I’m from Sheffield, born and bred. I had to watch Threads at school aged 10. It scared the hell out of me then and it still bloody does now. Without a doubt, Threads is the most frightening and utterly depressing piece of filmography ever made.

The most gripping, grim and depressing TV drama I have ever watched by a mile. Incredible piece of work.

01:52 in this video ... Quote "Four people were killed today on the M6 motorway in Staffordshire When their car was in collision with a heavy tanker"... End quote THEY DON'T KNOW HOW LUCKY THEY WERE.

This scared the hell out of me in the 80s and still does today, even more so.

Still the ultimate horror movie, because the nightmare is entirely possible.

Threads really affected me. Never before had I felt the inevitable weight of people's hubris, ignorance and callous disregard to life by those who easily commit readily to war - and the dreadful hopelessness, despair and reprehensible consequences as a result. We have all witnessed the same rhetoric, the same escalation and the same dismissal of human life and livelihoods as depicted in this clip here. Sometimes I despair, when I realise those in charge of and have power over our destiny have the minds of children in adult bodies, playing games like children, thinking childish thoughts, never seeing the solutions behind those immediately presented, never seeing the incalculable suffering as a result of their actions.

This movie may be dated but it is still very accurate on how the public would react to the threat of nuclear war.

Meta's naming of their new social media app to 'Threads' feels chilling as we havent been so near the scenario depicted in this movie than now in 2023

Thank you for putting this together. I watched Threads I think 2 or 3 times, but the last time was maybe 5 years ago. It is haunting, but actually the terrifying part I find is the leadup which is this first segment you have made. The news reportage in this first pieces does make it seem very real (obviously the filmmakers effect) but to hear the radio and TV showing events in the Middle East has an uneasy echo with today 2024.... I also liked the pub scene they did 6:20 onwards - its very effective - when people watch the TV news and listen - it quitens down with the sobering news - then the pub owner switches the channel and then the pepole want to watch the news again!

I heard Tomorrow's World starting on BBC in that house! That means it was Thursday night and Top of the Pops was on in half an hour!

It has you on the edge of your seat? Imagine if this was really going to happen

Dang. I'd forgotten how bloody marvellous this film was.

I still remember the permanent fear - living 30km from the west/east german boarder - and the words my grandfather said "If something happens, promise me you don`t seek shelter because the people who are been killed direcktly are the lucky ones."

What I learned from “Threads” is towards the end of the movie. Those with guns determine who gets to eat.

Threads is the only movie that genuinely scared me.

I remember my parents talking about the cold war in this period and how we would take off to our cabin in the mountains if anything happened. It was on the back of peoples minds with the nuclear arms race back then, hence these films being made. Now history is repeating itself, and I think this is more dangerous now.

I was serving in the army at the time I would not want to survive a nuclear war I pity the survivors

Purchased Threads on DVD a few days ago having not seen it for whats coming up to 40 years, imagine a 14 year old watching this in a time when tensions between East and West were so bad. I wonder how today's young people would view this if it were done in a similar fashion only with a more modern environment they can relate too

I have very clear memories of watching this programme, and the timing was absolutely spot-on. Prior to this, it was only CND's The War Game (frequently shown at rallies and anarchist punk gigs) but nothing came close to Threads for the impact it had on EVERYONE. Incredible filmmaking, combined with actual newsreel footage showing numerous Cold War escalations from around the world. We've become acclimatised to the 'mockumentary' and 'reality t.v' format since this was made, but in 1984 it was very much in its infancy. The impression it left has never been surpassed in my opinion. Many thanks for posting.

My mum used to say if there's another war we all go together.She lived through ww2 and my grandmother ww1😢

Hoping there would be a remake of Threads in 2023 to make everything aware in this time

I rember watching Threads at the time it hit home big time .

The teenage daughter studying while listening to classical music on her headphones is about to have her future ripped apart by something totally out of her control….. The dark side of being a teenager in the 80’s……

Traumatised me for years after watching that as a young teenager

We're closer to day 0 now than ever before.....

