Apocalypse! You can’t beat a bit of it.

It’s everywhere, from the unconvincing CGI monster-infested streets of New York in I Am Legend to doom-laden “what if” TV programmes like Channel 4’s passable Life After People or ITV’s ridiculous Flood. But before we were quite so worried about being wiped out by weird contagions or being forced to mutate into Kevin Costner by global warming, the purveyors of television drama had a much more immediate threat to frighten us silly with: mutual assured destruction.

I’m sure the certainty that anyone lobbing a nuclear warhead halfway around the world would unleash a retaliatory hail of atomic death before the missile had even left their home territory was much more likely to keep you awake at night than the vague notion that, at some undetermined point in the future, the polar ice caps might melt a bit.

Happy to feed the nightmares of their viewers, television companies stepped forward in the early 80s with two made-for-TV movies within a year of one another: Threads from the BBC in the UK, and The Day After from the US.

Everything Connects

While both of these films are still powerful enough to be scary, even after over twenty years, they each have a very different take on the post-apocalyptic landscape. In a sense, the films reflect differences in national character more than anything else: while Threads shows the population of Sheffield wallowing in medieval poverty even fifteen years after the Russian improvements to the city centre, the merry townsfolk of The Day After are seen banding together and preparing to reconstruct Uncle Sam via hard agricultural toil practically, well, the day after their own hammering.

In both cases, the films evoke the aftermath of a nuclear exchange in ways which don’t quite ring true, from opposite ends of the spectrum. The world of Threads is unrelentingly bleak, filled with deformed, mentally retarded children and adults too shell-shocked to function even a decade after the blast. The immediate aftermath of the nuclear blast causes mass panic and food shortages, which the ineffectual interim government can only curtail by taking drastic measures.

By contrast, The Day After’s rosier outlook gives us a provincial university hospital where dedicated staff remain at their posts for days, struggling to treat people who are happy to wait patiently in line despite half their faces hanging off and their entire family dying quietly by their side.

I’m sure the American TV audience would like to think it would pan out like that, but I think Threads barely has the edge on realism.

Woven together in a fabric

In both dramas, the countdown to doomsday is, if anything, more effective than the post-nuclear struggle itself. Both ramp up the tension in the early stages by staging a minor ground scuffle in the Middle East, encroaching into our characters’ lives via the background chatter of TV and radio reports. As things become more serious and those pesky Ruskies bust their way into West Berlin, the tension mounts.

Threads has its characters stockpiling food and following the advice of the creepy Protect and Survive television broadcasts; The Day After shows our heroes piling earth against their cellar windows, constructing an impromptu fallout shelter in which they can cower until the great American nation rises again (after perhaps a fortnight).

The Day After wins over Threads in one important respect: the beginning of the fateful day itself. This is almost by necessity. The United Kingdom would never have got much of a look-in during a nuclear exchange between the USA and the USSR, neither as a target (Threads has it receiving a mere smattering of the total firepower exchanged) nor as an aggressor, with our nuclear deterrent being both relatively small and lurking aboard submarines somewhere in the world’s oceans. The first nuclear strike in Threads comes with minimal warning, in the early morning when old Reagan would be snoozing. Despite causing pandemonium on the streets, it’s fair to say that the good people of Sheffield don’t stand much of a chance to do anything beyond being typecast, and melting.

The Day After has the luxury of being set in Kansas, home to some of the USA’s nuclear arsenal. The Russians are good enough to make the dubious decision to strike during American daylight hours, giving our characters the opportunity to see their own nuclear warheads heading off to do their duty – and the unpleasant knowledge that, no matter who started it, some Russian missiles will be along to return the favour.

If you’re a fan of post-apocalyptic material, both films are essential, if somewhat crusty viewing. If you have views on the nuclear deterrent or fancy acquiring some, so much the better.