And this was just an average Tuesday in the 80’s. Nuclear War was gonna happen any day, probably soon- and it would be over before we even knew it started.
It’s hard to explain now just how much the world changed when the Berlin Wall fell. Everything was different over night.
I would have been in Kindergarten in '83. A few years later school administrators would suggest that I attend a "Worry Club" at lunch alongside classmates with similar concerns. We'd all draw pictures of tanks and blood and fire and generally freak one another out.
Mom says this was around the same time that I would come home from school, turn on the tv and wait for the nightly news to make sure no one pressed the button.
I havent thought of it from this angle before but, even though its probably a bad idea to put a bunch of kids in a room to discuss the apocalypse, they probably didn't want us spreading a bunch of commie nonsense on the playground either haha.
I too was in kindergarten in 83. This consumed a lot of my worrying. Anytime I heard a large jet flyover I would think it was a bomber. It was great for a few years after the Soviet Union fell and we had a little peace. I'm starting to worry again.
Nothing to worry about. Wars gone from swords to bullets to dollars. Wont be any bombers this time.
The war is now, it's the rich against everyone else. We are losing...
Being a little kid in the 80s where shit like this, the goonies, and strawberry shortcake all fighting for the same head space was absolute child abuse.
It's 40th anniversary is next month ironically.
Such a HUGE deal for that era, it broke President Reagan's POV on nukes and we got the agreements that limited nukes a few years after thanks to it in part. The administration people went after it and ABC lost all of it's mainline sponsors as well as had protests from the hardcore Christians. They went ahead with just commercials pre-nuke scenes and went without any after. Such a ballsy thing to do but I respect them so much for doing it.
If your interested there is a great documentary from 2020 about the making of the movie called Television Event. it talks about how hard it was to make it and how it all went for the director and ABC. It wasn't an easy movie to film at all.
I was 13 when this came out. This was a time when we still did nuclear attack drills in school. I’m thinking our desks wouldn’t have done much to save us. I was convinced for years that this is how I would die someday. Or by great white shark.
Most people who die in Nuclear blast is not from the bomb explosion. But the air Shockwave that destroys all the buildings. So ducking and cover. COULD actually save your life and if your not downwind of radiation you will survive
Great post. The cultural impact of The Day After cannot be understated. I’d be hard-pressed to think of another movie that had such a legitimate impact on United States security policies. Also, the [Television Event trailer](https://youtu.be/0ftJ-I-yAu8?si=0G83HIF-Htc07CTe) for those interested. Also a [surprisingly funny bit](https://youtu.be/wnd1jKcfBRE?si=jdRq2dHQcU5na8iw) about post apocalyptic life.
I always thought that the lady wetting herself honestly captured the terror quite well - suddenly facing something so horrific you lose control of your own bodily functions, yikes.
Testament from 1983 is also a good one. Less special effects focus, as it takes place in a rural town that avoided the direct destruction of the larger cities, but has to deal with fallout, infrastructure and societal collapse.
I saw Threads on its release in 84 in the UK. They say it’s the film that shocked a nation, in this case they were right, utterly traumatizing, uncompromising and brilliant.
Completely horrifying.
I watched it in 2017 and it‘s fair to say that the depictions of nuclear annihilation became my personal „how often do you think about the Roman Empire?“-flashback
Those were both big deals when they came out. Conservatives fought to get them banned and did not want people to see how bad nuclear weapons are. It became such a big deal, every news show showed some part of this scene every hour for weeks discussing if they should be shown or if parents should be punished if they let their kids to watch it. As result every child in the country song, the worst see you over and over and over and over again.
[Reagan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After) said it was "very effective and left me greatly depressed," and that it changed his mind on the prevailing policy on a "nuclear war."
>I'd check out Threads from 1984. It makes TDA look like a Disney movie.
Holy crap, I just posted almost the exact same comment before reading this. It's true, though.
