61. Threads turns 40 with Bob Mielke

[00:00:03] So that's why you see that one farm family is the only folks in the movie who are even thinking about what they should be doing.

[00:00:10] Whereas England has always known that it wouldn't take many nuclear weapons in an exchange to completely get rid of the island,

[00:00:19] which is why they have the letter of last resort that the prime minister has to write when they become prime minister to tell the submarines,

[00:00:26] what do you do when your country's gone?

[00:00:35] Welcome to another episode of My Nuclear Life. I'm Shelly Lesher.

[00:00:38] A little over 40 years ago, a movie was shown on BBC which made the day after look optimistic.

[00:00:46] Mike Jackson's famously bleak docudrama, Threads, showed us the generational impact of a nuclear attack.

[00:00:53] The movie, which The Guardian called the most horrific, sobering thing I'd ever seen, sticks with everyone who watches it.

[00:01:01] Today I'm speaking with author and professor at Truman State, Bob Milke, who just released a book, Threads.

[00:01:08] On Die Die Books. It is an interesting look at not just Threads, but nuclear culture in general.

[00:01:15] I'll link it in the show notes.

[00:01:23] I want to start by asking you what prompted you to write a book about Threads.

[00:01:28] I was actually asked by Nick Tote and his wife, Rachel Kempf, who are former students of mine and are filmmakers and screenwriters,

[00:01:41] mainly doing horror films, but they started a publishing house called Die Die Books, which does book-length studies of horror films.

[00:01:50] And this was during the pandemic.

[00:01:52] So our first meeting, and it was early in the pandemic, which was great because I was also on sabbatical working on a novel.

[00:02:00] And they came up and Nick said, we decided you would be the ideal person to write this book.

[00:02:06] And I said, yes, you're right.

[00:02:08] I will do it.

[00:02:09] I was happy to do it.

[00:02:10] And so I'm one of the few people who actually benefited from all that quarantine so I could do all that.

[00:02:17] They asked me because I have been involved in, even though I teach English and am a humanist,

[00:02:24] I've been involved with nuclear weapons in some ways my entire life,

[00:02:29] but certainly for a half century in some major like scholarly and critical capacities and creative capacities.

[00:02:36] So did I read that you actually teach a class on the nuclear bomb in the English department?

[00:02:42] Yes.

[00:02:43] Well, actually, we have an interdisciplinary seminar called the GINS, the Junior Interdisciplinary Seminar.

[00:02:50] It technically is not quite the acronym, doesn't work out.

[00:02:53] But anyway, they went that way for propriety, I think.

[00:02:56] But the GINS class, yes, I do that.

[00:02:58] And that's an interdisciplinary course.

[00:03:00] It's not an English course.

[00:03:01] I'm in English, but I teach that outside of English.

[00:03:04] And students come from all majors and we investigate.

[00:03:09] And I do a broad mix of things.

[00:03:11] But like I say, at the very end of my book, I didn't know my father, who was a factory worker in Milwaukee,

[00:03:18] electrician and mechanic, skilled factory worker.

[00:03:20] Since I was a little kid, I saw all of this, the how and why wonder book of atomic energy left for me to find

[00:03:27] and other kind of texts.

[00:03:28] And I certainly was haunted by John Hersey's Hiroshima.

[00:03:32] And then when I started doing nuclear stuff professionally with some articles and projects with a friend of mine,

[00:03:39] I can talk about for endlessly, our photographic tour of nuclear America that was decades in the making,

[00:03:46] my dad just casually told me, oh, by the way, I did stuff for the Manhattan Project.

[00:03:52] I had no idea.

[00:03:54] He never told me growing up.

[00:03:56] He was at Alice Chalmers during the war and they worked on the magnets for Oak Ridge.

[00:04:02] So it's always been there.

[00:04:04] I mean, like I say, I mean, then it really got into full gear in the early 80s when I taught at Wake Forest

[00:04:11] before I came to Truman State because I went to an interdisciplinary think tank in Greensboro, actually at Guilford.

[00:04:19] And Rob Knapp, who was on the physics faculty at Evergreen State, ran a workshop called Images and Strategies for Planetary Survival.

[00:04:27] And a whole bunch of the people there were fresh from the June 12th rally in Central Park in 1982.

[00:04:33] So I started teaching nuclear themed courses at Wake Forest.

[00:04:38] And that led to me both getting involved with the nuclear freeze movement there in Winston-Salem and Kernersville with some people.

[00:04:47] But weirdly enough, I had a lovely dinner with Edward Teller in 1984.

[00:04:53] Teller came to Wake Forest.

[00:04:55] I have questions about that because you're the first person that I have ever spoken to who had a lovely time with Edward Teller.

[00:05:05] Everyone has not nice things to say about him.

[00:05:08] So how was it lovely?

[00:05:12] I know I listened to your podcast.

[00:05:14] Yes.

[00:05:15] Well, I think he liked.

[00:05:17] I mean, I knew I could have.

[00:05:19] There are 20 things I could have said to him to instantly offend him.

[00:05:23] And I was a nuclear activist.

[00:05:25] But I thought this is such a rare opportunity because there was another guy, Bob Utley in political science, another dukey.

[00:05:34] We were both products of Duke, but he was extremely a neocon.

[00:05:37] And I thought I'm going to just ask Edward Teller off the wall humanist questions.

[00:05:43] For instance, I asked him, how come all the nuclear tests have male names and women?

[00:05:49] They're never named after that.

[00:05:50] And that just set him off.

[00:05:52] He was like, I consider myself a feminist and I'm deeply offended by this.

