Chateau Lloyd

One of the Youtubers I watch, The Critical Drinker, recently highlighted a TV movies I'd never heard of before: Threads.  This apparently the British version of The Day After.  Both films attempt to depict what a nuclear conflict would actually be like with the not-so-subtle subtext that the US government would be in large part responsible for any nuclear exchange.

To put it another way, better Red than dead.

Anyhow, I never saw The Day After and feel no need to do.  I'm of the same mind regarding Threads, because I find the topic somewhat pointless and based on a stack of false premises, the most important one being: the worst thing in the world is death.

Again, I haven't watched either movie, though I have read plot synopsis, and the thrust of both is that lots of people dying is bad and it's terrible to not have nice things anymore.  Both overemphasize the lethality of nuclear fallout (very common, the same thing happened in the HBO Chernobyl series), and put great emphasis on the breakdown of society.

The thing is, we know how functional societies response to catastrophes.  We've had Hurricane Katrina and actual atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Guess what?  Both Japanese cities are healthier and safer than Detroit or Chicago, which remain dangerous because of existing social conditions, not a one-time event.

Hollywood continues to push narratives where the only thing standing between our current sense of order and prosperity and utter bloodthirsty anarchy is some weird investment in the police or something.  Once the fear of punishment is withdrawn, even the inhabitants of quiet rural towns will suddenly start slaughtering one another.

This tells us far more about the authors than it does about society.  Remember, The Lord of the Flies was based upon the author's insecurities, not observable reality.  It turns out that a bunch of Christian boys ended up shipwrecked during WW II and they turned out fine.  They worked together, dividing up tasks and continuing to pray.  It could be a good story, if only someone wanted to tell it.

This brings me to another trope, which is that in a crisis, the militia/reservists/National Guard will immediately transform into SS Einsatzgruppen, lustily shooting their family, friends and neighbors because reasons.

I mean, at a certain level I get that these are horror films, wild fantasies designed to scare otherwise bored people out of their minds.

But at the same time they are only scary to people with no knowledge of God, people for whom death is the ultimate horror rather than merely a transition.

We all are going to die.  In fact, we will be dead far longer than we will be alive, and that's why religious people spend so much time in preparation for the life to come.  I think a lot of the horror of these films is that people might survive and then have to live for 30+ years until someone reinvents DVDs or something.