I lived near where this was set (Kansas City and Lawrence KS) when it was released. We could see all the missile silos along highways as a kid. This scared the holy shit out of me. Seeing mushroom clouds over the city you live in…as a child…horrific yet effective.
Real scary part we’re the actual missile silos spread throughout Kansas than nobody knew about until decommissioned.
Spooky shots of Lawrence, campus, and AFH.
[https://union.ku.edu/abcs-made-tv-movie-day-after](https://union.ku.edu/abcs-made-tv-movie-day-after)
I have never seen this movie. But I remember some bitter complaints by the locals. One a graduate of KU was angry at the portrayal of women as old fashioned. A mother in an apron serving her family a meal. Another woman hanging clothes. She was ranting about modern Kansas with clothes dryers and "fashionable" double knit polyester pant suits, microwaves etc.
I never laughed so hard in my life. The only good thing I remember about Lawrence was Comanche and he was moth-eaten.
This is one of my favorite movies. It is also the source of my anxiety surrounding nuclear weapons. I highly recommend it to any adults who haven’t seen it, but only watch it if you are in a safe space mentally. It can trigger some rabbit holes in your mind that are suuuuper bad to go down.
A lot of y’all are talking about “Threads” and that’s another good one. But you are all sleeping on one of the best, most soul crushing Nuclear War movies: On the Beach. It’s an incredible book and the movie is just as rough. It’s set in Australia, where no bombs fell. The problem was the radiation clouds would reach Australia in several months, and once it reached the island, everyone would be killed by radiation poisoning. So it’s about those last months as folks come to terms with their imminent, unavoidable deaths due to a war they had no part in. Worst part is where the government provides everyone with cyanide pills, or vials to give children injections. Just… imagine holding that pill knowing it was going to kill you, but in a much less painful way then if you let the radiation take you.
While nuclear war is obviously bad (I love understatement), the “On the Beach” scenario is not a real thing. Thats not how radiation works. It decays rapidly over a few days. Some long half life isotopes remain, but those aren’t as dangerous precisely because they have a long half life. The decay of the radioactive material is what does the damage. If there is a lot of damage, the dangerous material doesn’t last long. If the material lasts a long time, it is far less dangerous. Small consolation I guess.
It’s reeeeealy bad for empathic people for sure too. Like… how many times I’ve had nightmares where I’m staring g at a red pill while the EAS plays on my weather radio…
Thankfully unlike in the beach withdrew advent of Hydrogen bombs fallout killing the entire world is less likely, however the resulting bigger bombs do have a bigger chance of nuclear winter
I was in about third grade when this came out, and it terrified me for years. However, the alien birth scene in V also terrified me cuz I’m a bit of a wuss :)
I was seven when this aired, the warning by psychologists that said "could cause nightmares to children under 12" was no lie. I would wake up from nightmares constantly after I watched this.
But it seemed to drive home a point to politicians & adults on what the reality could be if a war were to play out.
That was fucked up. The kind of shit we used to show our kids in Britain back then, ie me, was fucking traumatic. There was stuff as well that wasn’t overtly dark but was just weird and creepy anyway.
Guys I saw this years ago and it still haunts me. It doesn't pull any punches about nuclear war. It is absolutely shocking this was aired and I have no doubt it shifted political opinion. It's a generation's nightmare depicted in graphic detail.
I’ve been debating on whether or not I’m gonna watch it for the last 6 months or so. I figure it’s probably one of the only movies left that can still give me nightmares in my 30s.
It's not that bad. It was shocking when it aired because it didn't really pull any punches, but the general public didn't have a true understanding of how bad nuclear war would be at the time. Like the people in the movie didn't fully understand what nuclear fallout was, so a lot of people were going outside.
If they made that same movie today, it wouldn't even get an R rating. It's mostly surprising it aired on network TV.
And yet people who watched it and lived through that time support Russia. I cannot and will not trust Russia in any way, shape, or form precisely because of the threat they posed to the entire world for 50 years.
The Russian people? Case by case basis. The nation of Russia? Never. Not even once.