[00:05:57] And it's because the military named the tests.

[00:06:00] If I would have named them, I'm a feminist.

[00:06:03] I would have given some women's names for them because women are powerful.

[00:06:07] The bombs are powerful.

[00:06:08] Yeah.

[00:06:09] Yeah.

[00:06:09] Really?

[00:06:10] OK.

[00:06:11] Really.

[00:06:12] OK.

[00:06:12] Really.

[00:06:12] I thought, here's a guy that might be responsible for the cause of my death.

[00:06:17] I still think that, you know, on a bad day.

[00:06:20] He's got a lot to answer for.

[00:06:21] But I thought, I am just going to let him be.

[00:06:25] I didn't want to, you know, I wasn't going to bring up Oppenheimer or, you know, any of the usual things one could do to get him upset.

[00:06:33] So we did that.

[00:06:34] The main, the other thing I remember, it's been a while.

[00:06:36] So I mainly listened.

[00:06:38] And of course, he was on his hobby horse about the X-ray laser.

[00:06:41] Somebody else I went to high school with at Marquette High, Bill Broad, New York Times science reporter, has written a couple of wonderful books about how the X-ray laser, as we know, was totally bogus.

[00:06:52] You know, fake test results at the test site and so on.

[00:06:55] But anyway, that was what he why he came to Wake Forest.

[00:06:58] But the only thing I really remember is like I couldn't believe how he took his coffee.

[00:07:04] Like at the end of the dinner, he dumped an entire sugar bowl into the cup.

[00:07:08] I realize now from having Turkish coffee and stuff, it was some Hungarian thing.

[00:07:13] But he stirred it into a slurry and that was how he enjoyed it.

[00:07:17] Oh, that's interesting.

[00:07:19] But yes, I got along with him because I didn't make any of the moves I could have.

[00:07:24] I mean, I think he knew he could tell by various things that I was not completely behind his program.

[00:07:31] But it was just so boring seeing this other faculty member who was at the dinner.

[00:07:35] I think he liked the fact that I wasn't genuflecting, you know, which is what the neocons were doing.

[00:07:40] And that you weren't poking the bear, right?

[00:07:42] Like, what's the point of asking him all those questions when you already know what his answers are going to be?

[00:07:48] Bingo.

[00:07:49] Exactamundo.

[00:07:50] And then the next big phase, I'm still answering your first question, kind of.

[00:07:55] No, it's fine.

[00:07:56] It's fine.

[00:07:56] Yeah.

[00:07:58] Okay.

[00:07:59] The next major phase was when I got the job at, then it was Northeast Missouri State University.

[00:08:04] Now it's ironically Truman State.

[00:08:06] In 86, I had a photographer buddy, James Serkovich, who is now in the Guild of Atomic Photographers, along with people like Robert Del Tredici and Carol Gallagher and oh so many others.

[00:08:19] And the guy who really got to see the bombs, Paul Schambroon, of all the photographers, he was the only one who actually, you know, I had cue clearance for a day, but I never padded a warm nuke.

[00:08:31] He did.

[00:08:32] But we applied, James Serkovich and I applied in 86 for a grant for a writer photographer project because we had been trained on the Iron Range of Minnesota by the poet Carolyn Forche and her husband at the time, Harry Madison, the photographer, on how to do social documentary writing and photography like the WPA projects in the 1930s.

[00:08:55] And we wanted to do one.

[00:08:57] And James asked me, do you have any ideas?

[00:08:59] And I said, yeah, let's do it on nuclear weaponry and nuclear weaponry culture.

[00:09:04] And so we applied for the grant.

[00:09:07] We didn't get it because they correctly assumed our plan was hopelessly broad, insanely broad, because we were young and crazy.

[00:09:16] We were like, let's just do it anyway.

[00:09:18] So for 25 years, we go out every summer and photograph nuclear installations and the surrounding culture.

[00:09:27] And I do interviews.

[00:09:28] I was always at a disadvantage because photographers could just get the shot and leave.

[00:09:33] And I have to kind of get boots on the ground to talk to people and so on and so forth.

[00:09:37] And so anyway, this is my rap feat, plus a couple of articles I'm pretty proud of on nuclear weaponry culture.

[00:09:45] One on which I refer to in the Threads book, where in the early 80s, again, fired up by that think tank, I looked at all of nuclear weaponry films and science fiction I could get my hands on and sorted out the basic ethical attitudes toward the bomb in these.

[00:09:59] And then later, a very niche article for Film Quarterly about nuclear test documentaries.

[00:10:05] I did the deep dive into that.

[00:10:07] So but anyway, then with all of this on the rap sheet, Nick was like, you should write this Threads book.

[00:10:14] Yeah.

[00:10:15] What happened to that 25-year-old in the making photography book or project?

[00:10:24] Excellent question, Shelley.

[00:10:25] The good news is that there is the tip of the iceberg has been published.

[00:10:31] It is called James Cerkovich's Atomic America.

[00:10:35] I think I cited in the Threads book.

[00:10:37] It's on Amazon, like all the stuff I'm talking about, you know, more or less.

[00:10:41] It's a selection of images.

[00:10:43] And I wrote an intro and Robert Del Tredici wrote an afterword.

[00:10:47] But that is the tip of the iceberg.

[00:10:50] There is about 600 pages of writing I have.

[00:10:55] And there are thousands of photographs he took that we currently have.

[00:11:01] And we're trying to figure out a way.

[00:11:03] At one point, one of my publishers was going to make it an online archive.

[00:11:08] It's still there.

[00:11:09] We still have the stuff, but it's really rough because we were making it up as we went.

