My primary school years, as for most children, were relatively carefree and straightforward.
Early-1980s playtimes in Bannockburn were consumed by mass football matches that would, when the bell rang after half an hour, end in a hotly disputed 34-33 scoreline. If you could also manage to avoid the bullies, and perhaps stammer a few words to the girl you fancied: result.
A shadow lurked, though – a chilly nagging at the subconscious, a chiselling away at psychological innocence that was harder to shake off than the schoolyard hardmen, and even more terrifying than a freckled 12-year-old in blonde bunches.
On occasion, one would re-enter the classroom to find the shadow taking on physical form. The janitor would wheel in the school’s single, warship-scale video recorder and, after various mishaps with leads and connections, up would pop the title sequence to Threads.
For those too young to remember, or in need of a refresher, Threads was a BBC film about the consequences of actual nuclear calamity. The Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union has suddenly become hot due to a dispute over Iran, and the devastating atomic warheads begin to fall. Two-thirds of the UK is destroyed, and 30 million people are killed.
More of us probably remember Threads’s key moments better than its plot: the burning baby, people being crushed by falling debris or immolated in nuclear fire, a woman peeing herself in fright. No one of my generation is ever likely to forget. It was a hell of a movie to show schoolkids, but it was also one hell of a message, deliberately delivered: this might actually happen to you.
Protect and Survive
We were taught, too, through the Protect and Survive campaign, what to do in the event of nuclear conflagration. How to create a fallout room in the cupboard under the stairs, how much food and water we’d need for a two-week stay there. Also required: a portable radio, toilet paper, a bucket and a first aid kit. Windows should be blocked up with bricks or sandbags or furniture.
And we were kept on our toes. The local nuclear alert siren was stored in the attic of our school, and when tested its apocalyptic wail would sound over a town that, for the duration, stopped, took note, and shuddered. Sleep well, kids.
Of course, we largely did sleep well – this was a grown-up problem, and there wasn’t much for us to do about it. But, as Martin Amis once put it: “The man with the cocked gun in his mouth may boast that he never thinks about the cocked gun. But he tastes it, all the time.”
The fall of the Soviet Union put paid to nuclear war, and the taste of gun faded for a few decades. But, in our new era, a time of invasions, proxy wars, Middle Eastern eruptions and looming Great Power confrontation, the metallic tang may be returning.
Warnings about global instability abound
Some things have changed, some have stayed the same. Russia remains a belligerent with delusions of grandeur, Iran a fundamentalist menace, the Holy Land a centre of existential dispute and a plaything of larger forces. China has replaced the Soviet Union as the mighty and ambitious force with which the West must contend.
Warnings about global instability abound. Ukraine continues to suffer under Putin’s murderous attacks. Any kind of peaceful accord between the Israelis and their neighbours appears to be its usual chimera – though until recently it had actually seemed closer than for some time, which might explain the current Iranian-instigated trouble.
Our obsession with identity politics has, in some senses, been a mark of a more stable world
Most foreign policy experts expect a confrontation between China and the US over Taiwan within the course of our lifetimes, and perhaps soon. Everyone is picking sides, and will have to pick yet more.
If climate change has given today’s youth a sense of what it’s like to live in a world that comes without guarantees of security and safety, that is somewhat contingent, then there is worse to come.
Is Fallout just Threads for a new generation?
Our obsession with identity politics has, in some senses, been a mark of a more stable world. The receding of the threat of mutually assured destruction has given us the time and space to think about other matters, to spend more time considering the inner life of the individual and their rights and demands.
But foreign and defence policy are back, with bells on. The role of foreign secretary, which for years has seemed a smaller job than it once was, is suddenly central again, and David Cameron is everywhere on our TV screens as he hops from international conference to global summit. Keir Starmer has freshly committed to raising defence spending to 2.5%, and doubling down on the UK’s nuclear deterrent.
This was how things used to be, with national security, the balance of power and foreign threats central to the political and policy conversation. It is how things will be once again in the years and decades ahead. And, don’t forget, we must throw Donald Trump into this toxic mix.
With exquisite timing, a new dramatic take on nuclear annihilation has just been released. Amazon Prime’s Fallout is an entertaining, cartoonish take on a post-apocalyptic society that must live with the consequences of its mistakes. It may or may not be a Threads for our time, but it serves to remind us that the human race has choices, and that it often makes bad ones. Take note, and prepare to shudder.
Chris Deerin is a leading journalist and commentator who heads independent, non-party think tank, Reform Scotland
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