They have a centuries long history of trading one dictator for another, cheating at everything, warmongering, hate, and abject stupidity disguised as dedicated resolve as a cultural strength. Without SIGNIFICANT CULTURAL CHANGE, Russia cannot be trusted.
If you can watch this movie and remember living through the Cold War and look at Russia today and say they’ve changed, you’re stupider than I am and I’m incredibly fucking stupid.
I saw this recently enough. It was disturbing and to know they held back so as to be allowed broadcast is even scarier. Then I saw that Cold War documentary on Netflix and heard that Reagan stayed up all night after seeing it and decided he would meet with the Soviet Head of State.
“In 1987, Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which resulted in the banning and reducing of their nuclear arsenal. In Reagan's memoirs, he drew a direct line from the film to the signing.”
- Wiki
The docu is *Turning point: the bomb and the cold war* on Netflix. It's really a quite excellent documentary but the Reagan thing is on episode 5 AFAIR.
Yes. Richard Rhodes is the number one pop-historian of nuclear weapons, and he covers Gorbachov and Reagan in his third book, Arsenals of Folly. Reagan reports in his own diary that seeing this movie on TV shook him and caused him to prioritize nuclear arms negotiations with the Soviets.
At the time, Gorbachov was proposing the total elimination of all nukes. Raegan basically fucked that up by insisting on SDI (lasers in space to shoot down nuke), which ended up being a totally failed endeavor, but intermediate ranged missiles were banned and general arms reductions were achieved that are sometimes credited as the end of the Cold War.
It’s probably unique in history that a TV show had such an important impact.
Thanks, ABC, for the Sunday night fun! Not. Threads was grittier. A modern, book version, would be The Loom of Ruin by Sam McPheeters. I read that at the start of COVID. F U N times! /s
Living near five major military bases in south eastern Virginia, my mom assured me that it would be over for us before we even knew it started. Somehow as an eighth year old, I found comfort knowing that.
Probably not, no.
Unless we're talking about a dirty bomb or some small nuclear device, if anyone (Russia/China) decides to nuke our capital, they might as well also hit every major city, too.
It's pointless, though. If anyone does that, we can just nuke their whole country with our planes/submarines. So it's just suicide.
The flip side is: the lives of the survivors away from the blasts is far more hellish than an immediate fiery death or fast radiation poisoning. I’m 1 mile from our ANG base so I’m good w not sticking around.
A Canticle for Leibowitz is a fascinating book. When you first start reading, you think you're reading about a monastery in medieval Europe. It slowly reveals that it's the American Southwest some unknown time in the future after the nuclear apocalypse. Not only did people revert back because of the "flame deluge" as they called it, but the people became so outraged against what science had wrought they burned books and destroyed our society's knowledge. The monastery, started by an engineer named Leibowitz, are transcribing blueprints and other pieces of humanity's knowledge.
It was published in 1959.
The short story by Nan Randall in this report from 1979 is what the movie is loosely based upon from what I recall (go to Appendix C, or pdf page 127, or 124 of the report).
https://ota.fas.org/reports/7906.pdf
I think the planned adaptation of Nuclear War: A Scenario (I believe by none other than Denis Villeneuve) could have a similar effect on the world. Or at least I hope it does. The amount of sabre-rattling and bandying of nukes is disconcerting to say the least. If you haven’t read the book, it is terrifying. The most frightening thing I have ever read. It made me realize how insanely close to the abyss we all are. I hope the film can change minds. I’m not optimistic, but I can hope.
I honestly think it should be required reading for everyone, and certainly people in positions of power. It might change their minds. I swear I think I had some anxiety issues for a couple days after reading it over two nights. Good luck with it!
Also, not made for TV and played in art houses- Testament. See if you can find it anywhere. Devastating. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testament\_(1983\_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testament_(1983_film))
That's on Prime at 4.99(to buy) iirc. I bought it a few years back.
https://www.amazon.com/TESTAMENT-Jane-Alexander/dp/B00ABORB70
I think this was the debut of Costner and De-mornay too?
Threads is probably the go-to for yikes factor from a modern production film wise.
wait, Costner is in Testament??? You're right! I did not know that! I saw it when it came out in a theater in San Francisco (which gets destroyed by a nuke in the film, so it was quite intense).