[00:11:15] The photographs would just be fantastic just on a website.

[00:11:18] I think a lot of people would find that very useful and interesting.

[00:11:22] Yeah, right.

[00:11:24] One of the things that happened with Del Tredici, our book is a good selection, or his book,

[00:11:28] Cerkovich's Atomic America, because Del Tredici dissuaded us from images that didn't mean anything

[00:11:36] without a caption.

[00:11:37] A lot of the photos require a caption.

[00:11:40] So for instance, we went to St. George, Utah.

[00:11:43] And on Tabernacle Street, a block south of Main Street, there are all these houses boarded up

[00:11:49] because of cancer.

[00:11:50] Exotic brain cancers from Dirty Harry and some of the shots that went over there.

[00:11:55] And no one wants to live in these places.

[00:11:57] At least when we were there, no one wanted to live in these places.

[00:11:59] And the images of the boarded up houses, they are important for the story.

[00:12:04] But Del Tredici didn't think they stood alone.

[00:12:06] And that was the case with a lot of our images, is they required the backstory to appreciate

[00:12:12] what you were seeing.

[00:12:13] Yeah, that makes more sense.

[00:12:15] They almost need an essay in themselves.

[00:12:18] Right.

[00:12:19] So we really, the photos that are in Atomic America really pop.

[00:12:22] In Richland, Washington by Hanford, there's the grave.

[00:12:26] When you go into the cemetery, there's an atomic symbol on the entrance to the cemetery.

[00:12:31] There's atomic symbols on the sides of the churches in town.

[00:12:35] Of course, at the time, the high school team was the Richland A-bombers, the logos.

[00:12:40] We got a lot of, I mean, what I call, aside from just the signage, you know, of course,

[00:12:45] atomic-themed businesses, we would always pull over and photograph those.

[00:12:49] But I talk about, and like yourself, I collect what I call Atomicana, which is just, you know,

[00:12:54] objects.

[00:12:55] So like everything from a Richland high school t-shirt to, on the high end, I have a tile

[00:13:03] from Hiroshima that's got blast damage.

[00:13:06] And I have some trinitite, you know, things like that.

[00:13:09] And a Geiger counter to see how hot it still is, which is not very.

[00:13:13] But I don't have any uranium glass.

[00:13:15] You have uranium glass.

[00:13:16] Oh, yeah.

[00:13:17] But the trinitite, the Geiger counter isn't as useful as putting it in a germanium detector,

[00:13:23] because that's the only way you can tell if it's true trinitite.

[00:13:27] Okay, thank you.

[00:13:27] Well, I know what it is, because I got it from the site.

[00:13:30] Yeah.

[00:13:30] It was really funny.

[00:13:31] When we were there, the National Park guy said,

[00:13:34] I'm going to look the other way now in case you want to get some.

[00:13:38] Yeah, that's before they bulldozed it all under.

[00:13:41] That's right.

[00:13:42] It was pre-then.

[00:13:44] Yeah, yep.

[00:13:45] Yeah.

[00:13:45] So it's interesting to introduce Threads as a horror movie.

[00:13:50] I guess I never viewed it as a horror movie until reading that in your book.

[00:13:56] Yeah, me neither.

[00:13:57] I was shocked.

[00:13:58] But what Nick told me is that it shows up on the Shudder streaming service.

[00:14:03] It's been rebranded as a horror film.

[00:14:07] And I think on some level, you know, and Nick gives me some pushback on this.

[00:14:11] On some level, I think that's a little sad because that wasn't what it was supposed to do.

[00:14:15] It was supposed to be a social problem movie to get us to abolish nuclear weapons.

[00:14:21] Right.

[00:14:21] I was going to say, doesn't that diminish its purpose and how you view it?

[00:14:26] Because if a viewer is coming in thinking it's a horror movie,

[00:14:29] then they're not viewing it as something that could possibly happen.

[00:14:34] Yeah.

[00:14:35] Well, no, I hope that's why I wrote my book.

[00:14:37] I wanted to like really reassure people.

[00:14:40] In fact, even on the back of the book, in fairness, they do say that this is a real problem.

[00:14:46] In other words, I suppose you can say that this might get them in the seats

[00:14:54] and then maybe they can figure out something more.

[00:14:57] It's all we've got.

[00:14:59] I could go on and on about this.

[00:15:00] Maybe I will for a little bit, but hopefully this will be useful.

[00:15:03] I was thinking about this this morning about narratives.

[00:15:07] And because, you know, I'm in English, right?

[00:15:09] That I think the stories we tell as a culture work more effectively to accelerate violence

[00:15:18] than to retard violence, sadly.

[00:15:20] That in other words, think about the stories being told about Springfield, Ohio now,

[00:15:25] or on a happier note, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's cabin, which did lead to the Civil War.

[00:15:31] But Threads, they really hoped when they met.

[00:15:35] I mean, Mick Jackson, when he made it, I think he hoped this would be such an incredibly immersive

[00:15:44] experience that it would lead to political action.

[00:15:47] And like I point out in my book, the great irony is is the day after was much more politically

[00:15:52] effective than Threads.

[00:15:54] Ronald Reagan.

[00:15:55] He got it because he was a Hollywood actor.

[00:15:58] And unlike the Threads being kitchen sink British realism, the day after was a disaster film.

[00:16:04] And he got that.

[00:16:07] And it turned out I had Reagan wrong.

[00:16:09] He was actually, on some level, deeply opposed to nuclear weaponry.

[00:16:13] He just kept that a big secret.

[00:16:15] But he never liked it.

