Just watched Threads, and I agree it is well-done as a film. I would say the pacifist angle is concealed rather than absent.

Having thought about it, I suspect it is not very realistic, either, for a few reasons.

The first is the most obvious – why would either side initiate an all-out strategic nuclear exchange that neither could possibly win? In the film’s scenario, the war comes after a long build-up in tension over a conflict in the Third World, arguably the least likely scenario.

Concerning the effects, I am also a bit dubious. The film mentioned 3000 Megatons as being the bomb total (with 210 Mtons falling on the UK). Presumably about half the total tonnage landed on each side, and a considerable fraction would have been aimed remote ICBM sites and military bases. The typical yield of a late Cold War US nuclear warhead was about 300 kton. So 3000 Megatons total would mean 10,000 such warheads, which is fairly close to the total number of nuclear weapons of all types (including tactical) available to both sides. If 5,000 fell on the West, and 5,000 fell on Russia and Eastern Europe, it still would have left most of the world’s area and population unaffected, at least directly. South America, Africa, Australia, large sections of Asia, and parts of North America and Europe would have had intact infrastructure.

According to the film, 210/3000 = 7% of the total, and presumably about 14% of the Soviet-launched tonnage fell on the UK. But the UK’s land area is only 2.5% of the US, and its nuclear and conventional forces were similarly much less numerous. Why the UK would have been hit so hard is difficult to explain. If West Germany and France were on the receiving end of a similar proportion, it would mean only 1/3 the Soviet weapons were aimed at the US, where the important targets are more numerous and far more dispersed. In the narrative of the film, the US was certainly the principal antagonist of the Soviets (in the Middle East, etc).

The level of devastation and mortality depicted in the film is phenomenal, but about 90% of Japan’s urban areas were destroyed (most by conventional firebombing) in WWII, about 20% of the pre-WWII population of Poland was killed in the war, and perhaps an even greater fraction of the Soviet Union’s, if Stalin’s pre- and post-war atrocities are included. Germany losses were about 10% of its total population, but virtually the entire country was reduced to rubble. But these areas recovered. Radioactivity and other effects obviously make a nuclear war worse, but the film’s portrayal of only a medieval level of recovery after 13 years seems exaggerated.

Obviously a 3000 Mton nuclear exchange would have been hell, but I think the film-makers may have subtly painted a worse-than-worst-case scenario to make their point.

LagunaDave on December 25, 2006 at 7:11 AM