To be broadcast on Channel 4 on Saturday 5th January 2008 at 7:30pm
Recovering from festive flu, but spotted this ’Must Watch’ doc coming up on Channel 4 . To find out more about the day we nearly died google on ‘Operation Able Archer 83’. This ran from 2 to 11 November 1983. It was an ultra -realistic NATO war game. So realistic it convinced the Soviets it was a cover for an actual first strike… so they went to maximum alert – inter-continental ballistic missiles armed, nuclear bombers lined up on the runway etc etc.
To understand the KYPP/ anarcho-goth-punk era you have to remember that we really were living under the shadow of the bomb, with Reagan and Thatcher trying to out-gun the ‘Evil Empire’ of the USSR.
The sixties generation got a wake up call with the Cuba Missile Crisis – but we nearly had the real thing , but at the time no-one outside of the CIA/ KGB knew how close we got to a nuclear holocaust.
Here is some detail on the film.
1983 – THE BRINK OF APOCALYPSE
“This was more dangerous than the Cuban Missile Crisis” declares an interviewee in Flashback’s dramatic new Cold War drama-doc airing on Discovery Times on September 19th.
This major film represents 18 months extensive research into the events of November 1983 when leading figures in the Soviet Union thought they were about to come under nuclear attack from the West. And it follows the Soviets as they prepared for a full scale nuclear retaliation against an unsuspecting United States and western Europe.
“We may have been at the brink of nuclear war and not even known it,” declares Robert Gates, a key interviewee for the programme. Gates was deputy director of intelligence of the CIA at the time. The interview with him was recorded by Flashback in October 2006. In the following month Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense and is now one of the most powerful figures in the United States.
This film is a story of double agents and spies working deep undercover. It is a story of two superpowers accidentally heading towards nuclear Armageddon. It is a gripping story and the first ever telling on TV of an almost unknown Cold War incident.
It is called 1983 – THE BRINK OF APOCALYPSE and it runs for 90 mins. It will be shown on Channel 4 in early 2008. The film includes interviews with senior US military and CIA figures of the day. It features interviews with senior KGB officers from the Soviet Union and with members of the Soviet strategic nuclear forces who were mobilised in November 1983.
Producer-Director – HENRY CHANCELLOR
Line Producer – CHERRY BREWER
Executive Producers – TAYLOR DOWNING and SAM ORGAN
1983 – THE BRINK OF APOCALYPSE is distributed by Channel 4 International.
To be broadcast on Channel 4 on Saturday 5th January 2008 at 7:30pm