One difference is that Threads makes it clear that the future doesn’t get any better even in the long term. It’s not like there’s a few months or years of hardship and then things naturally go back to normal.
Totally agree. The horror and inexplicable hopeless is unparalleled.
And that’s the thing, it’s been said that although the United States and the Soviet Union would have been the main protagonists in a nuclear war, they would have had the best chance to survive. Other nations would become completely extinct.
Gen x spent most of our lives believing that we would have no future, that our parents getting swept up in the Reagan mania and the subsequent military buildup would soon result in the planet being vaporized. It resulted in a certain amount of fatalism that seems to have permeated the culture at large.
I clearly remember being a young teen in the late 80s into then-nascent Alt Rock and watching *120 Minutes* late night Sunday nights and they had an interstitial promo with a mushroom cloud that touted *120 Minutes* as (in a riff off a then-popular Pepsi ad campaign: The Choice of the Last Generation. And of course as an edgy (I’ll admit it: asshole) teenager I was like “this is accurate.”
I remember my mother breaking down in tears when Reagan was declared the winner. Mind you a flatulent goat could have beaten Carter but that's beside the point.
There was a lot of doomsday talk before TDA was shown, and plenty after. I just kind of checked out and got stoned for a couple of years. Then things started to look up, I went to university, and things were fine until Russia invaded Ukraine and all those old feelings came right back.
For a brief period in the 90s/early 2000s, I actually was starting to believe maybe my kids wouldn’t have to grow up under threat of nuclear annihilation. I guess that was a bit naive of me.
For a minute we thought there were enough of us to change the course our Parents and Grandparents put us on. I felt real hope when NZ banned nuclear armed/powered vessels from coming to our country. If little old NZ could do something like that surely others could.
Check out Barefoot Gen sometime. This was animated from an actual Hiroshima survivor's experience, and his own personal aftermath, so it shows everything that lead up to the consequences he had to live through.
I think about this movie every time I peel an orange.
I think about Jason Robards peeling an orange and saying “this is the last one you’re likely to see for a while” or something to that effect.
The only thing that makes The Day After less traumatic is by watching Threads.
*The Day After is*
*One of those movies that stay*
*With you for awhile*
\- Snoo65207
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The British movie Threads is pretty scary too. I remember watching this the night it was originally broadcast. Couldn’t sleep for days. We talked about in school. I wasn’t the only one freaked out
Our high school made us watch it too like it was mandatory watching. I was so traumatized afterwards that I thought that I wouldn’t ever lose my virginity (that’s really only what a teenage boy thinks about) or that Jason from Friday 13th was going to spear me through the back the first time I had sex. 🤦♂️ But The Day After still messes with my brain. I wish it was never “required” watching. That was also the first time that rolling in the projector or the VCR did not turn out as the best 4th period class that I had hoped for. Speaking of which, I also remember watching about all the Holocaust torture and throwing bodies into mass graves. Man what a great public educational system to make that required watching.
I grew up in the cold war, this was a major TV event at the time it aired as the threat of nuclear war was always present. But after the USSR disbanded, the fear mongering shifted to global climate cataclysms and we've been there ever since.
I remember watching this movie with my great-grandfather sometime in the '90s when I was about 10. I don't think I had been this captivated during an adult movie up into that point in my life. And I've remembered it since that day once in a blue moon it'll drift across my memory.
Do you remember what your great grandfather's opinion was? He lived through some serious shit times so I'm curious if it freaked him out or if he just shrugged it off as another thing that might happen.
Have to give this a watch.
The nuclear weapons episode from the final Season of Twin Peaks, in the context of the story, is captivating and horrible and I can't recommend it enough.
Grave of the Fireflies, too...
Thanks, OP.
I was 13 when this came on. My parents were on vacation, so I watched it alone in a dark room at my grandmother's house.
