"Threads" and "The Day After": Nuclear Holocaust in the 1980s

STORY BY: Janice C.
YEAR: 1983
LOCATION: Winnipeg, MB

Janice tells a story about the fear of nuclear war in the mid-1980s. "It constantly amazes me how strong it was at the time, and how much it has been forgotten". In BOOM X, that fear is mentioned in the context of a segment about the ABC TV movie The Day After, which was watched by so many North Americans on a November evening in 1983. She remembers a panel discussion after the movie "to calm everyone down", after the movie's graphic depiction of a nuclear holocaust and its horrific consequences for human civilization. Janice had just seen a movie called Threads, a British version of the same topic that had aired prior to The Day After, but with much darker and more horrifying scenes. "To this day, all I can remember of The Day After is being so mad that Canada was not included in the call-in phone number... all I wanted to do was pick up the phone and go 'didn't you guys see Threads!'". Thanks for sharing, Janice.