UK 1984–1985 : analysis of the fuel crisis and societal collapse in Threads (1984)

67 min readJan 11, 2025

I wrote this article to follow the footsteps of the authorities in the first part of the film, the year after the nuclear attack on the UK. Using the prism of petrol was important because it is an extremely precious resource and essential to the smooth running of any modern economy. In the context of an analysis of the film, this resource will enable us to answer an essential question: are the causes of the collapse linked to a disappearance of resources or to some other factor? Here is the required geography of this first essay :

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

This is the first 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.

A soldier monitoring the September-December 1984 harvest

Table of contents :

· Pre-war UK contingency plan
· Storage and availability of fuel in Threads
· “Nuclear fallout” May 26th 1984 to June 9th 1984
· “Reconstruction attempt, exodus crisis and pre-harvest” June 10th 1984 to September 22th 1984
· “First post-nuclear war harvest” September 23th 1984 to December 22th 1984
· “First post-nuclear war winter” December 23th 1984 to March 28th 1985
· “Centralized governance collapse” March 29th 1985 to May 26th 1985
∘ A parallel with “The Year Without a Summer” (1816)
∘ Consequences of the failure of the “work-for-food” program
∘ Overview of the institutional/food crisis
∘ The logistics “trap”
∘ Why is the crisis complex to articulate and not understood by the film itself?
∘ The scale of the institutional crisis
∘ Guaranteeing the continuity of the State, society and agriculture
∘ Scale of the famine
· “How to end 1985 ?” from 26 May 1985 to 31 December 1985
· Epilogue
· Sources

One year after the nuclear exchange in Threads, we can guess that there is no more fuel available given that we see people working in the field without any tractors or combine harvesters. Given the fact that the fuel was apparently rationed and only used out of necessity, it’s interesting to study how the whole fuel stock could have vanished in a year in Threads’ UK but also in the case of a nuclear war.

Important notes on what will follow :

The conversion rate used in the paper is 1 liter of fuel = 0.006 barrel
The paper assumes that the authorities ration the use of available fuel to sustain at least a year
And regarding the exact year (which is left ambiguous, even if the day of the attack is a Thursday which didn’t exist in 1984 but in 1983), I choose 1984 (the release year of the movie)

Pre-war UK contingency plan

We know from economic data of the UK in 1983 that the country was able to produce more than 2 million oil barrels per day, and was consuming something like 1 to 1.5 million per day. I will retain the higher estimate for calculations in this paper. We also know through recent disclosure of confidential documents that the UK was stockpiling many products during the Cold War like fuel, food, medication…

On the left, the United Kingdom’s daily consumption and on the right, its production (Source INDEXMUNDI)

It’s difficult to correctly quantify how much products were stockpiled due to the evasive nature of some documents, but we know that the UK in 1984 (thanks to the website Subterranea Britannica which I used at lot for this paper : https://www.subbrit.org.uk/features/struggle-for-survival/) might have been able to store — in times of crisis — quantities of oil equivalent to 76 days’ use in peacetime. The site is not very precise about the exact volume, so we will assume the UK’s consumption in barrels per day, or 114 million barrels of oil (crude or refined). For those who don’t know, there are two ways to store fuel :

Crude oil : it can last years, but can’t be used immediately without refinement
Refined oil : it can last 6 months to 1 year, but is available immediately and easier to store

Protect and Survive booklets probably distributed to the population in the movie

Storage and availability of fuel in Threads

The UK government in Threads will probably store the majority of this oil as refined oil in preparation for its contingency plan, but it’s not impossible due to the hurry that some barrels are crude oil (let’s say 10% of the total). In Threads, the crisis leading to nuclear war starts from May 5th to May 26th when the bombs fall on the UK, leaving a short window of 20 days for the government to stockpile fuel. Several factors are at play if we want to align with Threads narrative :

Unrest against the war
Flight from cities
Soldiers are deployed for reinforcement in Europe
No (or very little) rationing of fuel is enforced in the UK
Military vehicles are spotted taking position across the UK
Emergency vehicles are moved across the UK to secure location
Many fighters are used on May 26th when the Soviet Union launch its attack
Negligible amount of fuel was imported due to the international crisis
Even if the conflict is overshadowed by the international crisis, the UK is still involved in the Troubles
The UK miners strike is ongoing since March 6th

The last two points are very specific to the UK, but are not articulated by the film. They will not be taken into account to explain the events on screen. The amount of 76 days of oil corresponding to peaceful time usage is very unlikely in this context. It’s more likely for the UK to have only 20 days of oil at the end of May 26th, or 30 million barrels of oil (either in special storage centers or through the control of fuel stations), but by the end of May of the next year, everything has vanished.

The attack on the UK on the morning of 26 May was a brutal one, with almost 210 megatons potentially falling on the country. With an average of 1.5 megaton per bomb, it means something like 140 bombs. We can only guess why the Soviet Union launched its attack:

The crisis may have reached a point of no return, meaning that the leaders of the Soviet Union were unable to back down without incurring huge political costs both at home and abroad, which pushed them into a headlong rush. The growing riots in East Germany mentioned in the film are evidence of this. Retreat after all the force deployments in East Germany would probably have been too costly for the Soviet leadership, as it was at the expense of civilians. The Soviet Union’s economy was in total disarray in the 1980s, and this military build-up would have meant more shortages and sacrifices
Driven by its ideology — an extreme scenario but one that can fit into the logic of the film, which does not justify the attack — the Politburo came to the conclusion that the loss of at least 75 million people in the Soviet Union was acceptable as part of a massive, coordinated plan of attack, if that was the price to pay for hypothetically winning against the United States and keeping the Soviet Union going. An attitude somewhere between madness, cold calculation and sincere belief
It is also plausible that they reacted to a minor skirmish or provocation (even by mistake), and decided to carry out the plan to invade West Germany as far as the Rhine
The fact that nuclear bombs were used in the invasion of Iran described at the beginning of the film could have led to a ‘normalisation’ of the use of nuclear weapons in the Soviet military circles

The fact is that we will never know. In the scenario described by the film, the Soviets first created an EMP by detonating a high-altitude bomb in the North Sea to completely paralyse communications in the UK and Western Europe. The film doesn’t show this, but what is likely to happen at the same time is that Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops (perhaps 0.5 to 1 million troops) will cross the borders of East Germany into West Germany, to push on to the Rhine. This was part of a plan called “Seven Days to the Rhine” drawn up by the Soviet leadership during the Cold War.

The first targets were then the British military bases and those of NATO, followed by strategic infrastructures: ports, power stations, airports, refineries, etc. The following figures are taken from a work published on Medium under the title “The consequences of a nuclear war: case study on 80s UK”. We can therefore potentially list :

10 cargo-handling ports
12 international or regional airports
10 power stations
10 oil refineries
40 military infrastructures (bases, radars, communication centers…)

The bombing campaign then began, targeting all major cities and urban centers. London, of course, but also numerous industrial, economic and port cities, some with multiple purposes. These included :

Manchester (textiles)
Birmingham (automotive)
Liverpool (major port and industry)
Glasgow (shipbuilding)
Leeds (textiles and engineering)
Sheffield (steel and steel products)
Newcastle (shipbuilding and steel)
Nottingham (clothing and medicine)
Belfast (shipbuilding and textiles)
Bradford (textiles)
Stoke-on-Trent (specialized in fine ceramics, but can still be considered a manufacturing center)
Cardiff (steel)
Portsmouth (Royal Navy port)
Plymouth (shipbuilding)

For London, we could have these figures:

4.43 million dead
13–19 megatons

For the industrial and economic cities mentioned above, we could potentially have :

10 million dead
31–45 megatons

More symbolic cities like Oxford and Cambridge. Two major educational centers and where most of Britain’s elite are trained. The figures:

0.22 million dead
1 megaton combined

What happened next was inevitable, given the nature of a nuclear exchange. It became an all-out exchange with many irrelevant targets hit to maximize the destruction in the country and sometimes without justification: Leicester, Gloucester, Swansea… The final bombing figures are:

5 to 6 million dead
15–19 megatons

Cities potentially affected would be :

Southampton
Bristol
Leicester
Brighton and Hove
Edinburgh
Bournemouth
Sunderland
Kingston upon Hull
Luton
Peterborough
Swansea
Reading
Aberdeen
Warrington
Norwich
Swindon
Southend-on-Sea
Dundee
Ipswich
Gloucester
Londonderry

We can also potentially add :

York
Derby
Crewe
Blackpool
Blackburn
Exeter
…

Depending on estimates, the potential number of immediate victims could be between 20 and 29 million. Here is a simplified map of potential bombings:

The targets in red (atomic bombing targets) are cities identified in the scarce public information available on the “Seven Days to the Rhine” exercise. Added to these are: NATO headquarters in Brussels, US military bases in East Anglia, and oil/gas fields in the North Sea. The EMP (bold dotted circle) above Western Europe and the United Kingdom is also identified. The Soviet advance is identified by black arrows. With a question mark: the question of a possible invasion of Finland. The red crosses indicate countries that are not considered serious targets: France, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, etc. The blue arrows indicate the movements of NATO troops, and the yellow circles indicate atomic bombings in “airbursts” on Soviet troops.