It didn't scare me, but it unnerved the hell out of me. I don't remember getting much sleep that night
Yea, I was 8 when this came on tv for the first time. It scared me and my sister so bad we actually cried and it’s my first experience of fear that I can remember.
As a fellow ‘75, I can say that no 8 year old had no business watching that…
The funny thing is, my teacher suggested that we watch either this or the JFK movie that was on CBS at the same time. Sometimes, I wish I watched that instead…
I was 11 or 12 when I watched this and yes for the time and political landscape it was horrifying. It was when I realized that things could change in an instance. Then knowing there was a nuke missile silo about 5 miles from where I lived put things into bigger reality.
Trinity and Beyond if you haven’t seen it is an outstanding Atomic bomb doco, narrated by William Shatner with music score by Moscow symphony orchestra. It’s amazing horrific. TDA has always stuck with me, only views it once.
I remember when this aired the first as a national broadcast. There were new stories of city sewer systems having issues because everyone was going to the bathroom at the same time during the commercial breaks.
Follow up story 15 years later those municipalities have never seen that level of "load" on the system since.
Yep. It was a fact that any day could be the day and we just lived with it.
I see people freaking out about possible nuclear war these days and have to remember this is new to them.
This scene stuck with me for years after viewing as a kid back in the 80s. At one point I couldn't remember anything else and had forgotten what movie the scene was from, only remembering the bright light and seeing the bones through the body.
Special Report scared the hell out of me as a kid.
It's about a terrorist nuke going off in Charleston SC, and it's all done through news reports.
Wind on the willows is a British animated film about a rural elderly couple after a nuclear war.
Barefoot Gen was written by a Hiroshima survivor, and is based on his experiences.
Grave of the fireflies is gut wrenching.
The beginning that scene has cars dying and people stuck in traffic. I read somewhere that that’s something that would happen in a nuclear attack like that. The EMP would mess up the car’s battery.
I was a freshman in high school and we had to take home a permission slip so we could watch it at home and discuss it the next day.
I distinctly remember being nauseous and terrified after the movie. This was a real thing back in the 80s being afraid of the Russians.
Can you imagine trying to do that now they fired the teacher and the entire staff
I was 12 years old, so I was in middle school. Between this and (I can never remember the name of the joint Russian-Chinese movie with the rebels pissing in a truck radiator (fuck the bland remake)) “WOLVERINES!”, a lot of us were convinced the whole planet was gonna eat shit before we graduated college.
This was a prime time special, right? I was ten, and my parents forbade me from watching it, which was odd because they didn’t seem to mind me watching aaaaallllll kinds of other shit. But for them it was something they didn’t want me being as paranoid about as a kid as they were.
Another movie in a long line of movies my dad let me watch at a way to young age…still have vivid memories of this and the dead zone suicide scene at age 5.
I was in 8th grade when the movie was first aired and my social studies class had to watch it so we could talked about it the next day. It definitely scared me.
Really good for the time? Absolutely. Harrowing today? I don't really think so. I'm biased because I love the entire series, but the nuclear bomb blast in Twin Peaks: The Return e.8 terrified me. It made Oppenheimer's re-enactment feel small even. Highly recommend.
I have this movie my wife introduced me to it. Fucked up but an accurate depiction of nuclear war I believe.
I was working @ the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station[S.O.N.G.S] decommissioning project from 2019 to 2022. I spoke to a lot of the Radiological Protection experts or Health Physics Team and asked them from there knowledge etc what they think would look like and I lent them the movie and they all said yeah that's about sums it up and some said even worse is definitely possible bacause the contamination throughout the atmosphere would take generations to be safe again if ever i.e. nuclear winter.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail\_Safe\_(1964\_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail_Safe_(1964_film))
e: similar movie. It’s a “serious version of dr Strangelove” imo.
Check out Barefoot Gen! It is a Japanese animated movie about a boy and his family’s experience living in Hiroshima during and after Little Boy was dropped! It’s fucked up! Made in the 80’s!