[00:16:17] And so there's that famous moment at Reykjavik where Reagan says to Gorbachev,

[00:16:21] let's just get rid of all of them.

[00:16:23] And he was serious.

[00:16:24] You know, he horrified his aides.

[00:16:27] But the day after, I would argue, was a factor in the INF treaty.

[00:16:31] You know, one of the things that does show up.

[00:16:33] Oh, it absolutely was.

[00:16:33] Richard Rhodes.

[00:16:34] I mean, everyone agrees it absolutely was a factor.

[00:16:38] Yeah.

[00:16:38] Anywhere you look, they all, you know, the one time Reagan and his diaries was depressed

[00:16:44] was after he saw an advanced screening of the day after.

[00:16:47] But Threads, a far more powerful film, and because it's kitchen sink realism, a far more

[00:16:53] immersive film, you take Ruth's journey when you watch that.

[00:16:57] There's no distracting star power.

[00:16:59] There's nothing pretty about it.

[00:17:01] It's all in that kind of gritty blue-gray palette.

[00:17:04] Much more intense.

[00:17:06] But back around your thing, yeah, what do we do now that it's a horror film?

[00:17:10] We have to remind people that this is not a hypothetical horror.

[00:17:15] And you can argue, of course, in fairness, a lot of other horror films aren't hypothetical

[00:17:20] either.

[00:17:21] I mean, you shouldn't take rides from strangers, you know, and so on and so forth.

[00:17:25] They do give on some level life advice, but not like Threads does.

[00:17:30] Yeah, I think this is more of an existential threat than just getting a ride from a stranger.

[00:17:37] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:17:39] So like you, as you described in your book, like I saw the day after when it was on TV.

[00:17:45] I've said it before and I'll say it again.

[00:17:47] Why my mother let a nine-year-old watch the day after is beyond me, because I don't know

[00:17:55] how that happened.

[00:17:56] She wanted to get you into this field.

[00:17:59] Yeah, I don't know.

[00:18:00] But that movie was not for a child.

[00:18:03] It wasn't for anyone.

[00:18:04] I stayed up all night.

[00:18:06] I couldn't sleep a wink.

[00:18:07] But for a child.

[00:18:08] So I distinctly remember that as a point in my childhood.

[00:18:13] I didn't know about Threads until I was in college.

[00:18:18] Right.

[00:18:19] I didn't either.

[00:18:20] I mean, I was busy finishing a PhD.

[00:18:22] So I go to these nuclear conferences, anti-nuclear stuff, and I would talk about the day after

[00:18:27] and they'd say, ha ha, have you seen Threads?

[00:18:29] That was, you know, I didn't see it till I did not see when Ted Turner premiered it.

[00:18:33] I was busy staring at a computer screen or something.

[00:18:36] I saw it when I came up here.

[00:18:38] But yeah, it's like, wow.

[00:18:40] There's so many reasons it's more powerful.

[00:18:42] Not the least of which is it goes beyond just the initial exchange and shows the long range,

[00:18:50] you know, that this is not something our civilization will recover from very rapidly.

[00:18:56] And that's why I think a book like Ridley Walker is really important for it.

[00:19:00] Russell Hoban's Ridley Walker, because that's his world.

[00:19:03] So what I think is more powerful about Threads is that it really picks apart all the civil

[00:19:10] defense methods that we're told to use.

[00:19:13] So the day after is much more in the story.

[00:19:17] It's much more about character development.

[00:19:19] But I think Threads really breaks down everything that we're being told to do to protect ourselves

[00:19:26] and says, like, you know, we're all f***ed.

[00:19:30] It doesn't matter what the government says you should be doing because all these people

[00:19:33] tried it and people, you know, it doesn't work.

[00:19:36] We're still not going to have food.

[00:19:38] You're still going to be hung for stealing.

[00:19:40] Like, this is what the world's going to be like.

[00:19:43] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:19:45] Some of that reflects the cultural differences.

[00:19:47] You know, America, we were more or less like civil defense is DIY.

[00:19:52] So that's why you see that one farm family is the only folks in the movie who are even

[00:19:57] thinking about what they should be doing.

[00:19:59] You know, like Jason Robard's family is just business as usual.

[00:20:02] You know, the silo guy is a little more aware.

[00:20:05] But really, the farmer is the only one who's like laying in supplies and checking out.

[00:20:09] Whereas England has always known that it wouldn't take many nuclear weapons in an exchange

[00:20:15] to completely get rid of the island, which is why they have the letter of last resort

[00:20:19] that the prime minister has to write when they become prime minister to tell the submarines.

[00:20:24] What do you do when your country's gone?

[00:20:27] I mean, the letter of last resort is insane to me.

[00:20:31] Like, I was just talking to Nathan and Lee about that, like, to imagine what those letters

[00:20:38] say.

[00:20:39] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[00:20:41] I mean, yeah, right.

[00:20:42] Exactly.

[00:20:43] And I always think of that great science fiction story by Theodore Sturgeon of Thunder and Roses

[00:20:47] where someone has a choice to retaliate and end the species or save the species.

[00:20:53] This is one scenario it could play out.

[00:20:56] If you tell your subs to launch the missiles, it's in the name of what anymore?

[00:21:00] The raison d'etre for retaliation is gone.

[00:21:03] You know, but who knows what those letters say?

[00:21:05] Boy, like to be a fly on that wall.

[00:21:08] I know.

[00:21:09] I know.

[00:21:10] But anyway, yeah, but they had protect and survive.

[00:21:12] They had they were like, well, because we're going to get hit so hard, we need to, like,

[00:21:18] really inform the populace.