Five things should be taken into account to explain the quick depletion of fuel (all calculations are not sequential but always calculated independently on the initial stock) :

Some storage facilities are not anymore accessible following the nuclear strike (because the roads are destroyed or full of abandoned vehicles) and because some of them could have been explicitly targeted and thus rendered unavailable (radiation, EMPs..). If we try to estimate how much fuel was lost and taking into account the magnitude of destruction shown in Threads, it could account for 30% of the stock
Of this remaining stock, we have said that probably 10% of it was crude oil. Given the scale of destruction, we can assume that the crude oil was unusable and beyond recovery, given the poor state of many oil refineries
Given that most of the oil was stored as refined oil (gasoline, diesel…), the life expectancy of this refined oil was 6 months to 1 year, but only in good storage and transport conditions. Due to the bad storage and transport conditions following the nuclear war, it’s no mistake to think that as much as 20% of the stock will progressively become unusable and even dangerous for the vehicles in the coming months. The prolonged fall of temperature due to the nuclear winter can lead to wax crystallization rendering fuel unusable unless additives are added, which is unlikely to happen. The lack of proper storage will lead to oxidation and moisture of many fuel containers rendering the use of this fuel dangerous for vehicles as it could clog motors
Finally, it is also important to take into account that a lot of fuel will be lost because of leakage, mismanagement, loss and theft. We can imagine that 10% of the stock fuel will at one point or another be wasted in this way

It leaves us with a real stock of 9 million barrels on day 0 following the nuclear exchange, so 21 million barrels are lost and not accounted for. So 70% is unusable from the very beginning or progressively. Based on daily fuel consumption of pre-war UK, its 6 days of peaceful time use. With careful rationing, this fuel stock can last for a year with only 25 000 barrels a day. For each period, a final insert recalls what had to be done to justify the possibility of a substantial population (that of the film), i.e. 4 to 11 million survivors at the end of the film; the second essay details why (in view of the technologies visible on screen at the end of the film), the number of survivors is in the high range.

“Nuclear fallout” May 26th 1984 to June 9th 1984

…Radiation levels are still dangerous. Residents of Release Band A — that is Woodseats, Dore and Totley, and Abbeydale — should not stay out of their shelters for more than two hours per day…

Following the nuclear strike, people are urged to stay inside their homes due to the fallout for at least two weeks. Due to the danger of radioactive fallout, very few moves of vehicles (military, firefighters…) are likely to happen across the UK, but some fuel could already be taken from the stock to operate many of the engine generators across the country in bunkers (for the government and Regional Seats of Government), military bases… and also to maintain critical infrastructures like communication centers. Something like 1.6 % (or 140 000 barrels) of the fuel stock is used over two weeks or 10 000 barrels per day.

We would like to make an important clarification on a subject that we feel is essential for what follows: what was the level of governance during this first year in the film? According to the British contingency plans, in the event of a major crisis, the local authorities (in particular the RSGs) were to take on most of the responsibilities and operate almost autonomously. Over and above what may or may not have happened in reality, we have reservations about this theoretical system of governance:

British regions, like everywhere else, are unequal in terms of agriculture, demography, fuel stock… Consequently, a simplistic application of this logic could lead to absurdities such as a region with enormous agricultural potential that could not ensure harvests due to a lack of oil, with no national mechanism in place. A region with no agricultural potential would have to feed its population with no national mechanism in place either. Something not realistic in practice, even if it could be have been discussed in government plans
The film will show us something interesting : shortly before the harvest, the members of Sheffield City Council — in charge of the urban area and its surroundings — die buried under the rubble of their shelter. However, a number of above-ground events are being organised, probably in and around Sheffield. We must therefore deduce that national (or at least region wide) governance has survived to coordinate people in the event of a failure on the part of one of them
Several things are organised in the film on what we can assume to be a national scale (or at least a wider regional level): a rationing mechanism, which we’ll talk about later, and above all a mechanised harvest (announced by a government radio message, the last one in the movie). These two mechanisms depend on resources that need to be coordinated: food and oil. And harvesting involves an effort that has to be coordinated and planned on a much larger scale than the county or the single RSG area, for one simple reason (which we’ll discuss in detail later): the British agricultural geography means that efforts have to be concentrated in specific areas and the products redistributed

As a result, we will tend to think of the first year’s efforts on a national rather than a regional level. This is evidenced, for example, by this intertitle a week after the attack, which states that representatives of the British central government are being sent across the UK to take control of food stocks in different parts of the country.

For example, a 300 kW diesel generator consumes 70 litres per hour (full load). A more powerful generator, say 600 kW, could potentially consume 150 litres per hour (full load). That would be an average of 110 litres per hour. If the generator runs all day, this equates to 2 640 litres per day, and 36 960 litres for the two weeks following the fallout, equivalent to 232 barrels. In 1984, the UK may have had something like 250 strategic generators across the country (this number is completely unknown for the sake of transparency — perhaps even less than half of it — the idea being more with this value to create some sort of constraint in our estimate of fuel consumption; the idea is also to take into account the possibility of highly variable capacities), which would have represented 70 000 barrels for the two weeks or 5 000 barrels per day (or 20 barrels per day per generator if we use the figure of 250 generators).

To be completely transparent about what happens next: the exact consumption ratios or the number of units (bunkers, vehicles…) will not be decisive in understanding what happened after the attack, even if they do provide a kind of framework for understanding the events on screen.

What remains available is likely used by the military forces taking positions across the country (securing food depots, warehouses, fuel stations…) and conducting some low-level operations. The stock is now at 8.8 million barrels after the curfew.

Key points for the period :

Continuity of centralised government, even if diminished (at the very least, by sending emissaries to the country to coordinate the necessary actions).
Deployment of forces, even if minimal, at key points in the country (service stations, petrol depots, food warehouses, etc.) to guarantee logistical continuity.
Start of an inventory of the state of national infrastructures to coordinate upcoming reconstruction.

“Reconstruction attempt, exodus crisis and pre-harvest” June 10th 1984 to September 22th 1984

The three months and a half after the curfew leading to the harvest will see a lot of things happening in the UK. All these events are going to be intertwined and are not going to happen in a sequential manner. Threads left it ambiguous but we can infer that this phase lasted 3 months and a half, as the first post-nuclear harvest began 4 months after the nuclear exchange, preceded 5 weeks after the nuclear exchange by a growing exodus from cities to smaller towns like Buxton and the countryside, and then the need to organize a pre-harvest. Over three months and a half the stock is depleted of 2.08 million barrels or 23.5% of what remains. It represents 20 000 barrels per day.

…All able-bodied citizens — men, women and children — should report for reconstruction duties, commencing 08:00 hours tomorrow morning…The only viable currency is food, given as reward for work or withheld as punishment…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…

Two weeks after the attack, the British government radioed the inhabitants and ordered them to register at the designated points to start rebuilding. At this point, the narrator introduces a certain amount of information concerning an important element: food and, in particular, its distribution. Seemingly insignificant, this information (never developed by the film itself) will nevertheless have unforeseeable chain-repercussions, which I will develop later. The mechanism described by the narrator does not resemble a classic food rationing system. We’ll call this mechanism “work-for-food”. The conceptual framework proposed by the film is, to say the least, strange. We are talking about a food rationing system that operates according to these principles:

Money no longer makes sense since the attack
The only viable currency is food.
[Used as] a reward for work or withheld as punishment
A survivor who can work receives more food than another who cannot.
The more deaths there are, the more food remains for the others

In my opinion, it is important to be very honest about this mechanism: it’s not normal food rationing. It looks like a concentration camp. Should this description be understood as proof of the narrator’s (and the film’s) cynicism or as a tangible reality within the film’s universe? As usual, Threads never provides an explanation for its own premises: we must consider this as a tangible reality within its universe. And this will be confirmed by the next scenes of the film itself.

From a purely historical point of view, it is possible that the British government may have made provision for the temporary replacement of currency by a temporary barter system. This hypothesis is described in the 1982 War Plan UK, written by Duncan Campbell. But it seems to us that these passages have been read selectively.

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 could have been compromised does not shock me. However, the mechanism is presented in this book as a moral and ethical aberration, while emphasising that plans were known to return things to normal. The author of the book seems not to see the problematic of the subject and writes this comment, which in our opinion is not serious: “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 doesn’t seem to know (or understand) that a contingency plan is made to keep a society ‘on its feet’. Money (an essential basis of any modern society) is a problem that any contingency plan must address, in the same way as the rest: rationing, agriculture, order, etc… The film makes a particularly problematic reading of this.

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 talking about quite exceptional methods (even if not very different objectively from other historical periods) this passage deals with crimes and misdemeanours. 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 screen seems to us to have far more far-reaching implications than the urgent measures decreed by the authorities. Still, we’re talking about a system where death becomes almost a sought-after benefit with this terrible phrase “…the more people die, the more food is left for the others…” The concern that may arise is that a mixture of possibilities concerning different categories of population and problems are turned into a single model applied to the whole population : this is what the film narrator implies. And since the film doesn’t provide any details of its implementation, we’ll have to start from that premise.

Being obliged also to mention the author’s bias on his own subject, its summary is the best proof of this : “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 assumption when the book itself evokes with force and detail the intensive discussions of the government of the time on all subjects, however difficult, and the condition of collective survival. But the most glaring irony for the author is his conspiratorial premise of a government seeking to organize genocide in disguise in the event of nuclear conflict, under the guise of contingency plans, while devoting over 400 pages to demonstrating quite the opposite, since the British government seemed capable of discussing the whole range of subjects. The fact that difficult subjects are raised (such as the need to control the flow of refugees, for example, so as not to jeopardize harvests, as we can surmise 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 the common sense and steps taken by the government in the days before the attack:

Evacuation of hospitals to treat the wounded after the attack
Emergency vehicles moved to safe areas
Broadcasting of “Protect and Survive” TV spots
Control of priority routes throughout the country to facilitate transport
Sending the necessary instructions to local authorities
Arresting political agitators (a necessity in the event of a serious crisis; France arrested sympathizers of the German-Soviet pact in 1940 before the Battle of France, England placed Oswald Mosley under house arrest during the Second World War… realities far removed from Duncan Campbell’s conspiracy theorizing)

As mentioned above, we’ll have to make do with the narrator’s assertions. But let’s return to the main subject, the beginning of the reconstruction of the cities.