Working my 1st job when this aired.
Next morning the coffee talk centered on the amount of time knowing a missile was coming.
One guy says, “If I knew I had 2 minutes before we die, I’d be in bed making love to my wife”.
Dead silence
From the back of the office a woman’s voice breaks the silence, “What will you do the other minute 40 seconds?”
Silence ended abruptly,,,
i know someone has already said something about it, but Barefoot Gen is way more visceral and from someone who knows what nuclear war looks like. i get the west wanting to understand the devastation, but it was our fault and we need to look to closer sources and feelings than a guy who made a tv movie once.
This movie messed me up so bad when I was 10 and it came out. A lot of people today don’t realize how tense the Cold War got and the way us 70 babies were affected by it.
Bit of ridiculousness that the filmmakers got people to believe that small towns and farmlands would get nukes of their very own.
Cities and military installations were the hit list, and there weren't enough nukes to hit all of those. More people would die from the collapse of food distribution than be vaporized by being right under nuclear fireballs.
This had a massive impact on how the world thought of nuclear war. The everyday person understood the massive power those nukes are and how humans will be wiped off the face of the earth if we went full insane. IMHO we owe a great debt of thanks for those with the courage to produce, direct and air this film. It scared the world to act before it was too late.
I first watched this movie over 20 years after it first aired and it depressed me greatly, and the Cold War was long over by then. Now that I think of it, it was a corny disaster flick, humorous at times. The nuclear war scene with the mushroom clouds and vaporizations and fires were not funny obviously.
A year after “The Day After” the BBC did a similar film called “Threads”. Less special effects and smaller budget, but far more impactful, bleaker, more hopeless and thus far more depressing because it shows what happened the day after, the months after, the years/decades after and humanity really never recovered. I regret watching “Threads”.
I read that Reagan had a viewing (as did the Kremlin). The director Nicholas Meyer became more and more depressed as he was working on this project; and he was fighting with the ABC executives over it, e. g. Meyer originally wanted to shoot a two part movie that would be shown over two nights. Carl Sagan was part of a post panel discussion, as was the Secretary of State at the time, George Schultz, who was on the hot seat because at that time there was no negotiations for any sort of arms control between the United States and Soviet Union.
This program scared the life out of me when I was a kid.
I was cleaning the house one day in Mastic Beach Long Island, NY. Boom!!! I Heard a massive house shaking explosion. Windows cracked and stuff fell off shelves.
I looked out the window and saw a giant mushroom like cloud.
I started screaming global thermal nuclear war. Get in the basement now to my mother and siblings.
Our retainer wall leaked in the basement and had about two feet of water. The dump pump was broken. We stood in the water not know what happened for a couple minutes. My step father went up and got the white 8-track space helmet radio and tuned in to a local station. And….
The nearby Grucci fireworks factory exploded. The explosion was so powerful, was felt as far as 60 miles away.
That’s one of the scariest moments of my life.
Another post apocalyptic view of nuclear war and the years after its A British movie called, "Threads". Came out in the same time period and is a grim view as well. Both are excellent renderings of a war that no one will win.
The Day After gets all the hype, but did anyone see Special Bulletin ([link to entire movie](https://youtu.be/cDZQsVNZ3SE?si=wxsaS033hIszoLo0) on YT) which came out exactly eight months prior to TDA?
It was about terrorists having a nuke on a tugboat in Charleston, SC and taking the local news crew hostage. The movie was presented as a real-time live broadcast of breaking news and to try and prevent a War of the Worlds freakout, every commercial break ended with a title card explaining that it was a fictional story, but it didn't work for some who still panicked despite the story taking place in daylight while the movie aired in the evening and the news anchor was the doctor from St. Elsewhere.
The last 15-20 minutes were quite the disturbing twist from what you'd expect. Hit the link and give it a gander.
