PREP 1982 BBC TV show about American Survivalists (comments by Bruce Clayton, Kurt Saxon, Ron Hood and others)

[1911user]

This is a 48 minute BBC TV show made in 1982. Video and audio quality are decent. It's a look at the US survival movement circa 1982. It's an interesting historical piece with interviews of Dr. Bruce Clayton (Life After Doomsday author!), Kurt Saxon (poor man's james bond and many others), Ron Hood, and some others including the owner of a big survival shop in LA.

They spend a fair amount of time on a group in Arkansas called the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord. They were convinced in 1982 that Armageddon was less than a year away and they were preparing for it. The BBC seemed particularly interested that they were training their children with (gasp!) guns. There is another segment where people were paying for 10 days of Mitchell WerBell's military style training school to handle the current "out of control" crime situation in the US.

The official title is "The Survivalists"

Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb5bppuyKhs
Archive.org link: https://archive.org/details/Survivalists1982BBCDocumentary

 

[Illini Warrior]

I remember seeing this in the late 80s after cable TV got started - Saxon came off bad which wasn't all that unusual sometimes for him ...

 

[jward]

Thanks, will definitely watch when i can afford the bandwidth.

...and crime in 82 was rather fierce, iirc, due to crack.
...btw, whatever happened to car jackings? Are they not the scourge
they once were, or am I merely sheltered from the worst of it?

 

[1911user]

I remember seeing this in the late 80s after cable TV got started - Saxon came off bad which wasn't all that unusual sometimes for him ...

LOL! He did have a solution for the 80 million people that were unlikely to survive.

Thanks, will definitely watch when i can afford the bandwidth.

...and crime in 82 was rather fierce, iirc, due to crack.
...btw, whatever happened to car jackings? Are they not the scourge
they once were, or am I merely sheltered from the worst of it?

Car jacking became an issue when parked cars became much harder to steal (alarms, electronics, better locks, etc.). So they started stealing cars after people had unlocked and started them. It was much easier except they had to deal with the owner now.

The crime was more due to liberal social and criminal ideas taking root in the 1960's and 70's. Watch the original Death Wish (1974 Charles Bronson) sometime. In NYC and other places, people were cheering loudly in movie theaters because someone was finally fighting back (in 1974) against the muggers, rapists, thieves, murderers, etc. Crack was just starting to be a problem when this originally aired in 1982. It was a much bigger issue in the mid-late 80's.

The 1983 movie The Survivors (Robin Williams, Walter Mathau, Jerry Reed) does a good job of capturing the sour mood in the US in the late 70's and very early 80's (America was going down the toilet, Reagan turned it around)
Robin Williams bought guns and went to survival camp to learn how to deal with the coming dark ages..
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086397/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_94 <------ film info

 

[Jeep]

This video reminds me of a documentary on a VHS tape I had seen many years ago narrated by George Kennedy. The name of the documentary if I remember correctly was "The Jupiter Menace". That had a lot of the same people in the BBC doc they interviewed and IIRC it was about the planets lining up to cause earthquakes and polar shift.

 

[Reasonable Rascal]

The CSA folks used to hit the gun shows, selling full auto sears for various firearms ranging from AR15's to HK91s and almost any other you could think of. Saw them in Des Moines 2-3 times alone. Small wonder their compound was raided.

RR

 

[pops88]

I remember reading Soldier of Fortune back in the mid-late '80 and seeing the adds in the back for the survival / militia groups. The nurses at work teased me that instead of a "stitch and b$%^$" party mine would be "nukes and nuts."

 

[Blacknarwhal]

Bloom County had some fun with the topic of survivalism back in the early eighties thanks to the whole Russia thing.

Fair use cited just in case that's necessary.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon...0d83b340098e2480ee6a7bc._SX1600_QL80_TTD_.jpg

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pY0URH5-...ii2tDPUGk32a0vKfL02ctACHMYCw/s1600/RCO010.png

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YV53S6f-...zBnwO__BYtitMXnhVbkYqwCHMYCw/s1600/RCO012.png

 

[Illini Warrior]

The 1983 movie The Survivors (Robin Williams, Walter Mathau, Jerry Reed) does a good job of capturing the sour mood in the US in the late 70's and very early 80's (America was going down the toilet, Reagan turned it around)
Robin Williams bought guns and went to survival camp to learn how to deal with the coming dark ages..
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086397...nm_flmg_act_94 <------ film info


survivalism would crop up on the regular TV programming back then - usually negative as hell - nut case gun slingers ....

remember the Lou Grant TV show - spin off from the Mary Tyler Show? - survivalist episode >>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtfOcdzB678

 

[1911user]

The 1983 movie The Survivors (Robin Williams, Walter Mathau, Jerry Reed) does a good job of capturing the sour mood in the US in the late 70's and very early 80's (America was going down the toilet, Reagan turned it around)
Robin Williams bought guns and went to survival camp to learn how to deal with the coming dark ages..
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086397...nm_flmg_act_94 <------ film info
survivalism would crop up on the regular TV programming back then - usually negative as hell - nut case gun slingers ....

remember the Lou Grant TV show - spin off from the Mary Tyler Show? - survivalist episode >>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtfOcdzB678

Watching now. It doesn't seem totally one-sided so far. Thanks for the link.
EDIT: Finished watching it; contrived ending to make the survivalist look bad.

 

[Ragnarok]

Thanks, will definitely watch when i can afford the bandwidth.

...and crime in 82 was rather fierce, iirc, due to crack.
...btw, whatever happened to car jackings? Are they not the scourge
they once were, or am I merely sheltered from the worst of it?

I din't remember crack being a huge issue in 82... Was more around the mid-80's that it became a real problem in the inner cities... And, that is when I remember first hearing about kids killing otjer kids for heir sneakers and jackets and I was like, WTF??? It went downhill rather quickly after that...

 

[Mongo]

Ron Hood is in it as well - with hair!

 

[Ben Sunday]

Never saw the video but I am well aware of Dr Clayton. Quite a guy, in my opinion. First became aware of him when a first edition copy of "Life after Doomsday" arrived on my desk where I was producing radio talk shows in the late 70's and early 80's. He was careful to make his point and stress his concerns without coming across as foaming at the mouth and looking or sounding like some radical smoking some damn good stuff out of a baggie. Not ashamed to say he was something of a philosophical guru for my concerns for many years.

I applied and promoted some of his thinking during my Minutemen days (thru 1983).

Always wanted to interview him on the radio but the pieces never fit together...place, time, being in town, etc.

FWIW, I highly recommend his book.

 

[1911user]

Ron Hood is in it as well - with hair!

Added his name to the title.