[00:21:19] And of course, Mick Jackson, before he made Threads, did a documentary, A Guide to Armageddon

[00:21:25] for the BBC, and he actually asked a couple of guinea pig couples to try out these things.

[00:21:31] And he just he determined this advice wasn't so great.

[00:21:34] And then, of course, like my book also mentions, bands like the Chieftains and Jethro Tull came

[00:21:40] along and did satiric songs in a sort of a Tom Lear fashion on protect and survive.

[00:21:46] So, yeah, they had a whole different mindset.

[00:21:48] And as you quite astutely point out, that is a very different vibe in the first hour of

[00:21:54] Threads is that instead of just following these little domestic things so that we can

[00:21:59] care when the bombs go off, we're getting this elaborate preparation because, of course,

[00:22:03] some of that is like muscle memory of the Blitz.

[00:22:07] Right.

[00:22:07] And that's a huge difference, too.

[00:22:10] I mean, people in England at the time had a memory of the Blitz.

[00:22:16] I mean, it was 30 years.

[00:22:18] So people knew.

[00:22:20] Yeah.

[00:22:21] One of the books I used for the historical chapter was this immense compilation of underground

[00:22:27] nuclear bunkers and city hall.

[00:22:29] Every little township in England had a plan to keep the municipal government going after

[00:22:36] the bomb fell, which, you know, and they have all these spotters.

[00:22:39] I mean, it's incredible.

[00:22:40] Like every couple of miles in England, there's a radiation detector, or at least there was.

[00:22:44] So they took it all very much more seriously.

[00:22:47] And that gives the mashup that gives Threads its unique power is that there's all this

[00:22:54] preparation.

[00:22:55] And also, as we know, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is the longest running anti-nuclear

[00:23:00] organization on the planet.

[00:23:02] England has thought a lot about protesting nuclear weaponry and about getting ready for nuclear

[00:23:07] exchange in a way that the day after is a story of American innocence blundering into

[00:23:13] something.

[00:23:14] Yep.

[00:23:14] Yep.

[00:23:14] Like we had nothing to do with it.

[00:23:17] The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, you had mentioned their symbol becomes highly

[00:23:24] recognizable, right?

[00:23:25] Could you tell us what that is?

[00:23:27] That's right.

[00:23:27] Yeah, it's the peace sign.

[00:23:29] I forget who the inventor of it was, but it's a semaphore for SOS.

[00:23:34] Yeah, I'll just read a little bit.

[00:23:36] Gerald Holmes in 1958.

[00:23:38] All right.

[00:23:38] It's a broken downward angled cross that derives from the semaphore symbols.

[00:23:43] I was wrong.

[00:23:44] It wasn't SOS.

[00:23:45] It was NND, nuclear disarmament.

[00:23:47] But it's done like that.

[00:23:49] So it's a warning about that.

[00:23:51] And of course, some people see some kind of crucifix imagery in that as well and so on,

[00:23:55] which so be it if it helps, whatever it takes.

[00:23:58] And then, of course, later it's made famous by the Vietnam protesters.

[00:24:02] But that really wasn't the intent of it.

[00:24:05] Right.

[00:24:06] Absolutely.

[00:24:07] It was a symbol for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

[00:24:10] And everything goes back to nuclear.

[00:24:14] It does.

[00:24:15] My nuclear life.

[00:24:16] You know, I mean, that's why this is my go-to podcast.

[00:24:19] You know.

[00:24:19] I appreciate it.

[00:24:21] Thank you.

[00:24:22] You had mentioned in the book, I mean, I love the foreword that you call yourself a Cold

[00:24:27] War kid.

[00:24:28] How did these movies impact you?

[00:24:33] I mean, let's start with the day after, because that was obviously the one that you saw.

[00:24:36] And you said it kept you up all night.

[00:24:38] Right.

[00:24:39] It was late.

[00:24:39] I mean, at that point, I'm in grad school, so I'm all grown up.

[00:24:42] But I didn't sleep.

[00:24:43] I mean, the first nuclear film I saw where I couldn't sleep was my sister.

[00:24:48] Again, it was more like your nine-year-old thing.

[00:24:50] I was 10 years old.

[00:24:51] That's not much better.

[00:24:52] In fact, I might have been nine.

[00:24:54] I was taken to Failsafe.

[00:24:55] You know, Sidney LeMay's Failsafe in the theater.

[00:24:58] I saw that motherfucker in the theater.

[00:25:02] I missed school.

[00:25:03] I got a fever.

[00:25:04] Terrible things happened to my body as a result of seeing that.

[00:25:08] And they kept me from, they thought Dr. Strangelove was a little too risque.

[00:25:11] So I had to wait till that came on television.

[00:25:15] Yeah.

[00:25:15] Because of the precious bodily fluids and all that good stuff.

[00:25:19] But that kept me up.

[00:25:20] Nonetheless, even though it was a comedy, I didn't sleep.

[00:25:22] I mean, I can basically tell you the movies I saw that kept me up all night.

[00:25:27] Day After, Failsafe and Dr. Strangelove.

[00:25:30] I am also mightily impressed by the long-lost 1964 Rod Serling, Carol for Another Christmas.

[00:25:40] I think Tim Westmeyer might have gotten around to talking about that on Super Critical.

[00:25:44] But it shows up on Turner Classics every now and then.

[00:25:48] But it is, you know, it's a retelling of Dickens' Christmas Carol.

[00:25:52] And ironically, it's got Sterling Hayden and Peter Sellers in it from Dr. Strangelove.

[00:25:56] They did that right either slightly before or slightly after.