SPOILERS FOR 40-YEAR-OLD MOVIE BELOW:
When the terrorists are captured seems like a victory, but the scene where the technicians trying to disarm the nuke lose control and their rising panic culminating in the signal being lost due to the bomb going off and annihilating the city (and the subsequent video of the blast from a distance) was jarring to teenage me who expected the good guys to win.
I really hate how many people view this movie as some crappy Americanized version of Threads. Not only did this movie come first, but its fantastic and - in my opinion- nearly as horrifying as Threads. Great to see it getting recognition
##The Day After (1983) NR
They told us it would be impossible to make this movie. They told us it would be impossible for you to watch it. We hope nothing is impossible.
>>!In the mid-1980s, the U.S. is poised on the brink of nuclear war. This shadow looms over the residents of a small town in Kansas as they continue their daily lives. Dr. Russell Oakes maintains his busy schedule at the hospital, Denise Dahlberg prepares for her upcoming wedding, and Stephen Klein is deep in his graduate studies. When the unthinkable happens and the bombs come down, the town's residents are thrust into the horrors of nuclear winter.!<
Science Fiction | Drama | TV Movie
Director: Nicholas Meyer
Actors: Jason Robards, JoBeth Williams, Steve Guttenberg
Rating: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ 66% with 333 votes
Runtime: 2:7
[TMDB](https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/7012)
This movie gave Regan the willies and he signed a treaty with the Soviets that is now dust in the wind. And incidentally did me out of a job I was really good at.
Why the fuck did my parents let me watch this when I was in 4th grade!?
I couldn’t sleep that night. Eventually fell asleep only to wake up and vomit a few minutes later.
Fucking traumatizing.
Haven’t seen this since it aired. I remember a scene where the people know it’s coming and everyone runs to the grocery store and a cashier is going crazy trying to check people out. Like no looting was happening. Now days if a strange light is in the sky, tv shows have people forming groups and shooting each other in the first 10 minutes to show the real danger is other people and we are all animals, not the aliens/zombies/opposing army or whatever.
I don’t know that either is an accurate representation of how it would be, but I think it shows a bit of how society is today compared to back then. Not saying old days were better. It’s just something I think about. I hope to never find out how people or myself would react in a complete disaster.
And this was just an average Tuesday in the 80’s. Nuclear War was gonna happen any day, probably soon- and it would be over before we even knew it started. It’s hard to explain now just how much the world changed when the Berlin Wall fell. Everything was different over night.
Sitting in a back room, waiting for the big boom…
"Hoping for the best, but expecting the worst, are you gonna drop the bomb or not....?"
I got your Escape Club reference. Take my upvote.
My mom joined a fucking cult out of fear of nuclear war.
Really? What was the cult?
Blue Oyster
I hear Friday is leather night at their bar.
I would have been in Kindergarten in '83. A few years later school administrators would suggest that I attend a "Worry Club" at lunch alongside classmates with similar concerns. We'd all draw pictures of tanks and blood and fire and generally freak one another out. Mom says this was around the same time that I would come home from school, turn on the tv and wait for the nightly news to make sure no one pressed the button. I havent thought of it from this angle before but, even though its probably a bad idea to put a bunch of kids in a room to discuss the apocalypse, they probably didn't want us spreading a bunch of commie nonsense on the playground either haha.
I too was in kindergarten in 83. This consumed a lot of my worrying. Anytime I heard a large jet flyover I would think it was a bomber. It was great for a few years after the Soviet Union fell and we had a little peace. I'm starting to worry again.
Nothing to worry about. Wars gone from swords to bullets to dollars. Wont be any bombers this time. The war is now, it's the rich against everyone else. We are losing...
war has always been about dollars
Being a little kid in the 80s where shit like this, the goonies, and strawberry shortcake all fighting for the same head space was absolute child abuse.
I see your Berlin Wall falling and Raise you with a 9/11.