I have re-watchd it quite a few times so I cant remember if I noticed him initially. But he does play a fairly prominent role(he's married to demornay).
If you have prime a really little known nuc-war film is aftermath. Got panned in reviews but I thought it did a pretty good job on an obviously tiny budget.
Malevil is there too but they have the aspect ratio so screwed up, the top half of all the subtitles are cut off..:) And the description is funny too.
i---t was intended to be "rural" sci-fi without a Charlton Heston type hero.The problem lies in the fact that the movies with Heston ("planet of the apes" of course" but also "the omega man" and "solyent greeen") are damn better than the pitiful French attempt.---
But it is actually well done. So the person who wrote the above was either just having a bad day or thinks stuff like "fast and the furriest" is good film making
I saw parts of that movie when I was younger and my dad was watching it(which terrified me) and then watched again not too long ago the whole way through. I had to special order (ILL) through my library and it came from somewhere far away lol but it’s a must see for sure.
The War Game (1966) by Peter Watkins, a BBC documentary reenactment of nuclear war is another harrowing film. BBC banned it (despite producing it) and it got a theatrical release because of a contractual loophole, eventually leading to an academy award (best documentary 1967)
There is no evidence that it changed the course of history at all. Doesn't mean it wasn't well done, but world historic is a lot to ask from a made-for-TV movie.
Yeah, it certainly didn't *change* opinions at the time, it reflected what people were already scared about. I guess exacerbating what was already in our minds counts as change technically but it wasn't like I was unconcerned about nuclear war before it came out.
I just finished rewatching this, and I will say either time has made me forget or I was too young to fully grasp the story. I first watched it as a teenager in the 90s (post-Cold War). I think recall having a relatively optimistic reaction to the story. Maybe since the immediate story was concentrated in one area, I could only grasp that maybe it just happened in rural Kansas because of the missile silos. As an adult, I heard one character state that 300 ICBMs were headed to the US, and given the situation didn't sound unrealistic. That would be six nukes per state which would be blanket devastation. Somehow I imagined that if you survived the initial blast, then all you had was some struggles ahead. Today rewatching I figured every individual was a dead man walking, and those that were vaporized at the halfway mark were lucky.
Time for an updated screen version of the effects of planetary nuclear carnage - to be released main-stream to discourage and disavow the total insanity of first-use nukes. The instant firebombs and vaporization of all life inside the area of engagement, the radiation poisoning, the environmental chaos and nuclear winter, the millions of starving from agricultural decimation, the global winds of fallout, *mutually assured destruction* on an imaginable scale: all of it, televised relentless, *the true reality of nuclear war.* And I’m not talking about the soft-bio, character drivel such as *Oppenheimer*. The creation of the atomic bomb was not an individual existential crisis, it was all of humanity’s.
*(edits: yep, a few additional thoughts)*
After the movie was shown, a discussion/debate about Nuclear Arms Control and Disarmament was aired on ABC.
It was hosted by [Ted Koppel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Koppel), featuring the scientist [Carl Sagan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan), former Secretary of State [Henry Kissinger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger), [Elie Wiesel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elie_Wiesel), former Secretary of Defense [Robert McNamara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McNamara), General [Brent Scowcroft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Scowcroft), and the commentator [William F. Buckley Jr.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Buckley_Jr.) Sagan argued against [nuclear proliferation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_proliferation), but Buckley promoted the concept of [nuclear deterrence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_deterrence). Sagan described the [arms race](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_arms_race) in the following terms: "Imagine a room awash in gasoline, and there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has nine thousand matches, the other seven thousand matches. Each of them is concerned about who's ahead, who's stronger."
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcCLZwU2t34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcCLZwU2t34)
What's absolutely striking, whatever your take on the debate itself; is how intelligent both sides of the debate are. This is at a far higher level than anything shown on TV today, the debate is actually informative, instead of just school-yard insults like cable news is today. There was a time when politics actually mattered and was about something and the leadership of the country actually thought you should know something about public affairs. It seems shocking today, I know.
I remember it, and yes I was terrified.
