If Threads had been set in the 1950s, with a bit of Fan Wank, you could even postulate that it's kind of a Spiritual Licensee Prequel to Orwell's 1984 ! An anarchic totalitarian police state ruling over a crippled, declining Britain after a hinted-at nuclear war, anyone ? The novel's descriptions of London and the state of society in Oceania are eerily similar to the movie's scenes set years after the war.