Mutant koalas, sewer-dwelling CHUDs and sapient automatons are just some of the horrors we’ll be warding off with skull-stacked pikes should Nathaniel Lindsay’s vision of a nuclear future ever come to pass.

Lindsay is a Melbourne-based filmmaker and his short, Ducked and Covered: A Survival Guide to the Post Apocalypse, looks to the rich canon of genre films of the ‘60s through ‘80s to forecast the harms Australians can expect to face in the post apocalypse.

The film took home the Audience Award for Best Animated Film at the 2010 Maelstrom International Film Fest, as well as screening at The Williamsburg International Film Festival, New Filmmakers NY 2010, Cinequest 20 Film Festival in San Jose, CA and the upcoming Doomsday Film Festival in Brooklyn, NY.

From its official synopsis:

Ducked and Covered: A Survival Guide to the Post Apocalypse is an instructional public information film designed to assist the general population with surviving life in Australia after a nuclear war. Produced by the Australian Board of Civil Defence during the early 1980s, this previously unseen, dusty print was uncovered deep within a university film archive.

Broken into four chapters, the film guides wary survivors through the trials that will await them in the post apocalypse. From post-apocalyptic fashion and unique uses for surplus human skulls, to becoming a local warlord and avoiding radioactive mutants, there is something for all dwellers of the wastelands.

With its dry methodical narration, brooding synthesizer, minimalist animation and erroneous guidance, Ducked and Covered is a dark humored parody/loving homage to the late cold war era, early 1980’s public information films, as well as a reminder… of what still could be.

Ducked and Covered: A Survival Guide to the Post Apocalypse from Nathaniel Lindsay on Vimeo.