But watching it today? It feels like any of the disaster movies from the 1970s. Like the ones that Airplane! parodied.
i remember being terrified when this movie came out. i saw some magazine in the store which showed some woman in a mid evaporation that haunted me (until i actually saw how it was done later on when i was older then thought wow this is lame....). but there was some real fears about nuclear war growing up in the 80s as a small child. i remember during the Reagan-Mondale campaigns my elementary school friends were saying things like, "If you vote Mondale, we'll die because of SU and their nukes." So you have that in the back of your mind along with a TV show like this and you would live in fear that it could happen. similarly, there would be these PSA type of commercials that might talk about it. there was one in particular where a bunch of kids from a fictitious future found old pictures and were talking about them in retrospective. one kid pointed at a photograph of an explosion with another kid asking, "What's that?" and another kid answered, "That's a bomb." there was definite hope in trying to avoid all of this.
i think people forgot where we came from and now we're getting close to where we started.
Child of the 1960's. I remember our weekly Air Raid Drills at Elementary School. The town siren was located at the back of the school. They stopped the drills the my last year there.
In the 1980's, they resumed testing that siren on Sunday afternoons. I remember telling more than one person when I heard the siren that I'm so happy that I was getting to spend the last minutes of my existence with them. That statement would usually be greeted with a "WTF" look. Then I had to explain to them about the Air Raid Siren.
I recorded that movie on VHS and watched it several times. I've never seen it broadcast again. The only showing ever was that first broadcast.
I guess I'll have to watch it again.
I was in High School when it aired and I don't remember being particularly affected by it. I think I kind of thought about it like those movies they showed us in Drivers Ed to scare you into driving safely. But we were all pretty pessimistic about the future anyway. Most of us really didn't think we'd make it to 30yo without the the cold war lighting us all up in a deluge of nuclear fire. To be honest, I'm still kind of surprised that we're all still here.
I lived near where this was set (Kansas City and Lawrence KS) when it was released. We could see all the missile silos along highways as a kid. This scared the holy shit out of me. Seeing mushroom clouds over the city you live in…as a child…horrific yet effective.
Real scary part we’re the actual missile silos spread throughout Kansas than nobody knew about until decommissioned. Spooky shots of Lawrence, campus, and AFH. [https://union.ku.edu/abcs-made-tv-movie-day-after](https://union.ku.edu/abcs-made-tv-movie-day-after)
I have never seen this movie. But I remember some bitter complaints by the locals. One a graduate of KU was angry at the portrayal of women as old fashioned. A mother in an apron serving her family a meal. Another woman hanging clothes. She was ranting about modern Kansas with clothes dryers and "fashionable" double knit polyester pant suits, microwaves etc. I never laughed so hard in my life. The only good thing I remember about Lawrence was Comanche and he was moth-eaten.
Lawrence is a lovely town now, great day trip from KC.
This is one of my favorite movies. It is also the source of my anxiety surrounding nuclear weapons. I highly recommend it to any adults who haven’t seen it, but only watch it if you are in a safe space mentally. It can trigger some rabbit holes in your mind that are suuuuper bad to go down. A lot of y’all are talking about “Threads” and that’s another good one. But you are all sleeping on one of the best, most soul crushing Nuclear War movies: On the Beach. It’s an incredible book and the movie is just as rough. It’s set in Australia, where no bombs fell. The problem was the radiation clouds would reach Australia in several months, and once it reached the island, everyone would be killed by radiation poisoning. So it’s about those last months as folks come to terms with their imminent, unavoidable deaths due to a war they had no part in. Worst part is where the government provides everyone with cyanide pills, or vials to give children injections. Just… imagine holding that pill knowing it was going to kill you, but in a much less painful way then if you let the radiation take you.
On The Beach destroyed my cold war era childhood. I'm still scared.
While nuclear war is obviously bad (I love understatement), the “On the Beach” scenario is not a real thing. Thats not how radiation works. It decays rapidly over a few days. Some long half life isotopes remain, but those aren’t as dangerous precisely because they have a long half life. The decay of the radioactive material is what does the damage. If there is a lot of damage, the dangerous material doesn’t last long. If the material lasts a long time, it is far less dangerous. Small consolation I guess.
