h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Found the other one I was wittering on about, it's called 'Special Bulletin'. Good old imdb.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086350/

Wonder if it's as good as I remember it?

Lx

Here's a couple of really good ones:

Miracle Mile (1988) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097889/ A young Anthony Edwards answers a misdailed phone call from a soldier on an US missile base. He was trying to call his dad to tell him that they'd just launched their missiles and the world is about to end. Then we follow the story of Edward's character as he tries to save the girl he's just met at the end of the world.


Then there's the EMP (nukes in space) tech destruction of the Earth in Wim Winders' Until the End of the World http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101458/

At least half of the film takes place after the end.


I grew up in the generation that fully accepted the idea that WWIII would happen in our lifetime. These films express that angst well, while still being quite fun.

The american one like Threads was The Day After, wasn't it?

Threads gave me the willies,big time. Mostly because I come from Sheffield and the scene where the bomb goes off was filmed down the bottom end of The Moor - you could see the mushroom cloud, then the X-Ray people...

Most of my class (Mrs Bojangles *wave* I guess we're about the same age) were so convinced that we'd all die in a nuclear war before we were 30 that none of us have a proper idea about retirement. We never expected to get that far.

The Fourth Protocol was about a nuclear bomb, wasn't it? I remember in the book the Russian guy smuggled parts of it into the UK concealed about a mini (hemispherical headlight casings or something)

If you're including EMP pulses, Dark Angel was set in a post EMP pulse America.

I watched it entirely for Jessica Alba you understand.

A Boy and His Dog is post-nuclear, if that counts. It makes me laugh that it went out in america with the oh so subtle title 'Psycho-Boy and his Killer Dog' in case parents thought it was a nice sweet Disney film for kids. You'd think the 18 certificate would've given it away really.

I never heard it referred to that alternate title. Of course I was a bit young to see it in the theatre. The video is definitely titled "A Boy and His Dog". I haven't seen it in ages though...

to netflix

Oooh... when I added A Boy... to my queue, netflix recommended Zardoz. I've not yet seen it. John Boorman, Sean Connery... can't miss.

'Threads' has been repeated once, I think, on BBC Four a few years ago. I saw it again last year. It wasn't any less scary. You do watch it and wonder how we're still here...

I bought it recently from amazon, only £8:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Threads-Karen-Meagher/dp/B0009S9LNK/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/202-9224448-0881467?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1186147320&sr=8-1

Zardox. Connery in a nappy. Scariest thing about nuclear war, one feels.

Watched the War Game last night. Big mistake. Worse than Threads, in my opinion.

There are a few contenders for Most Depressing Day Of My Life.

Always in the top five is the day I had a row with my girlfriend and stormed out of my house, got in the car and drove off. After driving for a while, I decided I needed something to take my mind off things, and saw a sign pointing to "Secret Bunker", specifically Hack Green nuclear bunker.

Three hours or so later I had watched all of "The War Game", most of "Threads", seen an actual nuclear weapon (casing - much smaller than you'd think, I could put one in the back of my car, no problem) and basically realised that I had lived through a war in just as real as sense as had my grandparents' generation.

Put my row in proper context, for sure.

SoRB

Interesting thread...

There have been quite a few "nuclear war/bomb" films or TV series, quite a few of them from the atomic-war paranoia of the 1980s but a surprising number of more recent "West v Russia" war films like "By Dawn's Early Light" and "The Sum Of All Fears".

