to do.
The film propagates a problematic message that human dignity must be crushed under the pretext of the filmmakers’ ideological agenda — nuclear bombs are worth more than the respect due to any of the survivors (fictional or real)
Finally, the film is in full narrative “psychosis”, believing it is describing a country which is in a definitive terminal phase (agriculture, demography, society, etc.)… while showing signs which require the exact opposite.

In conclusion, the detailed and careful analysis leads to:

Complete reversal of the initial message of the film… by the film itself: the initial catastrophe (the atomic bombing) becomes peripheral, human choices (notably the disastrous choices of the authorities to implement a “work-for-food” program) come back to the foreground, and it is ultimately the political choices that take over to explain the following events on screen
Introduction of the notion of resilience in a forced march: a country in complete disarray with famine, collapse of governance and complete de-mechanization shows a decade later an organized, productive society and non-agricultural activities

Whatever one can say about my hypotheses developed here: the whole problem is linked to this film’s claim to occupy for 40 years the title of master film of absolute realism. A realism that requires even minimal logistics (agricultural, geographical, societal, etc.) — and not conceptualized on screen. A stewardship which ultimately destroys its message — being both necessary to claim the title of realistic film and totally contradictory with its philosophical and moral message; the film cannot claim both simultaneously.

The film, a monument to secular nihilism, takes us to the crossroads of the imagination against its will. The agricultural and mining reality of England is undeniable: the fields and the coal are in the East. But such an event never took place. Would this have been possible? We may never know. And at the same time, this must have been not only plausible but even obligatory in the film considered to be the most realistic there is. It’s quite poetic and beautiful at the same time: something impossible to definitively attest or refute — which the film refuses to both deny and recognize — becomes the primary condition of its realism, making this fact incontestable to guarantee its credibility.

Out of respect for democratic pluralism, the “known” alternatives to our explanations:

“We provided the basics, for the film to deal with all that”

The worst thing that can happen after a nuclear war? Growing food together with simple tools, seeds, soil and maybe hope too. The ultimate drama for the average “apocalyptic” movie fan. For some academics too. This is exactly what our ancestors did for centuries and millennia. The requirement for the film to be plausible.

…for these survivors that the film itself never conceptualized: those in the fields with their hoes, these soldiers trying to maintain some semblance of order and Jane…

But this is already a very long discussion: the introduction that I feared writing in “New English” for the 1997 edition of the Domesday Book under the supervision of Jane

“Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seeds to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them. » Psalm (126:5–6)

“Those who work their land will have abundant food, but those who pursue fantasies are meaningless.” Proverbs (12:11)

“So [Ruth] went out, entered a field and began to glean behind the harvesters.” Ruth (2:3)

Cheers to the 1998 harvest somewhere in what was once central England, 14 years after the nuclear attack, in the alternate universe of Threads. Those also from 1997, 1996, 1995, 1994… and all the others before them. Whether barley, potatoes, turnips, carrots, rye… And perhaps also in what was once Scotland, Wales and the south of England.

Sources

Belarus case :

BELARUS: COUNTRY REPORT TO THE FAO INTERNATIONAL TECHNICAL CONFERENCE ON PLANT GENETIC RESOURCE 1996
Impact of the Chernobyl accident on agriculture : IRS (Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire)

UK mining maps :

Et Margaret Thatcher brisa les syndicats : Monde Diplomatique (2010)
Homes to be heated by warm water from flooded mines : BBC (2020)
Northern Mine Research Society

UK agricultural maps and land use :

Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board
U.S. Department of Agriculture — Foreign Agricultural Service
POTATO PRO
Revision World (Distribution of farming types in the UK)
Natural England

Some deep thoughts on Threads (1984)

On collapse, human action and political failure

On agricultural transformation

The East of England: an inevitable choice

The only way: continuity

On human dignity

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