I recently bought the dvd of the full threads film, god it’s so depressing 😢

Very interesting with Iran being the flashpoint. Could have realistically happened at the time.

threads and the war game have genuinely traumatized me

Oh for supermarket checkout prices like that nowadays.

Going to hell in a handbasket. I like how the film repeatedly focuses on the daily lives of the people, such as groceries, pubs, newspapers, getting to work. I was in high school in the early 1980s, I watched the Day After and many other nuclear war films (even Special Bulletin), but this was not on where I lived.

The predecessor is THE WAR GAME and very gruesome too. A family burning in a car, burnt people killed wirh mercy shots, eyeballs melting... was silenced 20 yrs in Britain. 1965

This feels more like a collection of "real time" news reports than a "movie". Whoa!!!

The BBC did a film called The War Game in 1966. The top bosses said it would be too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting, but it was shown at a few selected cinema`s. 1985/19 years later it finally ended up on TV

Thank you! Looking forward to the rest

I remember this ,the bbc put out a news briefing and then showed threads .I. Live in N.Ireland and the troubles were still going strong. They made a an awful cartoon showing 2 elderly people being reduced to ash this was truly an awful time. Government leaflets came through our doors recommended to get under tables. After hearing an alarm.

9:14 as a russian i didn't even know we have surface-air missiles with nukes history teachers don't tell us so much

Forty years on and oh how we need this film.

Threads Blu-ray: amzn.to/3lbPYPH American superfortresses started using Lake Biwa northeast of Hiroshima as a coastal rendezvous point towards the end of the War. The city's air raid sirens had been sounding false alarms almost every night for weeks. Hiroshima and Kyoto were the only important Japanese cities that hadn't been visited in strength by "Mr B" (America's B-29 bombers). Hiroshima was reserved for a special demonstration and the people waited anxiously. B-29s had started making regular reconnaissance flights and the "yellow-alert" siren had become a morning routine. On the night of 5 August 1945, Hiroshima’s sirens wailed as two hundred B-29s approached the city from the south. People evacuated to their “safe areas” and waited for the napalm firestorm. The terror bombers roared overhead and then passed on heading north. People returned home but another warning wailed soon after midnight. The yellow alert sounded around 7:00 and the all-clear followed as an American reconnaissance plane approached from the south. People headed to work and thousands of school children gathered for morning work details helping to clear fire breaks in the lanes and streets. A lone B-29 passed high overhead at 8:15 and detonated a uranium bomb 1900 feet above the city. Two hundred thousand people were burned, blinded, disembowelled, irradiated and buried in rubble as the city crumbled beneath the nuclear flash, blast and shock waves. A turbulent column of heat, dust and ash rose miles into the sky shrouding the city in darkness. Neighbourhoods and streets were transformed into an unrecognisable wasteland of total destruction. Dazed survivors scrambled over mounds of wreckage and muffled voices screamed from the rubble. Tens of thousands descended on the city’s hospitals and the few remaining medical staff were overwhelmed. ‘More than 80 per cent of the city's doctors and nurses were killed in the explosion, their hospitals levelled or severely damaged. There were few medicines or painkillers. The shockwave tore through the Red Cross Hospital: ceilings and partitions collapsed; windows blew in, showering everyone with glass ... patients ran about screaming.’ Paul Ham, Hiroshima Nagasaki, 371 Ragged, gruesomely injured people filled hospital corridors and crowded the streets where many were vomiting from radiation sickness. Scattered fires grew into a conflagration and the hot air swirled with burning showers of cinders. Panic gripped the city and people herded into the corpse-filled estuarial rivers. Others fled to the blackened parks and huddled alongside the dying as they moaned, "Mizu! Mizu! - Water! Water!” Black radioactive rain fell from the mushroom cloud. Three days later, Mr B detonated a plutonium bomb above the Urakami Christian district of Nagasaki. America was now a nuclear power that ruled the sky and the world was shocked and awed. Britain handed leadership of the global capitalist system to America at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 and British imperial sterling was superseded by a truly international world reserve dollar regulated by the IMF and World Bank. Bankrupt Allies, West Germany and Japan fixed the exchange rates of their currencies relative to the US dollar which, in turn, was backed by a mountain of gold. US dollars were then shipped overseas as part of the Marshal Plan funding postwar reconstruction in the shadow of the Cold War. The Soviet Union became a nuclear power in 1949 and, by 1955, both the US and USSR had detonated a hydrogen bomb. Atomic bombs release energy through nuclear fission but thermonuclear weapons are driven by fusion reactions: the process that powers the sun. Hydrogen bombs can produce large multimegaton yields thousands of times more powerful than the "Little Boy" Hiroshima bomb and now represent the prevalent type... America built the first nuclear weapons during World War II and used them against Japan. Today, several nations are nuclear-armed including North Korea, Pakistan, Israel and soon perhaps Iran. The distinctive mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion lifts fine particles of dust and ash high into the stratosphere blocking light and reddening the rising and setting of the sun. As well as radioactive darkness, a thermonuclear war would also produce huge volumes of ozone-destroying nitric oxide further lowering global temperatures and plunging the planet into an extended nuclear winter. Please click like, subscribe, and turn on notifications. It really helps with channel growth. Thank you! This channel is not monetized. All ads are run by the copyright owner. Last Messages: amzn.to/42kbEdV