[00:26:00] But Peter Sellers is in this dystopian post-nuclear world.

[00:26:04] Have a look.

[00:26:05] But anyway, that's an amazing film that is not so well known.

[00:26:08] It was a United Nations special.

[00:26:11] It was shown once and I watched it.

[00:26:13] And then they shut it down.

[00:26:15] They never showed it again.

[00:26:16] It was too radically anti-nuclear and anti-war.

[00:26:19] It was seen as UN propaganda by certainly the right.

[00:26:24] Yeah, it's a great film.

[00:26:25] And the other great one is Joseph Losey, Wisconsin's own, who moved to England.

[00:26:30] These are the damned or the damned.

[00:26:32] It's known either way.

[00:26:33] And that's just a weird parable about preparations for surviving nuclear war.

[00:26:38] I have a lot of ink on it in the second chapter, but it's a haunting film.

[00:26:42] I saw these later when I no longer lost sleep.

[00:26:46] Yeah, I think after you're about 12, 15, 30, you can start watching them.

[00:26:53] Well, let's do the math.

[00:26:53] I was in grad school when I saw a day after and it still got me.

[00:26:57] But yeah.

[00:26:58] And Threads, I can't believe I slept after I saw Threads, but I did.

[00:27:02] I must have been really tired.

[00:27:03] I don't know.

[00:27:04] I think I don't lose sleep over much anymore because we're going to blow ourselves up at

[00:27:08] some point.

[00:27:09] So I think I've just accepted it.

[00:27:11] Unless there is hope.

[00:27:12] There is hope.

[00:27:13] You want the hope?

[00:27:14] I do want the hope.

[00:27:15] I'd love to know the hope.

[00:27:17] Oh, it's the same hope that they said in 1946.

[00:27:20] We need world government.

[00:27:22] Yeah.

[00:27:22] Right.

[00:27:23] You know, Leo Gillard and Niels Bohr had it right.

[00:27:25] Nation states shouldn't be trusted with these devices.

[00:27:29] In fact, that was what I wrote when I was a sophomore in college.

[00:27:32] I took a really wonderful interdisciplinary seminar called Technology and Human Values.

[00:27:37] One of the guests was Victor Weiskopf came.

[00:27:39] I met Victor Weiskopf.

[00:27:40] That was cool.

[00:27:41] That was also lovely.

[00:27:42] And he was nicer than Ed Teller.

[00:27:44] Oh, yeah.

[00:27:45] I can.

[00:27:46] Yeah.

[00:27:46] He'd be an amazing.

[00:27:48] Right.

[00:27:48] But my plan, I actually solved in this paper.

[00:27:52] I mean, it's ridiculous.

[00:27:54] Yeah.

[00:27:54] I was reading Asimov's Foundation trilogy and I thought that's the secret, especially

[00:27:59] the second foundation is give all the nukes to the UN and have a secret like other deep

[00:28:05] UN to monitor the other UN and keep it international.

[00:28:09] Don't let these darn nation states get it.

[00:28:12] And that's kind of what Niels Bohr and Gillard were saying in 46, you know, I mean, but as

[00:28:17] long as we have nation states with nuclear weapons, yeah, we could lose sleep every night

[00:28:22] if we thought about that too much.

[00:28:23] I mean, it's a great plan, except it's not practical.

[00:28:26] Thank you.

[00:28:27] Yeah.

[00:28:27] Sad but true, isn't it?

[00:28:29] Yeah.

[00:28:30] So I guess we can't really fault threads.

[00:28:32] I mean, so when you when you look at that, you can you have to live with threads being rebranded

[00:28:37] as a horror film.

[00:28:37] At least people are watching it.

[00:28:39] Yeah.

[00:28:39] I mean, at least they're watching it, but they don't see it as as real.

[00:28:45] Maybe a couple.

[00:28:47] I like to think that somebody all we need are a couple people.

[00:28:51] As I think I told you, tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of its premiere broadcast premiere,

[00:28:56] and they are showing it in a theater.

[00:28:58] September 23rd.

[00:28:59] Yes, ma'am.

[00:29:00] September 23rd, 1984 was its premiere on the BBC.

[00:29:04] They're doing in a theater, they're having a rare theatrical showing of it.

[00:29:08] So who knows?

[00:29:09] That'll get that.

[00:29:10] I'm sure that'll get some press.

[00:29:11] But yeah, you always want more.

[00:29:14] I mean, that's why we got involved in all this.

[00:29:16] I do it because I want to raise awareness and have people get off their Mustang sallies and

[00:29:22] change the situation.

[00:29:23] What can people do to change the situation, though?

[00:29:27] Because look at what happened.

[00:29:28] I mean, the nuclear freeze movement was huge in the 80s.

[00:29:32] I can't imagine a movement being any bigger, yet it didn't get rid of nuclear weapons.

[00:29:38] Yeah.

[00:29:39] I mean, well, of course, the really dark place we can go to is if there is anything to remind

[00:29:46] people of how terrible the weapons are, that might be an impetus.

[00:29:50] But I would much rather not have that be the be the reason for it.

[00:29:54] I mean, so so what can people do?

[00:29:57] Yeah, I mean, I go back like look at Christopher Nolan, you know, Oppenheimer, I think he gave

[00:30:02] it his best shot.

[00:30:04] He had been obsessed about this material.

[00:30:05] It was clear from earlier films like The Dark Knight Rises, which had a nuclear theme.

[00:30:10] He wanted to do it.

[00:30:11] And I think he hoped.

[00:30:12] But like I go back, it's really hard to get a representation.

