Tuesday 22 May 2007

Threads

If you have ever wondered what the fallout would be, so to speak, of a nuclear weapon on a urban area then you must watch this film. Despite being over twenty years old it is chilling and certainly puts Britain's recent decision to renew Trident into some sort of context.

4 comments:

gary thomson said...

I watched the first half of this film the other night and found it quite chilling, harrowing, moving. To see people move toward their deaths sensing what was about to come and unable to do anything apart from the pitiful public defense measures.

I expect that you mention Trident because it means that politicians in this country are quite unphased about unleashing similar destruction on civilain populations in other countries in the name of defence. Quite a thought really.

The guy at the FOE meeting last month (Alan Taylor Prof of Moral Phil, Glasgow) said the best form of defence was to have a population who would be ungovernable, then nobody would want to attack or invade your country.

I can't remember seeing this film before but the title is vaguely familiar. I intended to watch the second half but Firefox wasn't responding in the AM and I had to force quit it. I think that must be some kind of memory leak in FF.

Paolo said...

I was made to watch this when I was at school and it was quite harrowing but I'm glad I was exposed to it, it's something I think, like Schindler's Ark (or at least Schindler's List), that everyone should experience.

I never used to think that there was a possibility of a nuclear war. If all the major global players have weapons then you have stalemate but that isn't quite true. You have stalemate until someone else develops better weapons, or until an unstable country gets hold of weapons.

In the run up to the war in Afghanistan, the US were already developing battlefield nuclear weapons. If you consider that alongside both the Star Wars projects of a ballistic missile defence system, and the stated aim of America to control the arming of space; how far away are we from a new arms race and a new cold war?

That is a rather gloomy outlook, I admit, but I can't help but think that the biggest danger to humanity is still not the environment or global warming, it is humanity itself.

Anonymous said...

I saw this abou t15 yers ago.. EXCELLENT depiction.... scary, realistic

Paolo said...

Apparently the film had the American physicist Carl Sagan amongst its advisers, they also used official government documents on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack so as bleak an outlook as the film portrays, one can assume that the actual event wouldn't be far from that as presented in the film which is a scary prospect.

The film is a perfect vehicle for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

:)