This decision will force the UK government and the RSGs to move materials stockpiled for this task to the destroyed cities. It will also be needed to deploy soldiers to assist local police forces and enforce martial law. Some remaining strategic industries will be restarted if possible, noting that after the nuclear exchange the word “strategic” can encompass a lot of reality like field bakery to feed soldiers, survivors and workers.

Regarding reconstruction of the cities, there is one subject that we feel is particularly essential : water. This issue is never mentioned in the film (unlike reconstruction or agriculture), but it is vital because the population must be able to drink clean water daily, and waste water must be treated to prevent contamination of rivers and epidemics. This issue concerns the whole country, but more particularly the urban areas that have been subject to massive destruction. According to the British contingency plans at the time, the population was asked to store water in their homes in case of such an event. We can assume (even if marginal and limited) that a small quantity of drinking water was stored by the authorities before the attack (tanks, bottled water, etc.), a temporary stopgap solution. Pending the (necessary and compulsory) reactivation of certain water treatment infrastructures (at the very least, treatment plants), emergency solutions will have to be implemented. There are several solutions :

Although problematic, rainwater can be collected via cisterns and then treated
Water from rivers, lakes, wells, etc. can also be used where possible
As a last resort, stagnant water

There are several “crude” techniques for emergency purification/treatment:

The best-known method is to boil the water for several minutes, but this requires a source of heat
The second is to use purification tablets, the quantity and availability of which is difficult to ascertain in the 1980s UK
The third is to use highly diluted bleach (2 to 4 drops per litre of water)

Waste water treatment is a major public health issue (more specifically, what is euphemistically known as “black water”). If the sewage system is compromised, it is essential to organise :

The use of dry latrines wherever possible, and not dumping these wastes in the open air or in a river, or burying themin the ground
The use of rudimentary septic tanks

All these solutions are obviously palliative, and will not compensate for the need to reintroduce a sewage system (or at least collective dry latrines in the worst case scenario) and, above all, to set up a functional drinking water network (even with rationing/distribution via bottles/jerrycans/tankers).

Military operations will represent a top priority. Soldiers will be tasked to engage in crowd controls and arrests of looters as urban food depots are depleted. Transportation (mainly by roads) won’t be cost free and probably difficult due to the destruction, as the restarting of some factories. If we estimate that 8 000 barrels a day are now used by engine generators across the country, reconstruction efforts and restarting critical infrastructures, it leaves 12 000 barrels per day. Even with the scale of destruction and EMPs, it’s very unlikely that no vehicles survive. The movie also shows combine harvesters, tractors and even a plane after the nuclear exchange; the idea that all vehicles suddenly became obsolete is not grounded. Based on historical data of 20 million personal cars in 80s UK, we can imagine that 1–2% of pre-war vehicles, 200000–400000 vehicles, with a midpoint of 300 000 vehicles (most of them civilian vehicles, but also military and emergency trucks, agricultural vehicles) are still working across the whole UK, but in critical conditions.

Based on the fact that something like 20 million people (or 35% of pre-war population) died immediately due the nuclear exchange leaving 36 million survivors, it means that we will have one vehicle for 120 people, putting a lot of strain on what remains and leading to quick overuse; compared to one vehicle for 3 people before the war. But as with the fuel, we will have a major gap between the theoretical value and the reality.

To estimate what was needed to run the cars, I took two iconic 80s vehicles of the UK : the Vauxhall Cavalier and the Humber Pig. The first consumes something like 8 liters per 100 kilometers, while the second something like 20 liters per 100 kilometers; during peacetime use.

Two Humber Pigs in action in Northern Ireland (archive footage during Bloody Sunday in 1972)

It translates respectively as 0.05 and 0.125 barrels per day. The first thing to do is a weighted average. I think that of all these vehicles, 75% were personal cars and 25% military/emergency/transportation. It gives us 0.068 barrels per day. The vehicles are going to sustain critical conditions over a long time : overuse, stop-and-go, overload, detours…

Let’s say that these four issues account individually for 30%, 25%, 50% and 30% of the initial consumption or 0.0204, 0.017, 0.034 and 0.0204 barrels per day. If you add them up, it accounts for a use of 0.0918 barrels per day. Now, the barrels per day value is 0.1598.

Many other factors will likely contribute to the increase : poor road conditions, mechanical degradation and fuel quality decline. Let’s say that these three issues account individually for 35%, 30%, 50% of the initial consumption rate or 0.0238, 0.0204 and 0.034 barrels per day. These issues could totalize 0.0782, with an updated value of 0.238 barrels per day.

The baseline at the beginning was representative of peaceful time usage and little distances. Longer distance (added to the previous constraints) can double peacetime use. Let’s add the initial consumption rate to the previous value. We finally get 0.306 barrels per day and per vehicle. Or roughly 48 liters.

In addition to the previously mentioned challenges, this value (however high it may be) must also take into account the likely inequality of the vehicle fleet (larger/smaller vehicles, poorly maintained…) and the probable emphasis on military/heavy trucks. One must also consider the obvious logistical problems that will arise with this fuel, including the likely absence of functional gas stations in many parts of the United Kingdom. This is illustrated by this map of British motorways from 1983 combined with the list of potential targets: the motorway network is probably no longer functional after the attack on 26 May 1984 :

The majority of motorways pass through or in the immediate vicinity of major conurbations and cities destroyed after the attack. These areas are already facing considerable logistical and humanitarian challenges. The cost of transport operations can only increase in this context, with the use of secondary roads not only as a mere necessity but probably as something mandated in many areas. The British rail network is probably also in a poor shape, as it can be seen from the cross-reference between the map of urban and military impacts and this map of British railways from 1982. All this can only increase the logistical constraints on the authorities in our context.

As in our previous discussions about generators: these figures primarily serve to “weigh constraints” on our fictitious stock (a way of thinking like planners who prefer to add constraints, even theoretical or unlikely ones, or when making financial forecasts where losses are sometimes overestimated in order to find the break-even point under precarious conditions) and to provide a framework for our analysis of the year following the attack on the United Kingdom. And as previously indicated with the generators : the exact consumption ratios or the number of units (barrels, vehicles…) will not be decisive in understanding what happened after the attack.

Running 300 000 vehicles will cost 92 000 barrels per day when, due to the fuel restriction and logistical issues in the post-nuclear war UK, the value available is closer to 6 000 barrels per day. It means that across the UK only 20 000 vehicles will be put in use (0.30 barel per day/vehicle). The ratio is in reality 1 800 people per vehicle.

Even if Threads don’t show it, doing otherwise is impossible, because of the critical need during the reconstruction to reestablish transportation, logistics, military operations... It leaves 6 000 barrels per day as a buffer stock to account for the uneven use of fuel during these fast changing and troubled times; and the growing cost of the pre-harvest.

Intermediate key points for the period :

Establishment of a census of the available vehicles and requisitioning of available/functional vehicles
Establishment of logistical flows/bridges, however precarious, between key regions of the UK
Mobilisation of the population for reconstruction duties

…A growing exodus from cities in search of food. It’s July…

As a result of the depletion of urban food stocks, we are witnessing an exodus from the cities starting 5 weeks after the attack, with millions of people, desperate and hungry, moving to small towns and the countryside in search of food. But this must be understood in the context of the “work-for-food” mechanism introduced earlier in the movie. If the food depots are almost empty : should we understand that the system set up by the narrator is beginning to show its first signs of weakness too ? The system described above doesn’t seem to completely deprive the population too weak or vulnerable to work of food. On the other hand, it’s possible that barely the minimum is provided, leading to migration from the cities to the countryside. Given the narrator’s description of the rationing system in place, injustices are probably rampant. In fact, what appears on screen is a sign of the first failures of the policy being implemented, as evidenced by the increasing arrests of looters and the setting up of courts martial just four weeks after the nuclear attack on the United Kingdom.

Shortly before they die in their bunker, the Sheffield district officials in the film have one last interesting discussion about food. The supply problems are real. The medical officer’s proposal is clear-cut: “We’ll have to cut their rations. I’ve worked it out there. A thousand calories for manual workers and 500 for the rest.”

Based on UK historical data in 1983, 44 million people lived in cities and 12 million in the countryside.

In Threads, many people leave the cities before the nuclear war. Let’s say 2 million across the UK, now we have 42 million people in cities and 14 million outside.

If all of the 20 million deaths following the nuclear exchange were located in cities (or 47% of cities population), you will still have 22 million people in cities and 14 million people outside. Let’s say the exodus slowly began after the end of fallout curfew on June 10th 1984, grew considerably 5 weeks after the attack and completely ceased when the harvest started.

On an average of 104 days, it represents 211 000 people per day. The exodus during the Battle of France (May 10th to June 25th 1940, or 74 days) saw 10 million people (out of 40 million people) on the road fleeing the advance of the german army, or 135 000 people per day. Of all these people leaving cities, many will die en route.

The intertitle card a few seconds before the harvest scenes states that between 17–38 million died following the nuclear exchange (blast, heat, fallout…). This is a lot of people based on my own estimates of 20 million people during the nuclear exchange. Because the movie provides no clear answer on who die and when exactly, and because the figures are impressive (38 million is nearly 70% of the British population at the time) I will refrain from any stimates. Given the complete chaos, it can be inferred that the military will be sent in emergency to quell the exodus.