[00:30:16] I mean, I suppose you could even go back to the Gospels.

[00:30:20] I mean, you know, like that's a message that is basically turn the other cheek and don't

[00:30:24] go this way of violence.

[00:30:25] And it's powerfully said, but it's almost totally ineffectual.

[00:30:28] It's really hard to get people to change people's thoughts about these weapons.

[00:30:35] Because I guess what we should say is deterrence itself is a narrative and a very compelling

[00:30:40] narrative.

[00:30:41] I'll give you one of my favorite hot quotes that every once in a while I find where I

[00:30:45] got this and then I lose it.

[00:30:46] I think it was in some travel magazine.

[00:30:48] But somebody interviewed a Los Alamos scientist for a travel magazine.

[00:30:52] And he said, our job here is like the witches in Grimm's fairy tales to scare you into being

[00:30:59] good.

[00:30:59] You know, all these years since remains the most powerful narrative tied up with nuclear

[00:31:05] weaponry.

[00:31:06] And even the one that, you know, I mean, I was really creeped out when I read that, you

[00:31:11] know, Putin went to talk to some shamans and asking if he could use the weapons of the

[00:31:15] gods, if he could be forgiven or whether the ghosts would get him.

[00:31:18] And they didn't give him the right answer.

[00:31:20] They should have said, yeah, stay away.

[00:31:22] The ghosts will get you.

[00:31:24] But they didn't.

[00:31:25] They said, you know, yeah.

[00:31:26] Well, I think they were more scared of Putin than they were of the ghosts.

[00:31:30] I think so.

[00:31:31] Yeah.

[00:31:32] But I mean, I think we just we slog away.

[00:31:35] I mean, I have even another problem.

[00:31:36] You mentioned my nuclear classes.

[00:31:38] I haven't taught one of those in a while because interest in those classes even has declined.

[00:31:43] I used to do things when I'd start the class.

[00:31:46] I'd say, have any of you had a dream where a nuclear weapon went off?

[00:31:50] And over the years, I mean, it isn't even in their dream life anymore.

[00:31:55] No, it's not a big problem.

[00:31:56] But I bet you'd get more interest now that Oppenheimer's been out.

[00:32:00] Yeah, I should try again.

[00:32:02] I should try again.

[00:32:03] I think you would.

[00:32:04] Yeah.

[00:32:05] Yeah.

[00:32:06] Good point.

[00:32:07] Good point.

[00:32:07] Well, thank you.

[00:32:08] You've encouraged me to go back into the fray.

[00:32:10] I think you should.

[00:32:13] I'm notified that they wanted me to tape an intro for the film.

[00:32:16] And the Threads book, as you might imagine, it mainly sells in England.

[00:32:20] In England, it's got it's got a pretty good audience because people really remember that film.

[00:32:25] Just like we remember the day after.

[00:32:27] I mean, as soon as it came out, I bought the day after the day after.

[00:32:32] Like, it was the same thing.

[00:32:34] Nice.

[00:32:36] Did you get that?

[00:32:36] If you have the two versions, the European versus the American or whatever, because there's 15

[00:32:42] additional minutes in the theatrical release in Europe.

[00:32:45] The day after?

[00:32:47] Yes.

[00:32:47] Oh, yeah.

[00:32:48] I talk about that a little bit in the thing.

[00:32:50] Two of the things that are different is the European edition starts out with a B-52 bomber

[00:32:56] taking off from Offit.

[00:32:58] And when you see those rolling cornfields, that's a bomber's eye point of view in the European film.

[00:33:05] But all you see is just the helicopter view in the American one.

[00:33:09] And there were other things like there's a scene where Laurie Leflin's character, the daughter

[00:33:15] involved in the condom chase, she has a fantasy of her dead boyfriend that turns when she wakes up.

[00:33:22] It turns out it's Steve Guttenberg's character that got cut by the censors in the American.

[00:33:27] So there's a few goodies.

[00:33:29] Oh, I can imagine.

[00:33:30] There's a Blu-ray that has both.

[00:33:32] And there's also a really horrible jump scare in the European one when Jo Beth Williams and

[00:33:37] Jason Robards are talking about when they're helping the woman give birth in the Lawrence

[00:33:42] hospital.

[00:33:43] And he says something about only the cockroaches are going to survive.

[00:33:47] In the European one, they have a cut to a cockroach on a table.

[00:33:51] There's a scream and it does like a rack focus between the woman giving birth and the cockroach.

[00:33:58] It's really powerful.

[00:34:00] So what's interesting about the day after, and I wonder if it's the same with Threads,

[00:34:05] is that my cousin, who's in his late 20s, early 30s, he went to school in Kansas City.

[00:34:11] Like he went to University of Kansas.

[00:34:13] That's in Lawrence.

[00:34:14] Yeah, KU.

[00:34:15] KU, yeah.

[00:34:15] He went to KU, which is in Lawrence, lives in Kansas City, grew up in Kansas City his

[00:34:21] whole life, never even heard of the day after, even though it was filmed there.

[00:34:25] Ain't historical amnesia wonderful?

[00:34:28] Yeah.

[00:34:28] I mean, is that the same as Threads in England?

[00:34:31] Like, do people not remember?

[00:34:32] Because I lived in Sheffield for a year.

[00:34:35] I went to school in Sheffield.

[00:34:36] I was in Sheffield.

[00:34:38] I never heard of Threads when I was there.

[00:34:42] Yeah, I guess so.

[00:34:43] I mean, they were, as I found out in my research, the reason why they picked Sheffield is Sheffield

[00:34:48] had a really strong anti-nuclear movement going on.