One of UK TV's greatest achievements. Why no musical version, though?

Wow, thanks for sharing

The casualty rate would be much higher these days due to higher yield weapons. I forgot Lesley Judd played the newsreader.

It's happening now.

It's now 27/1/23 ,90 seconds to midnight on the Doomsday clock.God help us.

I wonder if anybody will screen this chilling drama again on network tv. Mind you given the present situation I don't think so.

You know, I think we're closer to nuclear war today than we ever were during the Cold War. I grew up during the Cold War and remember doing the nuclear attack exercises mandated in public schools here in the US (useless as we all now know them to be) and my parents didn't really shelter us kids from the exigencies of what was going on. They believed in educating us in the Cold War plus the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, both proxy wars between the US and USSR at the time. We are engaged again in a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine now, as well, but the stakes are higher since it isn't just the US and Russia who have nuclear weapons and who may choose to use them once the first shot is fired (nuclear shot that is). I truly think it's really only a matter of time before someone or an advisory committee thinks it'll be a good idea to actually use these weapons on "the enemy", whomever that may be, and I really do think it'll be game on around the world as countries settle differences or try to acquire territory. Civilians, as usual, will pay the heaviest price but that's war in general. Back then, there seemed to be a sort of unspoken agreement that weapons like this, although we had them, shouldn't actually be used. Sure, there was saber rattling and still is but today the rhetoric is sharper and much more aggressive and our leaders much different kinds of people than back in the Cold War. It doesn't help that politically unstable countries are also nuclear countries now and are kind of unknown players should a nuclear war break out. It's a genie we humans will NEVER put back into its bottle.

Really brutal movie 😢

In the time this movie was made (and the same goes for "The Day After") people lived under the nuclear threat. Now we realize that that world was far more predictable and stable than the one we live in today. Beyond their war rethorics, world leaders were much more responsible and there was a sort of "gentlemen´s agreement" between them. Today most leaders are little more than street gangsters, anyone may have a nuke and anyone may push the button.

Well done. That final scene is just terrible.

This would have been scary... Back when I was born...

What gives, OP? Did you have to cut the dramatic elements? Mick Jackson did superbly with a totally unknown cast. There's no doubt that Threads had a huge impact on UK consciousness of nuclear conflict and Reagan himself watched it.