Some of the engine generators across the UK start to fail, the reconstruction of cities is fading, and fuel is rerouted to manage the crisis : planes and helicopters to follow the movement of people and ask the refugees to turn back, roadblocks to stop or limit the influx of refugees in the countryside…

When you know that the British planners of the contingency plan in case of a nuclear war were (to say the least) skeptical of assisting refugees, you can imagine how violent the exodus was. But the authorities will face harsh realities : let everyone on the road die but also overwhelm the countryside, or keep order and “manage” the exodus.

From what we see of Buxton in the film, the second option was probably the one chosen. A situation which, however, seems to be a matter of local pragmatism, and is not guaranteed to be universally applicable.

A situation that deviates from the provisions of the contingency plan in case people leave their living area : it was planned that no shelter or food should be provided. It could explain the shift between the two only government broadcasts heard in the movie. The first broadcast urged everyone to move to designated points to start reconstruction. The second broadcast shows a clear shift toward agricultural production. This situation is grounded in many historical precedents where authorities had to adapt their plan to reality. A good example is Operation Hannibal during the collapse of the Nazi Germany in 1945. Till the end, the authorities refuse by all means to evacuate civilians (even children) from Eastern Prussia as they compare those actions as desertion. But in the end, against their will, they had to evacuate 1 million civilians.

Even though it is not described in the film, it is mandatory for a pre-harvest to have been organised by the authorities during this period, prior to the harvest, with the aim of preparing the fields with guidelines involving : the removal of dust from the fallout (it is sometimes estimated that up to 10 cm of soil needs to be removed in this case — although this measure would probably have been very exceptional if not anecdotal given its logistical and agricultural cost), the removal of livestock carcasses to avoid further contamination, the drawing up — although this would have been difficult — of soil contamination maps and also the preparation of the machinery needed to process the harvest. This effort was probably organised as soon as the curfew was lifted, i.e. over the following weeks. This compulsory need to organise a pre-harvest logically implies that people (soldiers, agricultural experts, civil servants, etc.) and equipment (petrol, equipment for assessing radiation, etc.) had to be moved to the UK’s agricultural areas very early on and in large numbers. The geography of the United Kingdom allows us to identify several key agricultural regions (here for England and Wales in 1985):

Identified by a dotted black line: the cereal plains of the UK, probably of vital importance to the fictional government in the film. The “grade” system for soil quality is unique to the UK. It works like this:

Grade 1, 2 and 3 land is considered to be the “best and most versatile” and is afforded significant protection from development; this land is predominantly in the East of England
Classes 4 and 5 are described as poor quality farmland and very poor quality farmland

All of these things are likely to require fuel. Due to the many logistical challenges and the exodus crisis putting a lot of pressure on the countryside, efforts are likely to be minimal. But the film shows us that the country continued to live a decade after the attack, and this implies a prior effort in the agricultural sector (seeds, livestock, etc.) in the year following the attack.

IAEA Imagebank, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

If this had happened, many of the UK’s key agricultural areas would have seen a steady parade of vehicles, soldiers, scientists and agricultural experts sent in to carry out key agricultural operations to salvage what was left of the coming harvest.

To conclude, the UK was a major oil producer in the 1980s thanks to North Sea oil. The disadvantage was that most of this potential was located quite far from the UK coast, particularly near the Scottish coast.

Development of the Oil and Gas Resources of the UK 1984, British Department of Energy

The UK also had a number of deposits on its soil, notably at Wytch Farm in the South West since the 1970s, and developments had been underway since the early 1980s in the Nottingham and Lincolnshire region. The UK also produced gas, but the deposits were closer to the coast in the East of England. It would be hard to imagine that the authorities would not have tried to bring some of the many pipelines and refineries back into service.

The oil terminals in the north of Scotland would logically have posed major logistical problems in getting them running again, as they are far away from the urban areas of Glasgow and Edinburgh. The logical thing to do would therefore have been to concentrate on this urban region to restart/repair some infrastructures. On the other hand, the Teesside oil terminal and the gas terminals in Humberside, Lincolnshire and Norfolk could have been a logical part of the redevelopment of critical infrastructure in a strategic region for agriculture. Similarly, restarting the wells in the Wytch Farm region could have been crucial, as the area was capable at the time of potentially producing several thousand barrels of oil. A ridiculous amount in peacetime, but crucial in the context of that first year and also for the following decade. We could therefore assume, particularly given the constraints of feeding a substantial population a decade later, which would require agricultural machinery, that even minimal petrol production (250–500 barrels/day, for example) would be gradually redeveloped over the course of the decade. At the end of 3 and a half months, only 6.7 million barrels remain.

Key points for the period :

Necessary management of the exodus crisis and emergency provisions enacted (in particular, abandoning the refusal to take in people who are homeless in the towns/villages of arrival)
Logistical deployment of people (military, civil servants, experts, etc.) and equipments (petrol, machinery, etc.) to key agricultural areas of the United Kingdom, in this order of priority: East of England (cereal plains and many crops), Edinburgh region in Scotland (barley, potatoes, etc.), Hereford-Worcester (mixed), Kent (fruit), South-West of England (livestock).
Conscription of the rural population and urban refugees to organise the first critical agricultural efforts: drawing up radiological maps, cleaning the land, state of the livestock, removing dead corpses, harvesting of “ready-to-harvest” crops, preparing/reparing farm equipments etc.
Vital efforts to restart viable oil infrastructures, with efforts concentrated in the South-West (Wytch Farm oil wells) and, if possible, work to restart pipelines/refineries to obtain oil from the North Sea

“First post-nuclear war harvest” September 23th 1984 to December 22th 1984

…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…Collecting this diminished first harvest is now literally a matter of life and death. Chronic fuel shortages mean that this could be one of the last times tractors and combine harvesters are used in Britain…

Four months after the nuclear attack, the first post-nuclear war harvest began. The UK government, RSGs and military perfectly understand that there is no room for failure. In addition to the mass use of refugees from cities (which was probably not the original intent of the authorities, but it happens as many of them have relocated to the countryside during the exodus), we can assume that the authorities will ensure the success at all cost of the harvest, even if it implies to reduce the pressure on fuel stock control.

It is quite ironic to see that during the only and last harvest organized by the government in the film, people were only working with their bare hands to collect food, while they were all working with tools and even protective goggles 1 year and 10 years later. All these clues suggest a desperate, disorganized, and ineffective harvest. On the societal level, things are in full decline on screen during the harvest. People are collapsing from exhaustion on the ground without receiving help, Ruth herself is abandoned and has to give birth alone, and the survivors are working under close military supervision. This does not bode well for a happy ending.

Case study with Scotland. The region is important for grain production but relatively remote from England and the agricultural heartland of Britain in the east. Here is a map that illustrates a typical logistical and bureaucratic fiasco that can occur in the worst-case scenario. Here: scenario with national coordination. The government headquarters sends a request to the various regions to find out their needs in terms of fuel, machinery, and personnel. This information must be communicated by a specific deadline in order to organize logistics. In our case, Scotland draws up an optimal forecast and sends it to HQ. Shortly before the deadline, HQ contacts Scotland to confirm the forecast. Problem: the person(s) in charge are not there, and the response is expected today. The person on the phone is unfamiliar with the subject, procrastinates, asks for more time (which is refused), searches through the documents at their disposal… On the other end of the line, the HQ agent(s) may unconsciously play along to further their own interests in a critical situation. The result? The final agreement falls short of estimates on several critical points, but the equipment, fuel, and personnel are made available and will leave for Scotland. New problem: the large conurbation of the Midlands is destroyed, rendering the highway network impassable. The only route: East Anglia, then along the east coast. Problems arise on the ground: disagreements, difficulties with the flow of refugees, fuel shortages, theft, delays… The agreement reached was already poor, and Scotland will ultimately end up with less than that.

The harvest will occur while trying to run remaining generators across the country to keep alive the few and fading critical infrastructures. Running all available tractors and combine harvesters will take a lot of fuel. It’s also important to note that in the 80s, the UK had an estimated population of 350 000 tractors of all types, combine harvesters and many other field equipment. Even if the countryside was partly spared of the fallout, destruction and EMPs, it’s unlikely for all these vehicles to be in functioning state.

British Government statistics for 1983 on agricultural vehicles (Source: Agricultural Statistics United Kingdom 1983, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES FOR SCOTLAND DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE FOR NORTHERN IRELAND WELSH OFFICE)

An unspecified number of survivors from the nuclear exchange died during the exodus crisis the months before (starvation, violence, diseases, radiation sickness, injuries, third/fourth degrees burns…). So it’s unlikely that survivors can run every machine. But it will imply that the authorities will still have to rely on vehicles for this harvest. And contrary to cars whose consumption is measured as liters per 100 km, agricultural vehicles fuel consumption is measured as liters per hour. As a reference, a medium sized tractor can possibly require 0.1 barrels per hour. If we extrapolate this value to all agricultural vehicles in our case, it amounts to 35 000 barrels per hour and 280 000 barrels per day (8 hours). An amount beyond imagination in a post-nuclear war world.