[00:34:51] In fact, they got a lot of free extras.

[00:34:53] I mean, what I love about Threads is, of course, practical effects versus CGI, I think are much

[00:34:59] more powerful than a simulation.

[00:35:01] You know, so there was that.

[00:35:02] But they got all that, you know, they had, there was a housing project that was going

[00:35:06] to get torn down so they could burn it and put a bicycle up in a tree and all that good

[00:35:10] stuff.

[00:35:10] But they got all of this cooperation from the locals to do those crowd scenes.

[00:35:15] I could see how that might be.

[00:35:16] People moved on.

[00:35:18] Just like there was a massive down decline in nuclear cultural texts after the Limited

[00:35:24] Test Ban Treaty in 63 until the late 70s and, you know, and the Cold War reheating up.

[00:35:29] But I suppose after the INF Treaty, that caused a massive drop in this kind of stuff, except

[00:35:36] for weird outliers like the sum of all fears and so on.

[00:35:40] You know, I mean, again, I think Tim Westmeyer explores all that in Supercritical.

[00:35:44] But there are gaps.

[00:35:45] There are large gaps in the record.

[00:35:47] And I hope you're right that Oppenheimer got people talking and has gotten them re-energized.

[00:35:52] Well, I mean, and I can't, was it, is it ICANN that won the Nobel Peace Prize a few

[00:35:56] years ago for trying to end nuclear weapons?

[00:36:00] And yeah, I don't know.

[00:36:01] I'd like I'd like to see it come back.

[00:36:03] You know, the not like the interest in nuclear weapons, but the interest in getting rid of

[00:36:08] nuclear weapons or at least the nonproliferation.

[00:36:11] I'd really like to see this come back into the conscious.

[00:36:14] Yeah.

[00:36:15] Well, I mean, what's really weird, as you know, is like the General Assembly of the

[00:36:18] UN a couple of years ago, they outlawed them.

[00:36:20] It's just that the Security Council won't, you know, they're not moving on it.

[00:36:25] But technically, they are illegal now.

[00:36:27] Well, the weapon states control that.

[00:36:30] So, of course, they're not going to.

[00:36:31] Right.

[00:36:32] Right.

[00:36:32] Right.

[00:36:33] Go forward.

[00:36:33] The General Assembly, if it's up to them.

[00:36:35] But yeah, we beat on boats against the current trying to make something happen here.

[00:36:40] I mean, that's the thing.

[00:36:41] I mean, actually, what I've said when I've done a few book readings, I said, why don't

[00:36:44] you guys go out and make a movie?

[00:36:46] Right.

[00:36:46] I mean, do something.

[00:36:47] I mean, try again.

[00:36:48] There certainly are new scenarios one could come up with.

[00:36:52] No genre in film ever completely dies out.

[00:36:54] It can all be revived.

[00:36:56] So try to tell the story again and tell it better until it works.

[00:37:01] Anybody listening to that?

[00:37:02] There we go.

[00:37:03] There's some marching orders.

[00:37:05] Wow.

[00:37:05] Yeah.

[00:37:06] I mean, and the other thing is that I don't think what people realize is how much more

[00:37:09] devastating it would be now that we're so interconnected and we're so dependent on devices.

[00:37:16] The EMP and how it would react with our cars and our daily lives.

[00:37:20] I mean, I don't know how people would survive right now.

[00:37:23] Oh, yeah.

[00:37:24] If it happened.

[00:37:25] The way that we're dependent on genetically modified crops.

[00:37:28] I mean, just it would be 10 times worse than it was in the 80s.

[00:37:32] Yeah.

[00:37:33] Yeah.

[00:37:34] Yeah.

[00:37:34] I mean, one of the things I'm saddened by is that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

[00:37:38] has moved that doomsday clock up as close as it can get before saying we're screwed.

[00:37:44] And nobody bats an eye like, oh, fake news or it's just another narrative.

[00:37:48] It's closer to doom than it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

[00:37:52] Yes, indeed.

[00:37:54] I mean, and that's crazy.

[00:37:56] But, you know, the Bulletin is also taking into account other factors now, right?

[00:38:01] Like climate change.

[00:38:03] Yeah.

[00:38:03] Water wars.

[00:38:04] Yeah.

[00:38:05] You know.

[00:38:05] So maybe people are just more interested in or more concerned about other things besides

[00:38:11] nuclear threat.

[00:38:13] Yeah.

[00:38:14] Yeah.

[00:38:14] Well, when they read your book and watch the movies, they'll be like, oh, shit.

[00:38:19] Let's hope.

[00:38:20] Let's hope.

[00:38:21] Nope.

[00:38:21] Nuclear fictions have not so far been able to make us abolish the arsenals, not even threads.

[00:38:26] But it's the best attempt made so far.

[00:38:28] So I suppose if somebody wants to pull that sword out of the stone, you definitely you should

[00:38:34] look at that to get started.

[00:38:36] Just like Mick Jackson looked at the war game.

[00:38:38] We haven't mentioned the war game yet.

[00:38:40] The 1966 Peter Watkins film, The BBC Stopped, which I saw on campus like shown at, you know,

[00:38:47] college film series.

[00:38:47] It's a great film.

[00:38:48] I kind of quasi documentary, but something needs to be done.

[00:38:53] And if you are a content creator, threads is a great place to start.

[00:38:57] And this podcast.

[00:39:03] Thank you for listening.

[00:39:04] And please go pet a puppy.

[00:39:06] I'm Shelley Lesher.

[00:39:08] And this has been another episode of My Nuclear Life.