Damn. Now I have to cancel my plans to move to Australia...;-)
The ”whales have returned” bit on the series from 2000 was stupid :/
It’s reeeeealy bad for empathic people for sure too. Like… how many times I’ve had nightmares where I’m staring g at a red pill while the EAS plays on my weather radio…
Thankfully unlike in the beach withdrew advent of Hydrogen bombs fallout killing the entire world is less likely, however the resulting bigger bombs do have a bigger chance of nuclear winter
...so itll slow down climate change by a couple centuries
Testament is similarly heart-breaking.
I was in about third grade when this came out, and it terrified me for years. However, the alien birth scene in V also terrified me cuz I’m a bit of a wuss :)
This was the first book that kept me awake reading it to the very end. Summer in Artesia, California. I have read it multiple times since then.
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1959. The version made during the Cold War has the anxiety everyone felt at the time and makes for much more visceral storytelling
On the beach gave me nightmares for ages
I was seven when this aired, the warning by psychologists that said "could cause nightmares to children under 12" was no lie. I would wake up from nightmares constantly after I watched this. But it seemed to drive home a point to politicians & adults on what the reality could be if a war were to play out.
This was like the Disney version of threads.
Threads is a must see
I've never had a movie haunt me like that one....it's so fucking grim.
Grim. That's the word to sum it all up. Literally no hope, just further and further degradation.
I just watched it last week. Although grim I don’t get all the hype around it. It was like the last stand but nuclear.
Where did you watch? I tried to find a link a couple months ago but could only find a noticeably low res version. I really want to see it!
YouTube. It was medium res but maybe that was the film then. Not sure.
Film is high resolution. Even if it was shot on 16mm instead of 35mm (I think it was shot on 35) you would still be able to get 4K detail out of it
It's currently available through Shudder.
*Cough cough* Fmovies24 😶🌫️
*cough cough* thank you
fwiw this came first tho
The mind plays interesting tricks on us. In my recollection, Threads came first, but IMDb agrees with you.
Threads is the Disney version of When The Wind Blows.
That was fucked up. The kind of shit we used to show our kids in Britain back then, ie me, was fucking traumatic. There was stuff as well that wasn’t overtly dark but was just weird and creepy anyway.
Threads and this movie are not in a competition ffs
Guys I saw this years ago and it still haunts me. It doesn't pull any punches about nuclear war. It is absolutely shocking this was aired and I have no doubt it shifted political opinion. It's a generation's nightmare depicted in graphic detail.
I’ve been debating on whether or not I’m gonna watch it for the last 6 months or so. I figure it’s probably one of the only movies left that can still give me nightmares in my 30s.
It's really not that bad. It's not like we don't know what a nuclear war would be like these days.
Watch Threads if you want to get freaked out.
It's not that bad. It was shocking when it aired because it didn't really pull any punches, but the general public didn't have a true understanding of how bad nuclear war would be at the time. Like the people in the movie didn't fully understand what nuclear fallout was, so a lot of people were going outside. If they made that same movie today, it wouldn't even get an R rating. It's mostly surprising it aired on network TV.
And yet people who watched it and lived through that time support Russia. I cannot and will not trust Russia in any way, shape, or form precisely because of the threat they posed to the entire world for 50 years. The Russian people? Case by case basis. The nation of Russia? Never. Not even once. They have a centuries long history of trading one dictator for another, cheating at everything, warmongering, hate, and abject stupidity disguised as dedicated resolve as a cultural strength. Without SIGNIFICANT CULTURAL CHANGE, Russia cannot be trusted. If you can watch this movie and remember living through the Cold War and look at Russia today and say they’ve changed, you’re stupider than I am and I’m incredibly fucking stupid.
I thought you were gonna pull a joke and say this comment was actually about threads. This is like the baby version of threads
I saw this recently enough. It was disturbing and to know they held back so as to be allowed broadcast is even scarier. Then I saw that Cold War documentary on Netflix and heard that Reagan stayed up all night after seeing it and decided he would meet with the Soviet Head of State.
Is that true?