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The harvest scene involving a combine harvester, and therefore cereals, must therefore logically take place in the east of the UK. Here’s a map showing where the majority of cereal crops are grown in the UK (maps from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board):

The scene could therefore logically imply Ruth’s migration from Buxton to the east of the country, as the Buxton area is dedicated solely to pasture. Wheat and barley are generally harvested between July and August in the UK. The delay in harvesting in the film is a testimony of how disorganized the country is at this point. The strategic value of the East of England is clearly illustrated by this map regarding root/tuber/wheat/barley crops :

A reality discussed earlier, and described in this 1985 map of soil quality in the United Kingdom (England and Wales) for agricultural use:

The “grade” system for soil quality is unique to the UK. It works like this:

Grade 1, 2 and 3 land is considered to be the ‘best and most versatile’ and has significant protection from development; this land is predominantly in the East of England
Classes 4 and 5 are described as poor quality farmland and very poor quality farmland

In connection with the discussion above of the need to organise radiation remediation efforts in major agricultural areas, here is a visualisation of the consequences of nuclear strikes on the ground (or “groundburst”) and more particularly in the UK’s most arable land with NUKEMAP and an associated wind map (I’ve deliberately chosen the month of May to coincide with the date of the attack in the film, although of course winds can vary greatly depending on the month of the year) :

I used 500 KT nuclear weapons. This value corresponds to the small weapons identified during the Square Leg exercise organised by the British authorities in 1980. NUKEMAP uses a very simplified model (the fallout never follows a straight line and such a precise trajectory), but this gives us a general idea. In practice, it looks more like something elliptical like the effects of the Castle Bravo nuclear test.

United States Department of Energy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

We can see that the most serious pattern of 1000 rad s— a lethal dose in the event of exposure — is relatively limited (the darkest red lines on the map). The greatest impact could be in the region of 100 rads, based on this simplified model. Note that this is only the potentially absorbed dose : we are not talking about radioactive contamination of the ground. In general, it is estimated that :

A dose of less than 100 rads generally causes no immediate symptoms other than blood changes
A dose of 100 to 200 rads delivered to the whole body in less than a day can cause acute irradiation syndrome (AIS), but is generally not fatal
Doses of 200 to 1000 rads delivered in a few hours cause serious illness, with an unfavourable prognosis at the upper end of the range
Whole-body doses in excess of 1000 rads are almost always fatal

The size of the weapons used also affects the extent of potential fallout. Here is a result for “lighter” weapons of 250 KT, with fairly similar results.

What would have happened on the ground is another story. But given the agricultural value of the region, it seems logical that the authorities should have concentrated all their efforts on saving the arable land. As a reminder : the film shows us harvesting with a combine harvester, the government broadcasts a message urging survivors to take part in agricultural work and the government implements a programme involving social control in connection with food distribution.

The United Kingdom has a constraint inherent in its geography that would have prompted major efforts : it is a relatively small and very compact country. The UK has productive agricultural land, but it is relatively limited in size and geographical distribution. This 2024 statistic on British cereal production (and wheat in particular) is revealing: most of its production is concentrated in the east of the country.

To this end, here is a summary of agricultural land in England in June 1983 with regard to the major agricultural products (cereals, vegetables, potatoes and beet) for the UK’s eastern counties. Cereals (3.3 million hectares in June 1983) :

North Yorkshire: 189,716 hectares
Humberside: 178,257 hectares
Lincolnshire: 291,423 hectares
Norfolk: 219,837 hectares
Suffolk: 183,857 hectares
Essex: 167,774 hectares
Kent: 93,431 hectares
Cambridgeshire: 179,817 hectares
Nottinghamshire: 80,127 hectares
Northamptonshire: 96,674 hectares
Hertfordshire: 62,552 hectares
Bedfordshire: 57,995 hectares

Total: 1.8 million hectares (54% of England’s surface area). Vegetables — excluding potatoes — (140,000 hectares in June 1983):

North Yorkshire: 2,557 hectares
Humberside: 11,783 hectares
Lincolnshire: 34,266 hectares
Norfolk: 19,206 hectares
Suffolk: 9,991 hectares
Essex: 6,427 hectares
Kent: 7,139 hectares
Cambridgeshire: 11,161 hectares
Nottinghamshire: 2,079 hectares
Northamptonshire: 238 hectares
Hertfordshire: 851 hectares
Bedfordshire: 3,908 hectares

Total: 103,000 hectares (73% of the area of England). Potatoes (141,000 hectares in June 1983) :

North Yorkshire: 12,273 hectares
Humberside: 7,884 hectares
Lincolnshire: 20,065 hectares
Norfolk: 12,406 hectares
Suffolk: 4,038 hectares
Essex: 5,578 hectares
Kent: 5,951 hectares
Cambridgeshire: 12,653 hectares
Nottinghamshire: 4,976 hectares
Northamptonshire: 1,295 hectares
Hertfordshire: 702 hectares
Bedfordshire: 1,202 hectares

Total: 84,000 hectares (59% of the area of England). Sugar beet (198,000 hectares in June 1983) :

North Yorkshire: 12,880 hectares
Humberside: 9,655 hectares
Lincolnshire: 33,021 hectares
Norfolk: 58,670 hectares
Suffolk: 24,694 hectares
Essex: 4,685 hectares
Kent: —
Cambridgeshire: 23,851 hectares
Nottinghamshire: 8,156 hectares
Northamptonshire: 632 hectares
Hertfordshire: 289 hectares
Bedfordshire: 509 hectares

Total: 177,000 hectares (93% of the area of England). If neglected or abandoned, it means that the UK is going to lose most of its cereals, potatoes and nearly all vegetables and sugarbeets. The primacy of the East of England (and the UK in general) is very well represented by this map of land use in the UK, with a massive concentration of arable crops in the East of the country (East of England, Kent and the Edinburgh region).

To conclude, here is a map of the East of England subjected to impacts based on the Square Leg exercise (1980). An extreme but illustrative case. The idea is to identify the most logical remediation efforts in red : around the Fens region, Norfolk on the coast in particular and along the coast as far as Yorkshire. This work is vital both for preserving the soil and for growing crops. In black, the abandonment of regions considered to be non-priority.

To conclude, it is important to discuss nuclides. These are simply individual radioactive materials (caesium-137, strontium-90, iodine-131, etc.) that could compromise the viability of foodstuffs. A distinction must therefore be made between the foods concerned, the potential impact and the remediation measures:

Cereals : moderate to high impact, contamination mainly of roots and husks, it is recommended that grains be cleaned/refined further
Leafy vegetables : high impact, direct contamination, it is recommended that they be cleaned thoroughly and that external parts be removed as far as possible
Root vegetables : moderate impact, risky consumption, washing, “deep” peeling and systematic cooking recommended
Fruit : moderate impact, risky consumption, same methods as for root vegetables, but risk of contamination of “internal” parts persists
Milk : high impact, very risky consumption, milk must be processed by making cheese with a long maturing period
Meat : moderate to high impact, few solutions other than avoiding muscles (“degreasing”) or waiting

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) :

But let’s go back to the main topic. You will also have to restart some food processing factories, even simple things like a grain mill. Military forces, deeply involved to maintain order and keep survivors in line primarily in the countryside, will need fuel. This could be one of the last episode of “mass consumption” of fuel in the UK due to the existential need of gathering food with as much as 53 % of the remaining stock used over a period of three months or 3.6 million barrels, equal to 40 000 barrels per day, which means that the tractors and combine harvesters can be use in larger numbers than expected. Generators and what remains of infrastructures are now probably using only 3000 barrels per day. Non-agricultural vehicles (most of them for military use or logistics) are expected to still use only 5000 barrels per day. With the desertion of destroyed cities following the mass exodus and the need to concentrate all energies towards agricultural production, most of them are left abandoned and without electrical power. Leaving 32 000 barrels per day for tractors, combine harvesters, other field machinery and cost of running what remains of food processing units; meaning that perhaps 40 000 agricultural vehicles can be used (0.8 barrel per day/agricultural vehicle). Compared with the number of British agricultural vehicles, this theoretical figure is less than the total for all combine harvesters in 1983 for England, Wales and Scotland alone (54,775 vehicles in total) :

Finally, efforts are being made to prepare fields for the next harvest. After 90 days, 4.3 million barrels are still available.

Key points of this period :

Gradual (and necessary) incorporation of the urban refugees into the rural world through participation in all agricultural works; a necessity to guarantee a smooth transition in the following decade.
Gradual development of a more decentralised government to guarantee the continuity of governance in the event of a failure of the central state; while maintaining the capacity for supraregional coordination (a critical point for harvests in a context of regional specialisation).
Concentration of expertise, institutional skills and population in key agricultural/industrial areas, and formation of logistical hubs at the crossroads of industrial/agricultural/energy capabilities; hubs that could logically become “relay points” in a context of deterioration of the state apparatus.
On energy, with winter approaching: the need to restart even minimal coal production

“First post-nuclear war winter” December 23th 1984 to March 28th 1985

…In the first few winters, many of the young and old disappear from Britain…

Then we have the first winter after the nuclear war. Due to the prolonged effect of the nuclear winter, the temperature drop is more severe than usual, resulting in many deaths. These deaths will likely cause a major drop in fuel usage as many activities are not sustainable without a minimum workforce. The chronic fuel shortage following the “mass consumption” of fuel during the harvest means that many systems are put out of use. Transport will be difficult with no snow removal. Many of the pre-war generators are probably not even used anymore. Probably more or less 100–150 generators across the country, consuming 2000 barrels per day. So, the UK is probably “dormant”, as people are unlikely to be working (the harvest is over), but normally human activity should gradually resume with the end of winter, and the need to resume some farming work (but with a greatly diminished and compromised stock of fuel). The figure could be around 20 000 barrels a day. During these 95 days, 1.9 million barrels were used. The remaining stock is estimated at 1.3 million barrels.

Key points of the period :

Critical threshold for resumption of oil production, a necessity for the harvest from 1985 onwards, a sudden transition to manual harvesting (particularly for cereals) is impossible; oil production increasing to coincide with the upcoming harvest
Gradual introduction of manual methods to save fuel (“hoe-farming” and possibly animal traction in regions where this is already possible)
Resumption of agricultural work with greater respect for the agricultural calendar (a normal agricultural cycle needs to be restored)
Consolidation of alternative forms of governance (regional centres, potential “rump sate(s)” etc.)