Interesting that someone mentioned people growing up "with the threat of nuclear war". Nuclear weapons have been with us since 1945 and since then we've lived with and continue to live with the same threat pretty-much unchanged. What does change is the amount of political tension and (more likely) moral panic about "imminent" nuclear war. The world had one in the 1960s as a result of the Cuban stand-off (when atomic war actually was a real (if unlikely) outcome) and the 1980s (when it was largely the result of paranoia, much of it politcally-inspired since both superpower blocs knew atomic war = self-destruction and the missiles/warheads were more about shows of strength than anything else). Ironically, some analysists think that the collapse of the two-superpowers system has made atomic exchanges more likely since it has made it easier for non-state players like terrorists to obtain them (who are more likely to use them because they have less to lose) or for nuclear-armed states to potentially attack "lawless" areas with strategic nuclear strikes if they feel sufficiently threatened (as the USA, Russia and I think France have stated they would in certain situations). On the other hand, it's been argued that nuclear weapons make war so dangerous for a country's rulers that they are forced to compromise for good or ill (see India and Pakistan's endless border-warfare petering out).

I absolutely agree that the cultural angst we felt in the 80's was driven by the media as a tool for those in political power, especially in Reagan's administration which was powered and funded by the military industrial complex. Increase fear = increase military spending = high profits. That equation hasn't changed, we've just found a different fear.

"The Fourth Protocol was about a nuclear bomb, wasn't it? I remember in the book the Russian guy smuggled parts of it into the UK concealed about a mini (hemispherical headlight casings or something)"

Yes. I've never read the book (I'd find it dated and Forysth is a terribly politically-partial writer so I imagine it's full of characters making speeches that are really Forsyth's own opinions) but iirc the plot is that a Soviet agent is smuggled into Britain to detonate an atomic device at a USAF airbase which will immediately be interpreted as an American warhead having suddenly exploded. This would then immediately make the majority of the British public want a far-left socialist government (for some reason) who would leave NATO and remove American missiles from British soil which for some reason would allow the Warsaw Pact to win WWIII. Utter tosh on many levels but quite an insight into the sort of paranoid nonsense that informed political debate at the time.

The plot was also largely ripped-off for the James Bond film "Octopussy".

"I absolutely agree that the cultural angst we felt in the 80's was driven by the media as a tool for those in political power, especially in Reagan's administration which was powered and funded by the military industrial complex. Increase fear = increase military spending = high profits. That equation hasn't changed, we've just found a different fear."

Unfortunately you've got your facts wrong, much of the paranoia was driven by media people who were *anti* establishment ("Threads" was attacked by the Thatcher government for scaremongering, not congratulated for demonstrating the thread Britain faced). The "there's going to be a nuclear war!" feeling was perpetuated by more by the left than the right. The right mostly tended to the view that there wasn't going to be a war and that the nukes were a deterrent to prevent a Soviet "first strike". The left tended to the view that it was the US that was planning a first strike and that missile buildups in Europe were part of this. History shows that, in fact, the West was getting itself into a fuss over a nuclear war that was never going to happen - both sides were terrified of the prospect.

I've seem to remember being in a similar convo somewhere else very recently , so apologies if I'm regurgitating anything here.

I guess it depends which period you're referring to. In the '80s, as I remember the prevalent view at the time was that it was all going to kick-off by accident. No-one believed anyone was going to launch a first strike; that would have been guaranteed suicide. By that time everyone had their early-warning systems, bombs in the air 24/7 and missiles already targetted. Specifically in order to deter a first strike, in fact. The deterrent relied on the response being swift and almost automatic. The scenario in Threads saw tensions (and exchanges) building slowly over a small conflict in the middle east, there was no direct action by either NATO or the USSR against each other, and certainly no talk of first strikes.

There was a prevalent feeling of futility in the 80s - that there was no apparent possibility of either side backing down, that both would continue to upgrade their systems to make them more responsive and more deadly until something went wrong or someone got twitchy. However unlikely a full-blown exchange might have been, the capability was there and the possibility was real. IMO what made Threads so frightening was not just the horor of it all but the fact it *could* happen.

