makes me sick to my stomach reading the synopsis
Threads (1984 film)
Young Sheffield residents Ruth Beckett and Jimmy Kemp intend to marry due to her unplanned pregnancy. As tensions between the US and the Soviet Union in Iran escalate, the Home Office directs Sheffield City Council to assemble an emergency operations team, which establishes itself in a makeshift bomb shelter in the basement of the town hall. After an ignored US ultimatum to the Soviets results in a brief tactical nuclear skirmish, Britain experiences fear, looting and rioting. "Subversives" including peace activists and some trade unionists are arrested and interned under the Emergency Powers Act.
Curbar Edge, Peak District, where the scenes set six weeks after the attack take place.
Attack Warning Red is transmitted and Sheffield town hall staff react with "action, confusion and slight panic."[3] Amidst panic, a nuclear warhead air bursts high over the North Sea, producing an electromagnetic pulse; most electrical systems throughout the UK and northwestern Europe are destroyed. The first missile salvos hit NATO targets, including nearby RAF Finningley. Although the city is not yet heavily damaged, chaos reigns in the streets. Jimmy is last seen running from his stalled car to reach Ruth. Sheffield is targeted by a one-megaton warhead which air bursts directly above the Tinsley Viaduct. Strategic targets, including steel and chemical factories in the Midlands, are the primary targets. Two thirds of all UK homes are destroyed, and immediate deaths range between 12 and 30 million. Of 3,000 megatons total, about 210 fall on the UK.
Sheffield Town Hall is destroyed and traps the city's emergency operations team. They attempt to coordinate the city's emergency and relief efforts through their few remaining short wave radios. Nuclear fallout from a ground burst at Crewe descends upon Sheffield. Jimmy's mother succumbs to radiation sickness and severe burns after being caught by the Tinsley Viaduct explosion. Jimmy's father searches for food and water. Fallout prevents the remaining functioning civil authorities from fighting fires or rescuing those trapped under debris. Ruth leaves her parents and grandmother in their basement, making her way to the Sheffield Royal Infirmary, where there is no electricity, running water, sanitation, or supplies. While she is absent, looters kill her parents and are executed.
By June, soldiers dig to the town hall basement but find the emergency staff have suffocated. Without the manpower or fuel to bury or burn the dead, an epidemic of communicable diseases spreads. The government authorizes capital punishment, and special courts execute criminals. The only viable currency becomes food, given as a reward for work or withheld as punishment. The millions of tons of soot, smoke and dust in the upper atmosphere trigger a nuclear winter. By July, without running water, electricity, or basic sanitation, Sheffield becomes uninhabitable. Ruth and thousands of other survivors defy official orders and leave the city. Many survivors die of radiation poisoning. Low-flying government light aircraft order them to return home. In Buxton, the police assign Ruth to a house. Once the policeman leaves, the home owner evicts her at gunpoint. At an outdoor soup kitchen, Ruth meets Bob, a pre-war acquaintance of Jimmy's. Ruth and Bob travel together, surviving on scavenged food, including the raw carcasses of radiation poisoned livestock.
In September, Ruth partakes in the yearly harvest, accomplished using the last remaining petrol and raw human labour, but the nuclear winter keeps yields low. Ruth gives birth to her child in an abandoned barn. The army relies on rifles and tear gas for control.
Millions of people around the Northern Hemisphere have died due to radiation, fallout, starvation, exposure or the nuclear strikes. Sunlight returns, but food remains scarce due to the lack of equipment, fertilizers, and fuel. Damage to the ozone layer intensifies ultraviolet radiation, increasing cataracts and cancer.
Ten years later, Britain's population has fallen to medieval levels of about 4 to 11 million people. Survivors work the fields using primitive hand-held farming tools. Few children have been born or raised since the attack. They speak broken English due to poor education and the breakdown of family life. Prematurely aged and blind with cataracts, Ruth collapses in a field and dies, survived by her 10-year-old daughter Jane. The country begins to recover, resuming coal mining, producing limited electricity, and using steam power. The population continues to live in near-barbaric squalor.
Three years after Ruth's death, Jane and two boys are caught stealing food. One boy is shot in the ensuing confusion. Jane wrestles for the food with the other boy and they have sex; while Hines' published script does not describe this as rape,[4] it has been widely interpreted as such.[5][6][7] Pregnant, Jane finds a makeshift hospital, gives birth to a child which is depicted as not crying nor moving (the implication being of a stillbirth), and screams as she sees it; again, while Hines' script does not describe the child as mutated, this interpretation is widespread.[5][6][8]