“Centralized governance collapse” March 29th 1985 to May 26th 1985

The scene in Threads begins with a telex stating that we are 10 months after the attack. The scene starts with several close-ups on wheat stock and a soldier inside a barn monitoring the harvest, then you hear gunshot, Ruth and other people are running away with grains, you can hear a soldier from an helicopter asking people to come back and shooting, then you see Ruth crying and desperately trying to crush some grains to feed her baby. The scene is ambiguous, but it could be understood that the harvest is either severely rationed or not distributed (likely because there is not enough food for everyone) and people resort to theft to feed themselves. The movie is silent about this, but my personal opinion is that the harvest is an irrecoverable failure, so what follows is based on this assumption.

A parallel with “The Year Without a Summer” (1816)

With the failure of the harvest becoming obvious for everyone, and the impossibility for the authorities to distribute as much food as needed to people, it could be possible that mass desertion and disobedience occur among civilians refusing to take part in the forced labor system, as the authorities can’t provide what was use as an incentive to force people to work : food. To understand the extent to which the harvest was an irretrievable failure, you need to understand that pre-war cereal production in 1983 was 22 million tonnes. I will use this figure for illustrative purposes. We can calculate the amount of crop lost as follows (calculations are based on the entire potential harvest):

We know from a similar event called ‘The Year Without Summer’ in 1816, that with little or no sunlight, crop loss can be as high as 30–60%. If we take the average (45%), this means that 9.9 million tonnes of cereals are lost and 12.1 million tonnes remain
We can also take into account the fact that certain regions of the country are deemed unfit for farming by the authorities due to the high levels of radiation and bombing during the nuclear attack. This could represent 5% of the potential harvest (or 1.1 million tonnes), leaving 11 million tonnes
The exodus has put a lot of pressure on the countryside, which could lead to the destruction of 2.5% of the forthcoming harvest, or 0.5 million tonnes of cereals

When the harvest began, this meant that production was limited to 10.5 million. But more food will be lost in the process (the following calculations are now sequential):

We can deduct around 10% in the form of seeds for the next harvest (i.e. 1.05 million tonnes), leaving 9.45 million tonnes
The rate of deterioration and loss (poor storage and transport conditions, destroyed silos, etc.) can be estimated at 15% (or 1.417 million tonnes). The product of the harvest is still reduced to 8.03 million tonnes
The difficult conditions imposed to ensure the success of the harvest are probably accompanied by hoarding and theft, let’s say 5% (or 0.401 million tonnes) or 7.629 million tonnes remaining.
The use of inexperienced (and exhausted) people and fewer vehicles will have an impact on the quality and quantities of what has been harvested, say 10% (or 0.762 million tonnes). We now have 6.827 million tonnes of cereals available
We need to include the impact of pests such as weevils, beetles and fungal contamination due to poor storage conditions, poorly trained workers, bad weather and lack of chemicals. This could represent 20% (or 1.373 million tonnes)

Finally, we have 5.454 million tonnes, or less than 25% of a pre-war harvest. An extreme worst-case for illustrative purposes (the amount could have been far higher; especially with lower climatic effects). The fact remains that the whole system was dependent on cereals, whose production was compromised even with better climatic conditions. This severely diminished harvest still needs to be processed and transported to the food depots. But due to the progressive breakdown of logistics, transportation and communications; it could mean that a significant part of this harvest is not even going to be distributed. This possibility aligns with the desperate attempt of Ruth to steal grains to feed her daughter.

Consequences of the failure of the “work-for-food” program

To understand the whole consequences of this, we must go back to June 10th 1984, when the authorities started the reconstruction. For unclear reasons, they tied the access to food to forced labor, even for children.

…All able-bodied citizens — men, women and children — should report for reconstruction duties, commencing 08:00 hours tomorrow morning. The inhabitants of Release Band A — that is Dore and Totley, Abbeydale, and Woodseats — should rendezvous in Abbeydale Park…
…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 film suggests that the mechanism may not have been universal. We can assume that the basic necessities of life were provided to people who were too weak, but without any real guarantee, as evidenced by the exodus from the towns. Nor does the film answer the question of how the system worked in winter. In Buxton, when Ruth arrives after leaving Sheffield, there seems to be some form of soup kitchen organised for refugees. A choice that could be explained by pragmatism, if the local authorities couldn’t do otherwise. But then we have another scene where Ruth is forced to eat a dead animal in the countryside. The existence of the programme, however, seems definitively confirmed by the scenes in the film during the harvest in 1984: Ruth forced to work while pregnant and abandoned, people dying or falling exhausted to the ground without assistance…

As the film is totally evasive about this counterproductive choice at the worst possible time, here is a possible explanation (to be honest, maybe the only solution for the film to maintain its credibility, while being forced to change its message) : the fact is that the implementation of this food rationing scheme was probably decided not because of logistical or ideological constraints, but because the authorities (unfortunately, as in many historical cases during serious disturbances) were more concerned with keeping order and people under control, and because they thought this was the best solution for maintaining pre-war economic, agricultural and societal systems. The authorities were in fact reluctant to admit that the best solution was to adapt to the realities of the post-nuclear war era, not to bring those realities into line with pre-war expectations. This was impossible, because all the systems of the past depended on depleting resources (such as petrol) or destroyed infrastructures. The best example is the use of fuel to maintain highly mechanised agriculture, when the authorities should have moved as quickly as possible towards more resilient and sustainable systems.

Putting the food in store for people to buy was impossible, but a rationing system could have been a better solution. Everyone gets food even in very small quantities (especially the weak like the newborns, children, elderly…) and those working can get an extra. The social contract could have survived, because with a rationing system, the food will still be a means to survive and not an end. But with the enforcement of forced labor, the social contract was gone. When something as basic as survival is tied to forced labor, we open the door to the unknown. In such an environment there is no place for cooperation, because the new economy is that more food is given to survivors when more people die. The “wealth” of the survivors is now tied to the death of their relatives. Trust erodes and it 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 is gone, everything collapses.

As for the possible contingency plans of the British government discussed in the book War Plan UK (mentioned above), imperfect as they were, they didn’t look on paper like what the film itself introduces. The introduction of some form of barter for remuneration is not a problem in itself, as long as the aim is to maintain social cohesion and cooperation; however imperfect that may be. It has nothing to do with considering human life as solely linked to the productive capacity of individuals. For example, a coal miner or a farmer in the fields simply needs to eat more than someone who stays at home. Everyone is entitled to something. The problem here is that the film introduces a mechanism that transforms the food distribution system into something totally transactional, uncooperative and punitive. A system in which the death of the weakest becomes the goal. A system that doesn’t even remotely resemble a poorly conceived or implemented contingency plan, but clearly resembles a concentration camp system. A system presented with great detachment by the narrator and which aligns perfectly with the images in the film (even if this was perhaps not fully conceptualised by the filmmakers) : an indispensable component in understanding the events visible on screen.

Overview of the institutional/food crisis

The crisis could possibly have started by mid-February 1985, with the emerging first localized events leading to the major crisis of March-May 1985 : local authorities probably tasked to implement a newly diminished ration for “workers” given the diminished harvest and few remaining food stocks. The central authorities could have been trapped in this self reinforcing “collapse loop” framework :

Decreased food stocks and poor harvest
Reduced rations
Disobedience/desertion due to the contractual (non cooperative) nature of the “work-for-food” programme
Lack of workers for coordinated efforts under central government leadership
Emergence of county/regional efforts, without the agreement and oversight of central authorities
Crucial tasks for central government are not carried out and crucial resources are diverted to alternative systems
Harvest is poorly managed, distributed or stolen/ hoarded in certain regions of the country (particularly the most vulnerable)
Progressive collapse of the national food distribution system (“work-for-food” program), logically replaced by alternative rationing, and above all emergency food aid
The authorities (military and civil servants) on the ground were also affected, leading logically to their taking control of the preserved/rehabilitated agricultural/industrial zones from the first year
Central authorities “passing the quid”, poor communication and inertia between the institutional players
Communications and transport hit a wall (lack of fuel, workers, orders, etc.)
The gradual shift from purely centralised efforts to decentralised efforts as part of new decisions by local authorities (seed harvesting and conservation, food aid systems, coordinated planting/harvesting efforts, etc.)

An important fact confirms our intuition about this possibility : Ruth steals raw cereals with other people. This means that these people no longer have (or have difficulty in obtaining) access to edible products : bread in our context. Although delayed, the harvest should have been completed in December 1984. These grains should normally have two uses: seeds for the next harvest and processing into bread/flour to feed the population. The scene takes place almost three months after the theoretical end of the harvest. Cereals must undergo a transformation process to become edible. The simple fact that the population is forced to turn to the latter is further proof of the ongoing disintegration of the food distribution system.

Order eroded progressively after that, probably in a matter of weeks, because authorities don’t have anything to offer in order to control a desperate populace. What will likely happen behind the scenes is deeply rooted in human nature : no one wants to be held accountable for the failure of the harvest. Even if the harvest was doomed from the very beginning due to the nuclear winter, lack of workforce, fuel and machinery. It won’t be a top down approach with remnants of the UK government blaming the local authorities (or remaining RSGs) who in turn will blame the military who were tasked to physically enforce the harvest. What is more sensical is that the military, confronted “physically” with the failure of the harvest (and all the consequences) and need for orders and guidance, will likely turn to what remains of local authorities (or remaining RSGs) who in turn will refer to what remains of the UK government. With no clues on what to do next, the authorities will remain, at best, evasive, or in the worst case scenario, silent. And because most of the communications between these people are made through deteriorated communication systems and not face to face, it will lead to miscommunication, misunderstanding and mistrust. It was already a major issue in the weeks and months after the nuclear exchange because the authorities were barely on the field and relied too much on intermediaries to get information, but it will prove fatal following the failure of the harvest and the need for a quick and coordinated response to keep what remains of the UK tight-knit.

