I named my website Threads as a wry and rather obscure reference to a 1980s BBC TV drama about nuclear apocalypse. Random musings for tumultuous times. I commend my own foresight.

One of the things I appreciate about Threads, other than it being possibly the bleakest piece of entertainment I’ve ever come across, is how vividly it depicts the threat and fear of a nuclear attack for viewers who did not themselves experience the Cold War.

Mine was the first generation to study the Cold War in a history textbook, divorced from any lived experience save for the vague recollection of the Berlin Wall falling. On the page, the Cold War sounds truly bizarre, and not especially scary. So many threats and manoeuvres, so much posturing, so much diplomatic wrangling, and yet – compared to the other major wars we learnt about – so little action.

Of course, at the time of these studies, in the late 90s, there just didn’t seem to be that much to fear. The end of history, and whatnot. While the previous generation had grown up in a climate of perpetual paranoia, and the subsequent generation would be perennially anxious about the problem of the climate itself, my lot were sandwiched cosily somewhere in the middle.

Ultimately, learning about people living in fear is very different to feeling afraid for yourself. And that’s why Threads works so well. It’s terrifying.

I have no idea whether the ongoing events in Ukraine have catapulted us back to the brink of global nuclear catastrophe. A lot of supposedly unlikely things have already happened in recent years. But the fear is certainly back. It’s creeping into every conversation, professional and personal. It’s permeating our culture, and rightly so, but it’s also distracting us from getting on with our lives, as evidenced by the fact that, at the time of writing, the BBC website’s Ukraine live feed has around half a million eyes on it.

Last night a friend offered me the reassurance that my house is apparently two streets beyond the fallout zone, should Manchester be hit by an ICBM. I hadn’t asked for any such reassurance (it was a non-sequitur in a discussion about energy prices), and in fact, his advisory left me feeling altogether more agitated than I had been prior to the conversation. Two streets is cutting it rather fine and I am yet to install a fallout shelter – we foolishly spent our remaining home improvement budget redecorating the spare bedroom.

Perhaps this is exactly the sort of facetious remark one might expect from a person who has never had much to be afraid of. Or perhaps it’s me acknowledging that I really don’t know what to do with the fear.

Do any of us really know whether we should be afraid, or how afraid we should be? We live such comfortable lives, you and I. It’s entirely possible we’ve forgotten what danger looks like, let alone how to respond to it.

Still, I guess if Threads taught us anything, it’s that in the event of nuclear apocalypse, all responses are basically useless anyhow. In which case, redecorating the spare bedroom was probably the right decision after all.

 Photo by Kilian Karger on Unsplash