Thursday May 12th, corresponds to 1983, not 1984. A minor slip, indicating the film was originally intended for release the previous year.

The way the crisis slowly but surely builds up and the way people start noticing it is so clever.

History repeating…

Amanpour appears as the presenter in TV!

Remarkably scary given the current state of play in Ukraine.

Me and my father watched that movie going way back I was 10 years old when The First I watched it it was on Cable Channel Superstation WTBS and a year later I watched it on KDNL-TV 30.

They should show this again on all TV stations in the UK. One of the most incredible anti-ear movies EVER made. The US did their own, "The Day After," but it was nowhere near as horrific.

It starts off slow people don't listen to the news

Where to download this app?

If America only listened to Patton

Warum gibt es kein link zu den anderen beiden Teilen? Auch wenn es auf diesem Kanal "normal" ist, nicht zu antworten, würde ich mich freuen, diesmal ein zu erhalten

The American president’s voice in the film sounds unsettlingly reminiscent of Ronald Raegan’s.

"The only winning move is not to play."

as of this last week i would watch this again just to be ready for what will happen soon

I saw this when it was on TV when I was 7 - I don't think I've recovered yet. And now its all happening again :/

The things change, the more they stay the same

I'm in the UK, and had to use a VPN (USA connection) to find Threads in full on You Tube 🤔

I think this was made because of Able Archer in 1983. My father said that we would all go upstairs lay on the bed and hold hands. We really did come close, if wasn't for the Russian who refused to push the button. A very chilling time as a child.

On the Beach also is a good watch. With the northern hemisphere gone and the radiation creeping southwards..

Came to watch this after that demon 79 ending

God this is depressing 😢

Happening now

Kirov class sustaining damage from the collision with a destroyer 😂 nice story, bro but the mass difference is ranging between 7 and 20 times between those two.

LOVE the BBC 1 newswoman’s hairstyle. ❤️❤️❤️

Do you know what shocked me most about the dock your film is the advanced looking jet aircraft that they’re using Even in 2023 they don’t look amiss, I remember as a 3year old kid being scared shitless by low flying jets from raf Driffield in 1972!

I remember this in 1984 I was 8

This is like American movie "The Day After"which was made the year before this(1983)and had also aired in Britain

When it gets to 90 ms to the witching hour I may stock up on some soup.

A new version with the contemporary information technology now inseparable from todays youth would have greater impact perhaps

Sounds familiar doesn't it?

POV: It’s early March 2022

No one panic buying toilet paper

The Daily Mail was 33p in 1984!!

Oh dear God its set in Sheffield..... my nearest target city. . . Its reputation preceeds it with this film I'm on bloody tenterhooks now..... nearmind..... we'll go through this together.... will somebody old me and?

How times haven't changed

IMDb says the film is 1:52, not less than 30 mins

3:05, Its Ed Bishop, Col Ed Straker from UFO.

These were some of the films of my childhood. Another is When the Wind Blows and The Day After - we grew up in the shadow of the Soviet bomb. Maybe these films should be shown to the current crop of clowns in the Russian government as they seem to freely throw around nuclear threats every day as if somehow they can win a nuclear war. Maybe they've forgotten what thermo nuclear war would mean for Russia....

Over and out…

All world goverment leaders should watch this film and see what could happen if they all press that nuclear button. It's the only war this world has never had and it could happen any time!

Better than the movie!👍

Silence

The pubs had TV, why wasn't Benny Hill at 6:38. It's 1984.

This and the US similar movie ‘the day after’ from the same era also about a nuclear war should be shown now in light of current world events. Right now we’re sheep bumbling around without a clue about what’s going on re Ukraine, China and NK

Mao said 'power comes out of the barrel of a gun.'

My dad's birthday was May 29.

As long as they don't hit Basildon.

I can't see anyone using them. Nobody wins so what's to gain?

Once it's all over be sure to thank military personnel for their 'service' and for making it all possible.

Still possible 2024😊