The logistics “trap”

Readers can ask themselves the same question we did: have we missed something by focusing for a long time on a resource (petrol) that seems totally disconnected from the crisis depicted on screen 10 to 12 months after the attack? Yes and no.

Yes, because regardless of the exact values of barrels or jerrycans, it’s clearly not a decisive factor in the film.

No, because we have followed the path of the authorities and above all of the film’s narrative: we have followed the classic path of a government in this situation being careful with its resources but omitting, as the film does without realising it itself and unknowingly, to take into account an essential factor: the need to maintain national cohesion and cooperation. Logistics remain a crucial factor in understanding certain things on screen, of course. But social cohesion even more so.

However, it should be noted that the film is in denial about the realities of governance, which are so obvious on screen in the first year. The film wants to convey a message of total powerlessness that is not compatible with the elements visible on screen: the combine harvester, the plane flying over the columns of refugees, the helicopter from which a soldier shoots at Ruth…. Remember the famous scene of the soldier in the barn who brings a jerry can to fill a tractor: this cannot exist without an organisational 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 lorry with jerry cans, a map and a list of farms where he can drop off his fuel; and he is required to make regular rounds (which is probably even more true in the context of the harvest shown on screen). Whether coordinated at national, regional or even county level.

Our exercise on petrol is interesting in this respect because it allows us to conceptualise the logistical and organisational universe (with, in particular, the choices discussed on the allocation of petrol) necessary for the existence of the first year on screen. It doesn’t matter if the figures are true (500, 250 or 50 generators, 40,000, 10,000 or 5,000 farm vehicles, 50,000, 25,000 or even 2,500 transport vehicles, 40,000 or even 15,000 barrels a day…): if it weren’t for that (petrol, organisation, cooperation…), nothing would have worked for a long time already on the screen.

And once you know that, you can’t help but be sceptical about the rationing programme implemented in the film.

Why is the crisis complex to articulate and not understood by the film itself?

To go back to the main subject, the “work-for-food” system, the film presents this as a formality, yet the mechanism completely reverses the film’s narrative. The system is so cynical and perverse that it doesn’t matter what the catastrophe is : a brutal rupture is expected. The film, without realising it and against its own will, has just shifted from the message ‘bombs will create inevitable situations’ to ‘human decisions are the only things that count in the end’.

If we hadn’t had this rationing mechanism introduced by the film, we’d still have the same problem. These grains have still not been processed for months. The climatic phenomenon alone is not enough to explain the situation, since the demographic figures in the film (up to 38 million dead four months after the attack) should normally lead to a new balance of resources: less grain, gasoline… but also fewer people. Clearly, this is neither the case nor the subject on screen.

We may have tricked the reader a little, but in the end we simply followed the quiet narrative of the film that created the mechanism for the collapse, with incredible detachment. So what do we do now?

We articulate this element, which was insignificant for the directors, and which comes between the scene where Ruth steals grain and the atomic bombs. The bombs are no longer the only explanation; human choices take precedence. To the detriment of the film’s message. But it’s also perfectly logical: what we see on screen in March 1985 has nothing to do with radiation, nuclear winter or bombs. The situation is more serious than that (grains have potentially been stored for months without being put into the fields, or are still not turned into flour), and as the film offers no explanatory mechanism, we can only deduce that what is happening is linked to a reduction in the harvest (a possible effect of the nuclear winter), which has itself weakened the edifice instituted by the film consisting of creating a transactional relationship around food.

We would have shown the same rigor with a problematic passage from the Hebrew Bible. The exploitation of this narrative gap with Threads is merely the result of a problematic narrative structure: the directors give the impression of having constructed a completely fragmented universe where each scene lives isolated from the others. The film tries to advance the story with scenes disconnected from each other, while refusing (knowingly or not) to take into account the elements introduced earlier. The opposite of a realistic staging. Unfortunately, what happened is the following:

The scene with Ruth and the grains is particularly ambiguous but leaves no doubt about the ongoing problem: the food distribution system is in disarray and the harvest is not being properly handled
The film offers no explanation for this scene (neither from the character nor from the narrator).
An exploration is done in reverse to seek a cause: why does Ruth have to steal grains, a product that is almost impossible to transform herself for consumption? So a completely desperate act

We find:

First, the harvest is probably disastrous due to the nuclear winter (and therefore probably diminished)
Then the rationing mechanism introduced earlier in the film: a totally inequitable, contractual system, destructive of cooperation and structurally totally dependent on a correct supply of foodstuffs
The combination of the two mechanisms (rationing system and reduced harvest) can only lead to this analysis : the authorities have just lost control of the situation; their system based on a contractual relationship with food has probably become completely unmanageable, and the consequences are spreading to the entire food distribution system.

To conclude on this point, we reiterate that our work is not ideological. The film claims to be realistic, and benefits from scientific, academic and media validation. Narrative coherence is therefore the minimum requirement for a film that claims to have these qualities. And narrative coherence transforms the film’s message. But let’s get back to the story.

The scale of the institutional crisis

The soldiers (contrary to the civilians), who were once preserved because of their status and importance in the post-nuclear war UK, will also start to feel the failure of the harvest and it’s not impossible that some of them will be starving quickly. They will likely suffer from exhaustion, stress, and one year after the nuclear exchange many of them are possibly dead too. The problem? Soldiers are likely the only people actually on the ground in contact with civilians. They could be the solution to the crisis; they risk becoming the problem. These soldiers have been under massive stress for almost a year. Many of them probably have no news of their loved ones. They have had to implement — possibly against their conscience for some — a poor and unfair policy. Morale and discipline are at an all-time low for many of them.

We can imagine that for a short time, what remains of the military attempt at all cost to keep order and hold its grasp over the situation, because this is what is expected from soldiers, but also because their status in the post-war UK is tied to the circumstances. But everything will soon collapse around them as the government and the RSGs civil servants progressively die (if that’s not the case already), vanish, desert and finally completely cease to emit any instructions as depicted in Threads.

With the collapse of any form of centralised command and the dissolution of the United Kingdom as a united country (meaning for many soldiers that even the “greater good” they sacrificed their lives for has disappeared, and therefore the meaning of their lives), it is likely that some units will begin to fend for themselves, disband, merge with the local population (such as some civil servants) to organise localised but coordinated, and above all, vital efforts in the context of the serious agricultural and food crisis on screen.

Guaranteeing the continuity of the State, society and agriculture

It seems a logical pre-requisite that a large fraction of these military/civil servants should have merged quickly with the local population to organise localised but coordinated, and above all, vital efforts in the context of the serious agricultural and food crisis on screen. The highly probable and logical prerequisite for having 4 to 10 million survivors ten years later according to the film’s figures, because of the need for coordination beyond the “village-level” and for an agricultural system that is not of the primitive subsistence type for such figures. This required : coordination from March-May 1985 over large geographical areas between institutional remnants/military/survivors/farmers, preservation of seeds and livestock (vital for ploughing), transmission and preservation of knowledge… A monumental collective effort given the context on screen. Without coordinated efforts by competent people at the worst possible time, over large geographical areas, it would be unlikely that there would be any survivors, let alone technical infrastructure or coal extraction.

To offer a few glimpses of hope to the reader, we can also imagine that part of the remnant military force tried to create and keep a rump state of the UK somewhere inside the country (like the Kingdom of Soissons after the fall of the Western Roman Empire). It could be the most logical place to organize an electric grid, a school and a hospital as seen 13 years after the nuclear exchange at the end of the movie; as all these things require some level of organization and order. Logic would dictate that there should be several of them, at the crossroads between the critical agricultural areas of the previous year and the former industrial/mining hubs of the UK.

The dissolution of the centralised state could have occured in the following months. Firstly, Ruth is then seen buying rats in the street (an intertitle refers to a year after the attack), which means that the crisis is probably worsening or even total in some parts of the country. Having opted for a counter-productive rationing programme, the loss of this capacity seems to irreparably compromise the place of traditional institutions. After the last message before the harvest in September-December 1984, there is not a single government broadcast in the movie. The last scene before the film’s narrative leap of almost a decade shows something extremely interesting: people are working with tools, some even wearing goggles, but no tractors. No soldiers in sight either. When you 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 under military surveillance. Obviously, the effort seems much more coordinated, productive, peaceful (even if the people seem exhausted) and above all voluntary. Another world seems to be emerging. The world ten years later shows no national coordination, despite the presence of soldiers. It looks more like a coordinated effort at the level of a county or perhaps a region, something perhaps more resilient, coordinated and probably more humane (with the famous school scene in particular).

We can imagine the use of 10 000 barrels a day, unevenly over these 58 days, or 0.58 million barrels. The March-May period in the United Kingdom is crucial for agriculture, so an effort will be made even if it is difficult due to the context. Despite these chaotic scenes a year after the attack, the film boasts an ambitious demographic a decade later: a minimum of 4 million inhabitants and a maximum of 11 million. Figures discussed at greater length in my following essay, but which imply the achievement of many things in the first year, as illustrated by this simplified diagram:

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We also need to imagine how governance has emerged between the gradual collapse of the centralised state and the emergence of new structures. Here’s another diagram.