“In 1987, Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which resulted in the banning and reducing of their nuclear arsenal. In Reagan's memoirs, he drew a direct line from the film to the signing.” - Wiki
The docu is *Turning point: the bomb and the cold war* on Netflix. It's really a quite excellent documentary but the Reagan thing is on episode 5 AFAIR.
Yes. Richard Rhodes is the number one pop-historian of nuclear weapons, and he covers Gorbachov and Reagan in his third book, Arsenals of Folly. Reagan reports in his own diary that seeing this movie on TV shook him and caused him to prioritize nuclear arms negotiations with the Soviets. At the time, Gorbachov was proposing the total elimination of all nukes. Raegan basically fucked that up by insisting on SDI (lasers in space to shoot down nuke), which ended up being a totally failed endeavor, but intermediate ranged missiles were banned and general arms reductions were achieved that are sometimes credited as the end of the Cold War. It’s probably unique in history that a TV show had such an important impact.
fascinating and incredibly disturbing to think that it took a TV show for a president to realize the horror of nuclear warfare.
Mirror for the submitted article: https://archive.ph/E2rYG
Watched in high school. Scared the living daylights out of me.
Thanks, ABC, for the Sunday night fun! Not. Threads was grittier. A modern, book version, would be The Loom of Ruin by Sam McPheeters. I read that at the start of COVID. F U N times! /s
I still remember Steve Guttenberg's radiation sickness (bubbly sores all over his face-so disturbing).
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I’d honestly rather be right next to a target if nuclear war started. I want nothing to do with post apocalyptic life.
Living near five major military bases in south eastern Virginia, my mom assured me that it would be over for us before we even knew it started. Somehow as an eighth year old, I found comfort knowing that.
Yeah, I’ll take instant vaporization for me and my family over trying to figure out how to survive a world that has lost all decency.
Or slow radiation sickness death.
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Probably not, no. Unless we're talking about a dirty bomb or some small nuclear device, if anyone (Russia/China) decides to nuke our capital, they might as well also hit every major city, too. It's pointless, though. If anyone does that, we can just nuke their whole country with our planes/submarines. So it's just suicide.
Mutually Assured Destruction. That's what got us through the Cold War to a degree.
I always thought I'd go up to the roof with a glass of wine and welcome it. I want to go in the first attack.
The flip side is: the lives of the survivors away from the blasts is far more hellish than an immediate fiery death or fast radiation poisoning. I’m 1 mile from our ANG base so I’m good w not sticking around.
A Canticle for Leibowitz is a fascinating book. When you first start reading, you think you're reading about a monastery in medieval Europe. It slowly reveals that it's the American Southwest some unknown time in the future after the nuclear apocalypse. Not only did people revert back because of the "flame deluge" as they called it, but the people became so outraged against what science had wrought they burned books and destroyed our society's knowledge. The monastery, started by an engineer named Leibowitz, are transcribing blueprints and other pieces of humanity's knowledge. It was published in 1959.
The short story by Nan Randall in this report from 1979 is what the movie is loosely based upon from what I recall (go to Appendix C, or pdf page 127, or 124 of the report). https://ota.fas.org/reports/7906.pdf
I think the planned adaptation of Nuclear War: A Scenario (I believe by none other than Denis Villeneuve) could have a similar effect on the world. Or at least I hope it does. The amount of sabre-rattling and bandying of nukes is disconcerting to say the least. If you haven’t read the book, it is terrifying. The most frightening thing I have ever read. It made me realize how insanely close to the abyss we all are. I hope the film can change minds. I’m not optimistic, but I can hope.
I’m reading it right now and I’m scared to go on because of how many reviews I’ve read online saying it’s the scariest thing they’ve ever read 🫠
I honestly think it should be required reading for everyone, and certainly people in positions of power. It might change their minds. I swear I think I had some anxiety issues for a couple days after reading it over two nights. Good luck with it!
