In 1973, fearing a Soviet nuclear strike, a UK government committee was formed to write a message to be played from the British Broadcasting Corporation’s secret bunker in Scotland during a worst-case-scenario attack. Irreverently constructed using declassified documents and scenes from the BBC’s drama-documentary The War Game (1965), Final Draft: Scripting the Apocalypse is a darkly comic, Kubrickian examination of the deep weirdness of modern warfare.
A secret UK committee drafts a message to be played in case of nuclear attack
Director: Scott Calonico
Producer: Erin Osborne-Martin
22 May 2015
videoWar and peace
A peace activist’s harrowing account of nuclear war is a visceral case for disarmament
26 minutes
videoComputing and artificial intelligence
Civilisation peaked in 1940 and will collapse by 2040: the data-based predictions of 1973
11 minutes
videoFilm and visual culture
Why do we crave the awful futures of apocalyptic fiction?
5 minutes
videoWar and peace
A war meteorologist’s riveting account of how the Allies averted a D-Day disaster
6 minutes
videoWar and peace
What was it like to go to the movies in January 1940?
5 minutes
videoPolitics and government
Aldous Huxley on the dangers of being ‘caught by surprise by our own advancing technology’
6 minutes
videoThe future
What’s the healthiest way to handle a creeping feeling that the world is ending?
15 minutes
videoThe future
Could the weirdest solution to the problem of nuclear waste also be the best?
14 minutes
videoSports and games
Skip the bus: this post-apocalyptic jaunt is the only New York tour you’ll ever need
16 minutes