Wednesday, August 03, 1983

Ant Attack & Two Tribes - Annihilation

Flippin' eck. Just found the 12" version of Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Two Tribes" on YouTube, and heard it for the first time since, what, 1983? Jeez, that's 26 years ago! I remember, vividly, playing "Ant Attack" on my ZX Spectrum, taping a copy from James Prosser, and being utterly absorbed in a virtual world. Playing TT on a little mono panasonic cassette player, having loaded AA for 5 minutes, settling down and immersing myself in that different world. A virtual world where nuclear war had caused these dastardly ants to grow... far-fetched maybe, but we lived in a world where a full-scale nuclear attack was a reality. It's amazing to look back on those days now...



A world of possibilities described at school in Z for Zachariah, on TV with Threads..., and the rather more sensational movie The Day After. But what I remember most vividly was the disaster at Chernobyl, the last nail in the coffin of a nuclear future - or so it seemed.