Equating watching a scary drama in 1984 with something as severe as PTSD and saying it's a very real thing for an entire generation is over the top. Baby boomers, sure they dealt with the cold war pretty realistically.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/20/climate-...
Unless you want PTSD to just mean "uncomfort". In which case, everyone has PTSD. But then what does disorder mean if it's normal?
You wouldn’t gotcha the flu because it’s not actually caused by the stars’ influence, would you?
I think in my area it was pretty broadly assigned reading at the time - lots of other high schools in the US assigned it - though no idea if that’s still the case (the book certainly isn’t perfect - the female characters are incredibly one-dimensional) but I hope it is still commonly read.
I see On the Beach as being Threads-Lite. On the Beach is certainly upsetting but wow, does Threads show a more upsetting version of similar dynamics. Plus none of the characters of Threads are as uncomplicatedly virtuous as the characters of On the Beach.
As all disorders are.
I can remember being in bed and hearing jets flying overhead and literally being terrified I was about to be nuked.
These weren’t commercial airliners.
I lived on the coast in the UK. It was airforce jets and it happened often enough for me to remember it.
To this day I could not watch threads.
The post Thatcher / Reagan / Gorbachev and Berlin Wall era in the 90s had a culture born out of Cold War trauma.
You don't have PTSD, you had a rational fear of something.
Take a trip to any at war country and you still may fear planes overhead. But it won't give you PTSD.
"Better dead than red." That's another one I vividly remember circulating, a bit later (early 80s).
The threat of nuclear war was very real. I guess we got lucky in the end.