_Threads_ changed my perception of what to hope for in the event of nuclear war. After watching _The Day after Tomorrow_ as a kid, I'd think of survival strategies about where to go to wait out the destruction. _Threads_ makes the point, all too clear, that there is no society left after WWIII, and what's left of our race will be horribly mutated and deformed. I'm almost happier now with the feeling that I might be caught in the initial blast due to my proximity working near a military base. If we are stupid enough to use these weapons at scale, it would be game over for humanity at this point.
I've read an article that argued Threads was actually a very optimistic view of what would have happened to the UK in case of a nuclear war. They said after the Cold War, the former head of the Soviet nuclear strike force who was in charge of attacking the UK assured his British counterpart that the entire UK was a complete overkill zone. There would have been no survivors.
I've thought about this. In the event of nuclear war, I desperately hope that I'm killed in the initial blast. I don't want to die in agony of radiation poisoning or fight for survival in an apocalyptic hellscape.
Threads over sold and under sold the threats. A lot more people would have dropped dead from radiation and the blasts within the first month.
But I think it's fairly unrealistic that if millions of British survived they'd go back to tilling land. Sure a lot of tools depend on long global supply chains, but trade would resume as soon as radiation threats died down (a couple weeks).
We'd only go pre industrial if nearly the entire population was wiped out. Even then civilization would still thrive in areas not directly effected-like South America.