You could certainly argue that a nuclear weapon being used in anger is more likely today, but there are nuclear exchanges and nuclear exchanges. The superpowers may still be almost as heavily armed, but their weapons are no longer targetted in peace time. Terrorists might get hold of a single small weapon if they're very lucky; Isreal, Pakistan or India might lob the odd missile at their neighbours... but people are bombing each other all the time. Atomic bombs, especially the little fission bombs these skirmishes are liable to involve, are just a bit bigger, is all. At most, we're talking a couple of cities. Harsh, but I can readily think of worse things happening in recent years, such as the Asian tsunami or Darfur.

Today's instabilities just don't compare to the combined arsenals of the two sides during the cold war, the prospect of all major population centres flattened, whole countries made uninhabitable and entire civilisations blown back to the stone age.

"I guess it depends which period you're referring to. In the '80s, as I remember the prevalent view at the time was that it was all going to kick-off by accident. No-one believed anyone was going to launch a first strike; that would have been guaranteed suicide. By that time everyone had their early-warning systems, bombs in the air 24/7 and missiles already targetted. Specifically in order to deter a first strike, in fact. The deterrent relied on the response being swift and almost automatic."

I think the problem with that thinking is the "kick off by accident" part as it supposes that firing an atomic weapon could happen in the same manner as someone tripping over a wire. Missile launches couldn't really happen without a great deal of agreement at a top military level and without several people being responsible to prevent a "rogue" element launching a strike (I remember hearing that a Soviet general in Cuba was in a position to launch a strike without Moscow's permission in the 1960s - something you can bet the Russian's learned from). I can't really see how a war could be started "accidentally" - it would need one side to initiate a first strike.

"The scenario in Threads saw tensions (and exchanges) building slowly over a small conflict in the middle east, there was no direct action by either NATO or the USSR against each other, and certainly no talk of first strikes."

But "Threads" was fictional, like "The Fourth Protocol". It's creating a "realistic" scenario that is in fact an extension of the author's paranoid worldview. The writer of "Threads" was convinced that the arms race was a massive tower of Babel that was destined to fall down in armageddon sometime soon. Forsyth was convinced that the Russians could successfully plant an atomic bomb in England and detonate it in such a way that it would frame the USA and that this would somehow break the West's resolve and allow the USSR to win the cold war (even more ludicrous given what we now know about the state the USSR was in). Both were more a reflection of popular paranoia and are interesting more as an insight into the times than anything else.

Of course, "Threads" depiction of a nuclear attack might well be extremely realistic, it's the "political situation" that leads to it that now looks rather naive.

"There was a prevalent feeling of futility in the 80s - that there was no apparent possibility of either side backing down, that both would continue to upgrade their systems to make them more responsive and more deadly until something went wrong or someone got twitchy. However unlikely a full-blown exchange might have been, the capability was there and the possibility was real. IMO what made Threads so frightening was not just the horor of it all but the fact it *could* happen."

I think that's why I class it as "moral panic". It wasn't impossible that there was going to be a nuclear war (just like it wasn't impossible a couple of years ago for someone's child to be abducted) but there was a paranoia and real omnipresent fear about something that was *extremely unlikely* to the extent that perfectly rational people were convinced it was an inevitability within their lifetime.

I suppose "The Day the Earth stood still" is about nukes.

just to put it in a bit of context: I grew up during the 70s and 80s and it was towards the end of the 70s that most of my classmates and I began to really worry.

In fact, one of the reasons I joined the army and did the job I did was to reassure myself that it wouldn't really happen. Ah the good ol' (naive) days!

"I suppose "The Day the Earth stood still" is about nukes."

Partly, but I think it's generally about war (specifically world war) which the arrival of atomic weapons had added a new level to. There had been two devastating wars in the 20th century and there was every impression that a third was waiting in the wings (this was in the days before Mutually Assured Destruction when the superpowers thought a strategic nuclear war was winnable). The "aliens come down and save us from ourselves" aspect is part wishful-thinking but part a sort of paternalistic authoritarianism ie "you're like children and you need to be treated as such". It's why it's interesting beyond its era - the ideas in it tend to resonate into later eras.