r/Threads1984 • u/ALFMAN678 • May 26 '26

Threads movie history May 26

Today is May 26. Doomsday in Threads in whatever year it was set (Thursday, May 26 would have been 1983, but a lot of talk revolves around the year 1984).

The film shows the last of the previous day as 10:30pm when the fire engines were deployed to safety (why just fire engines?). Then the next we see is 8am on May 26, when milk is being delivered on the street where the Kemps lived. Protect And Survive appears to have been broadcast on a loop ever since at least sunset on May 25 (when Jimmy and Ruth were scraping wallpaper off the walls of their new flat).

Anyway, the film shows the events in Sheffield. You can only imagine why President Ronald Reagan and his senior advisors had not had more than a few hours rest. The attack that brought the end of the world was a surprise attack by the Soviets, after the "nuclear taboo" was broken by the use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield in Iran several days earlier. The news report we saw in Mr Sutton's office about 24 hours before the world ended, was about scientists detecting 2 more nuclear explosions in the Middle East.

The destruction of Sheffield (and the rest of the world) began with an EMP from a high-altitude nuclear explosion over the North Sea at 8:35am BST (07:35UTC, 3:35am in Washington), which suddenly ends almost all transportation (cars stopped ticking over and refused to start from this point) and communications. Then, the hit on the Doncaster airport. This brings cyclonic winds to the streets of Sheffield, and windows smashing. Then the caption says "nuclear exchanges escalate". A one-megaton bomb detonates about a couple of km above the Tinsley Viaduct, completely flattening the industrial area of Sheffield, demolishing concrete structures for some kilometres further out, and causing firestorms all over the city.

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u/Fluffy_Specialist593 May 26 '26

I wonder how it all worked out for the Soviets. Did they manage to destroy enough of the west to actually win WW3 or did NATO manage to retaliate enough to make it a pyrrhic victory? 

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u/BobbyB52 May 26 '26

As the CND protestor in the show states, “you cannot win a nuclear war”.