continues to live in barbaric squalor. Three years after Ruth's death, Jane and two boys are caught stealing food. One of the boys is killed, and Jane and the other boy engage in a struggle for the food that degenerates into rape. Months later, she gives birth in a makeshift hospital. The nurse puts the dead and deformed baby into Jane's arms. Jane looks at the stillborn and begins to scream, but the audience only hears the howling wind. Cast Paul Vaughan as the Narrator Karen Meagher as Ruth Beckett Reece Dinsdale as Jimmy Kemp David Brierley as Mr Bill Kemp Rita May as Mrs Rita Kemp Nicholas Lane as Michael Kemp Jane Hazlegrove as Alison Kemp Phil Rose as Doctor Talbot Henry Moxon as Mr Beckett June Broughton as Mrs Beckett Sylvia Stoker as Granny Beckett Harry Beety as Clive J. Sutton (Controller) Ruth Holden as Marjorie Sutton Ashley Barker as Bob Michael O'Hagan as Chief Superintendent Hirst Phil Askham as Mr Stothard Anna Seymour as Mrs Stothard Fiona Rook as Carol Stothard Steve Halliwell as Information Officer Joe Holmes as Mr Langley Victoria O'Keefe as Jane Lesley Judd as TV newsreader Maggie Ford as Peace Speaker Lee Daley as Spike Marcus Lund as Gaz Ian Parkinson and Tony Grant as Radio Announcers Ed Bishop as US President (uncredited) Production and themes Threads was first commissioned (under the working title Beyond Armageddon) by the Director-General of the BBC Alasdair Milne, after he watched the 1965 drama-documentary The War Game, which had not been shown on the BBC when it was made, due to pressure from the Wilson government, although it had had a limited release in cinemas. Mick Jackson was hired to direct the film, as he had previously worked in the area of nuclear apocalypse in 1982, producing the BBC Q.E.D. documentary A Guide to Armageddon. This was considered a breakthrough at the time, considering the previous banning of The War Game, which BBC staff believed would have resulted in mass suicides if aired. Jackson subsequently travelled around the UK and the US, consulting leading scientists, psychologists, doctors, defence specialists and strategic experts in order to create the most realistic depiction of nuclear war possible for his next film. Jackson consulted various sources in his research, including the 1983 Science article Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions, penned by Carl Sagan and James B. Pollack. Details