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Scale of the famine

It would be hard to go against the scenes in the film: this is a famine, potentially “terminal” in some areas probably. I describe what can happen in such a case quite transparently in the next essay: “With the collapse of the food distribution system, people no longer have many options for survival. What was probably available for some time in some areas was “sawdust” bread (or a mixture of flour and sawdust) to avoid consuming too much grain; if a distribution system remained despite the chaos. […] To survive, many people in certain regions probably resorted to eating rats, dogs, cats and horses; if there were any left. In some areas, livestock may have suffered heavy losses. They were also going to have to eat grass and acorns like Ruth if food was in short supply. They could also have eaten mushrooms, sloes and other plants. Some of them probably tried to produce “bark bread” from the inner bark. The terminal famine, combined with the collapse of centralised governance, was brutal because the process itself was probably extremely uneven across the country and between communities. Contrary to popular belief, cannibalism is extremely rare, even in the worst famines on record, and is generally carried out by extremely isolated groups or individuals with no other means. […]”.

The question is whether the phenomenon is widespread throughout the UK or just in certain specific regions. A widespread impact makes it difficult to organise a successful harvest for the summer harvest. The logical compromise is to accept the scenes (which are logical given the effects of the nuclear winter) and the reality of the collapse of the centralised food distribution system, but to differentiate between urban areas that were destroyed (the majority of which were affected by the famine) and rural areas that were relatively spared (which was necessary to ensure the success of the harvest). Here is a suggested map:

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The following logic is proposed:

The risk is highest (red) for London, the large conurbations/cities in the North-East around Liverpool, the port cities in the South-West away from the major cereal-growing areas and Northern Ireland (few cereal crops)
The risk is considered moderate (blue) for all smaller towns/urban areas or those close to major cereal/agricultural areas
The risk is considered low (green) for all towns located in or in close proximity to major agricultural areas, often small in Kent and the East of England

Key points of the period :

Major institutional crisis: failure of the “work-for-food” program, almost inevitable disintegration of the central state
Uncertain future of a fraction of the military forces (merger ? warlordism ?)
Necessary governmental relay, which can logically be provided by agricultural/industrial/mining hubs where institutional remnants, the military, technical/agricultural skills and survivors are concentrated (“rump state(s)”)
Maintaining national coordination out of practical necessity (impossible to have totally independent regions) in preparation for the 1985 summer harvest, possibly facilitated by institutional resilience (transformation of the central state through new structures run by former members of this institution, facilitating communication/cooperation/organisation)
Oil production recovery to coincide with the harvest in the summer of 1985
Continuation of the previous year’s efforts and obligation of logistical flows between the regions despite the potential institutional crisis on screen

“How to end 1985 ?” from 26 May 1985 to 31 December 1985

How did the survivors manage to finish 1985, assuming that there are still 11 million survivors 10 years later? We have 700,000 barrels left from our previous national stockpile. To finish the year, that means we have just over 3,000 barrels a day left. As this was a virtual stock for this trial, and the film never mentions it, it’s perfectly logical that it could be higher. We feel that a mechanised harvest is essential to finish the year, alongside the implementation of new farming methods (animal traction, manual ploughing, etc.). There seem to be several solutions:

Strict rationing in the agricultural regions to conserve petrol for the major cereal harvests between June and August
Manual labour (or animal traction) to prepare the fields at the end of the year
Restarting oil production at the beginning of 1985, even at low volumes
Reintroducing old coal-powered agricultural vehicles from 1985

For 1984, it was important to deploy a large number of farm vehicles because of the delay in the harvest and the possible constraints on farmland. The idea here is to have a smooth finish to the year, while still using manual labour to a significant extent. The idea would therefore be to mobilise vehicles while limiting their use as much as possible. We can therefore take as a reference the figure used for non-agricultural vehicles (i.e. 0.306 barrels/day). 700,000 barrels divided by 218 days gives 3,200 barrels. This volume potentially represents 10,500 vehicles. If possible, coal-fired vehicles will be used where they are available. The logical transition is therefore :

Reintroduction of animal traction and manual work (‘hoe-farming’) from the beginning of 1985, or even earlier, to save fuel where possible
Limited use of petrol after May 1985, with a peak between June and August 1985 for the cereal harvest
Gradual increase in the use of animal traction and manual work (“hoe-farming”) during 1985; the idea being that animal traction would become dominant over the next few years
Vital re-development of petrol to ensure mechanisation of major harvests or agricultural work from 1986

As a reminder, the figures in the paper were deliberately high in order to factor in heavy constraints; it is obvious that so much petrol is not used per day by every vehicle, even in difficult conditions. But the aim is to remain logical within the framework developed above. Based on this figure, it would be logical to expect oil production of 3,000 barrels per day during 1986: Wytch Farm and the North Sea to a very limited extent. Not necessarily used as such, but at least rationed for harvests/work in the fields and minimal logistics between counties/regions.

Governance needs to be put in place, as mentioned above: populations need to be coordinated, harvests need to be organised, people need to work together, and the food problems in many regions also need to be managed… Logically, the pattern should emerge in regions at the intersection of industrial/manufacturing hubs and agricultural regions: food production and maintenance/recovery of vital industries for the decade to come. The end of failed centralised governance does not mean the end of cooperation between individuals, particularly the former players integrated into state institutions, at different levels. As shown in the diagram above, this process is logically underway, with the merging of urban and rural populations, and the creation of authority figures with these same populations, and has been going on for at least a year. The same applies to the success of the harvest: the population must already have been working in the agricultural world for several months.

There will also be a need for national coordination, taking into account the risk of fragmentation of the British national territory. What seems fairest (and logical) is to have the following organisation:

Maintaining local agricultural specificities (something that is difficult to change due to the specialisation of the agricultural landscape at the time)
One or more areas with combined agricultural capacities superior to other regions, and therefore with the legitimacy to coordinate the harvest at national level

The following map is proposed with the designation of the South Wales-Midlands as the driving region. This seems logical insofar as this geographical area potentially concentrates (in addition to its central position): most of the remaining industrial and mining infrastructures, was historically the most densely populated and has the most critical pre-war agricultural base (in particular the East of England) and significant agricultural diversity (livestock, vegetables, fruit, etc.) :

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

To conclude, here is the energy curve required with the comeback of oil production at around 3,000 barrels per day starting during the spring of 1985, with two comparisons: barrels available with production and without production. The crash is inevitable without production, especially if the logistical difficulties are greater. Consequently, the resumption of production with a gradual increase over the decade is the logical way forward.

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An alternative consumption curve for the first year is also proposed with the following parameters:

Fall from 40,000 to 30,000 barrels/day for the harvest in September-December 1984
Restart of oil production in March 1985, with an increase from 3,000 to 5,000 barrels/day by the end of 1985.
Increase in the volume of petrol consumed (around 20,000 barrels/day) for the agricultural season June-October 1985

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Key points of the period :

Success of the 1985 summer harvest, maintaining mechanisation in cereal-growing regions and supra-regional coordination despite the institutional crisis: guaranteeing food to get through the winter, remotivating survivors and legitimising new forms of authority
Transition to new forms of governance between supra-regional cooperation (harvests, energy and food) and partial autonomy at regional level
Low-level mechanisation (crucial for for cereals) and introducing manual methods where its the most efficient (e.g. “hoe-farming” for potato cultivation).

Epilogue

The absurdity of Duncan Campbell’s reasoning is perfectly illustrated by this first year in the film Threads. Anyone who seems to think that taking collective decisions, even difficult ones, in times of crisis is an expression of mental disorder or even dystopian totalitarianism, that social cohesion is secondary in times of crisis, that we have to accept the inevitable, is brutally contradicted by the film considered to be the most realistic on the subject. The themes developed in his book — the futility of efforts at organisation, cohesion and governance — are blatantly contradicted by the bad choices made by the fictional government. These bad choices demonstrate more than ever the relevance of good choices and collective decisions. A ferocious irony when you consider that the film probably drew most of the intellectual material for its script from his book War Plan UK.

The United Kingdom was in a more than dramatic situation at the end of May 1985 : there was no sign of improvement in the food distribution system, no sign of new forms of governance on the screen, and the country was totally destroyed (both cities and infrastructure). But the scene before the narrative jump, with the men and women deliberately ploughing furrows in the ground with hoes, shows that something is underway. The hypothetical reconstruction of the ten years leading up to the film’s final scenes will once again provide an opportunity to demonstrate that the conspiracy, nihilism and cynicism of Duncan Campbell (and of the film by extension, since Threads also drew on the same book for the elements needed to weave his story) are dead ends : everything that the film and Duncan Campbell reject in their deepest depths will ultimately have been necessary to finally see the end of the tunnel, and will form the basis for the final scenes.

Next chapter available here : UK 1985–1994 : explaining the narrative jump in Threads (1984)

Sources

Nuclear winter :

Tambora and the “Year without summer” : Bern University

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

UK 1984–1985 : analysis of the fuel crisis and societal collapse in Threads (1984)

Pre-war UK contingency plan

Storage and availability of fuel in Threads

“Nuclear fallout” May 26th 1984 to June 9th 1984

“Reconstruction attempt, exodus crisis and pre-harvest” June 10th 1984 to September 22th 1984

“First post-nuclear war harvest” September 23th 1984 to December 22th 1984

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“First post-nuclear war winter” December 23th 1984 to March 28th 1985

“Centralized governance collapse” March 29th 1985 to May 26th 1985

A parallel with “The Year Without a Summer” (1816)

Consequences of the failure of the “work-for-food” program

Overview of the institutional/food crisis

The logistics “trap”

Why is the crisis complex to articulate and not understood by the film itself?

The scale of the institutional crisis

Guaranteeing the continuity of the State, society and agriculture

Scale of the famine

“How to end 1985 ?” from 26 May 1985 to 31 December 1985

Epilogue

Sources

Written by Simon CHABROL

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