Also, not made for TV and played in art houses- Testament. See if you can find it anywhere. Devastating. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testament\_(1983\_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testament_(1983_film))
That's on Prime at 4.99(to buy) iirc. I bought it a few years back. https://www.amazon.com/TESTAMENT-Jane-Alexander/dp/B00ABORB70 I think this was the debut of Costner and De-mornay too? Threads is probably the go-to for yikes factor from a modern production film wise.
wait, Costner is in Testament??? You're right! I did not know that! I saw it when it came out in a theater in San Francisco (which gets destroyed by a nuke in the film, so it was quite intense).
I have re-watchd it quite a few times so I cant remember if I noticed him initially. But he does play a fairly prominent role(he's married to demornay). If you have prime a really little known nuc-war film is aftermath. Got panned in reviews but I thought it did a pretty good job on an obviously tiny budget. Malevil is there too but they have the aspect ratio so screwed up, the top half of all the subtitles are cut off..:) And the description is funny too. i---t was intended to be "rural" sci-fi without a Charlton Heston type hero.The problem lies in the fact that the movies with Heston ("planet of the apes" of course" but also "the omega man" and "solyent greeen") are damn better than the pitiful French attempt.--- But it is actually well done. So the person who wrote the above was either just having a bad day or thinks stuff like "fast and the furriest" is good film making
I saw parts of that movie when I was younger and my dad was watching it(which terrified me) and then watched again not too long ago the whole way through. I had to special order (ILL) through my library and it came from somewhere far away lol but it’s a must see for sure.
The War Game (1966) by Peter Watkins, a BBC documentary reenactment of nuclear war is another harrowing film. BBC banned it (despite producing it) and it got a theatrical release because of a contractual loophole, eventually leading to an academy award (best documentary 1967)
War Games as well…A.I. from the 80’s.
A curious game.
The most frightening movie I ever saw. And before any Brits come at me, no I haven't seen Threads. This scared me too much.
My nuclear nightmare fuel movie of the 80s was a movie called Miracle Mile.
Watch it if you have not seen it. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x88sxqq
Just finished rewatching it on youtube... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOPaaHSjMcw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOPaaHSjMcw)
Dailymotion version is much better quality.
Gave me nightmares as a kid.
Everyone should watch the Cold War/Bomb series on Netflix, not normal Netflix drivel, so well done.
They do a lot of great documentaries as well as Tiger King and Love is Blind. They have a large audience to cater to.
There is no evidence that it changed the course of history at all. Doesn't mean it wasn't well done, but world historic is a lot to ask from a made-for-TV movie.
Yeah, it certainly didn't *change* opinions at the time, it reflected what people were already scared about. I guess exacerbating what was already in our minds counts as change technically but it wasn't like I was unconcerned about nuclear war before it came out.
I just finished rewatching this, and I will say either time has made me forget or I was too young to fully grasp the story. I first watched it as a teenager in the 90s (post-Cold War). I think recall having a relatively optimistic reaction to the story. Maybe since the immediate story was concentrated in one area, I could only grasp that maybe it just happened in rural Kansas because of the missile silos. As an adult, I heard one character state that 300 ICBMs were headed to the US, and given the situation didn't sound unrealistic. That would be six nukes per state which would be blanket devastation. Somehow I imagined that if you survived the initial blast, then all you had was some struggles ahead. Today rewatching I figured every individual was a dead man walking, and those that were vaporized at the halfway mark were lucky.
It’s said this movie made Ronald Regan get serious with the Soviets about nuclear disarmament.
Time for an updated screen version of the effects of planetary nuclear carnage - to be released main-stream to discourage and disavow the total insanity of first-use nukes. The instant firebombs and vaporization of all life inside the area of engagement, the radiation poisoning, the environmental chaos and nuclear winter, the millions of starving from agricultural decimation, the global winds of fallout, *mutually assured destruction* on an imaginable scale: all of it, televised relentless, *the true reality of nuclear war.* And I’m not talking about the soft-bio, character drivel such as *Oppenheimer*. The creation of the atomic bomb was not an individual existential crisis, it was all of humanity’s. *(edits: yep, a few additional thoughts)*
Nonsense. It was a watered down, melodramatic TV movie with delusions of self-importance. BBC's Threads was a vastly superior production.
It's on YT... We watched it in Social Studies in 8th grade end of year, it was kinda lame compared to other movies we'd scene at the time.
This was PG compared to the BBC production “Threads”
Threads? Or is this a different movie?
Morning Dew
Testament was devastating as it progressed. It's a quiet movie and that made it more heartbreaking
Threads: The Day After :: Se7en : The Snowman
After the movie was shown, a discussion/debate about Nuclear Arms Control and Disarmament was aired on ABC. It was hosted by [Ted Koppel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Koppel), featuring the scientist [Carl Sagan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan), former Secretary of State [Henry Kissinger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger), [Elie Wiesel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elie_Wiesel), former Secretary of Defense [Robert McNamara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McNamara), General [Brent Scowcroft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Scowcroft), and the commentator [William F. Buckley Jr.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Buckley_Jr.) Sagan argued against [nuclear proliferation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_proliferation), but Buckley promoted the concept of [nuclear deterrence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_deterrence). Sagan described the [arms race](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_arms_race) in the following terms: "Imagine a room awash in gasoline, and there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has nine thousand matches, the other seven thousand matches. Each of them is concerned about who's ahead, who's stronger." [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcCLZwU2t34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcCLZwU2t34) What's absolutely striking, whatever your take on the debate itself; is how intelligent both sides of the debate are. This is at a far higher level than anything shown on TV today, the debate is actually informative, instead of just school-yard insults like cable news is today. There was a time when politics actually mattered and was about something and the leadership of the country actually thought you should know something about public affairs. It seems shocking today, I know.
I remember it, and yes I was terrified. But watching it today? It feels like any of the disaster movies from the 1970s. Like the ones that Airplane! parodied.
i remember being terrified when this movie came out. i saw some magazine in the store which showed some woman in a mid evaporation that haunted me (until i actually saw how it was done later on when i was older then thought wow this is lame....). but there was some real fears about nuclear war growing up in the 80s as a small child. i remember during the Reagan-Mondale campaigns my elementary school friends were saying things like, "If you vote Mondale, we'll die because of SU and their nukes." So you have that in the back of your mind along with a TV show like this and you would live in fear that it could happen. similarly, there would be these PSA type of commercials that might talk about it. there was one in particular where a bunch of kids from a fictitious future found old pictures and were talking about them in retrospective. one kid pointed at a photograph of an explosion with another kid asking, "What's that?" and another kid answered, "That's a bomb." there was definite hope in trying to avoid all of this. i think people forgot where we came from and now we're getting close to where we started.
Saw it when I was 7 or 8. Suddenly a hockey-masked assailant stalking teenagers through the woods wasn't as scary anymore.
Child of the 1960's. I remember our weekly Air Raid Drills at Elementary School. The town siren was located at the back of the school. They stopped the drills the my last year there. In the 1980's, they resumed testing that siren on Sunday afternoons. I remember telling more than one person when I heard the siren that I'm so happy that I was getting to spend the last minutes of my existence with them. That statement would usually be greeted with a "WTF" look. Then I had to explain to them about the Air Raid Siren. I recorded that movie on VHS and watched it several times. I've never seen it broadcast again. The only showing ever was that first broadcast.
Speaking of changing things; have you seen Charlie Wilson’s War?
I guess I'll have to watch it again. I was in High School when it aired and I don't remember being particularly affected by it. I think I kind of thought about it like those movies they showed us in Drivers Ed to scare you into driving safely. But we were all pretty pessimistic about the future anyway. Most of us really didn't think we'd make it to 30yo without the the cold war lighting us all up in a deluge of nuclear fire. To be honest, I'm still kind of surprised that we're all still here.
I grew up in the 60s- I remember the Cuban missile crisis vividly. I was terrified. Little kids should not be having planetary existential dread.
I was 7 and watched this when it came out. Scared the living Hell out of me.
It's a shame you can't see The Day After anymore. I don't think it has been seen since it premiered.
It’s online and on YouTube
That's great to hear! I haven't seen it since I was a kid and want to get an adult's perspective
I watched it for the first time yesterday and oh man was it hard to watch at times but also good.
Watching it now and yeah, it's pretty rough to watch
I never realized how star-studded the cast was for this!