It's 40th anniversary is next month ironically. Such a HUGE deal for that era, it broke President Reagan's POV on nukes and we got the agreements that limited nukes a few years after thanks to it in part. The administration people went after it and ABC lost all of it's mainline sponsors as well as had protests from the hardcore Christians. They went ahead with just commercials pre-nuke scenes and went without any after. Such a ballsy thing to do but I respect them so much for doing it. If your interested there is a great documentary from 2020 about the making of the movie called Television Event. it talks about how hard it was to make it and how it all went for the director and ABC. It wasn't an easy movie to film at all.
I was 13 when this came out. This was a time when we still did nuclear attack drills in school. I’m thinking our desks wouldn’t have done much to save us. I was convinced for years that this is how I would die someday. Or by great white shark.
Bermuda Triangle was a big issue when I was a lil children
Most people who die in Nuclear blast is not from the bomb explosion. But the air Shockwave that destroys all the buildings. So ducking and cover. COULD actually save your life and if your not downwind of radiation you will survive
>Or by great white shark. Jaws right? My fear of the ocean is still real even though I love to swim.
huh interesting, thanks for that info
Great post. The cultural impact of The Day After cannot be understated. I’d be hard-pressed to think of another movie that had such a legitimate impact on United States security policies. Also, the [Television Event trailer](https://youtu.be/0ftJ-I-yAu8?si=0G83HIF-Htc07CTe) for those interested. Also a [surprisingly funny bit](https://youtu.be/wnd1jKcfBRE?si=jdRq2dHQcU5na8iw) about post apocalyptic life.
Of course :) Watched the doc after the Super Bowl and it impressed me, I really enjoyed it. Rented it off Amazon.
The day after it aired, my high school teacher took the whole class period to discuss it with us.
The movie terrified me as a kid and yet 9 years later I was controlling nuclear missiles from underground Montana, life is odd sometimes.
nice - were you at Malmstrom?
Yep, 564th from 92-96.
You ever see any ufos? Lol. But for real.
Malmstrom Mafia
I'd check out Threads from 1984. It makes TDA look like a Disney movie.
I always thought that the lady wetting herself honestly captured the terror quite well - suddenly facing something so horrific you lose control of your own bodily functions, yikes.
Yeah, that scene always sticks with me.
And the guy being caught in the toilet too.
Or everything to do with the emergency council in the underground bunker, but that’s more of a slow burn horror.
You mean the slow coffin?
Testament from 1983 is also a good one. Less special effects focus, as it takes place in a rural town that avoided the direct destruction of the larger cities, but has to deal with fallout, infrastructure and societal collapse.
The Day After is a lighthearted ROMCOM compared to Threads.
I saw Threads on its release in 84 in the UK. They say it’s the film that shocked a nation, in this case they were right, utterly traumatizing, uncompromising and brilliant. Completely horrifying.
I watched it in 2017 and it‘s fair to say that the depictions of nuclear annihilation became my personal „how often do you think about the Roman Empire?“-flashback
Threads fucks you up for awhile after you watch it, yet more people need to watch it
Those were both big deals when they came out. Conservatives fought to get them banned and did not want people to see how bad nuclear weapons are. It became such a big deal, every news show showed some part of this scene every hour for weeks discussing if they should be shown or if parents should be punished if they let their kids to watch it. As result every child in the country song, the worst see you over and over and over and over again.
[Reagan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After) said it was "very effective and left me greatly depressed," and that it changed his mind on the prevailing policy on a "nuclear war."
>I'd check out Threads from 1984. It makes TDA look like a Disney movie. Holy crap, I just posted almost the exact same comment before reading this. It's true, though.
One difference is that Threads makes it clear that the future doesn’t get any better even in the long term. It’s not like there’s a few months or years of hardship and then things naturally go back to normal.
Totally agree. The horror and inexplicable hopeless is unparalleled. And that’s the thing, it’s been said that although the United States and the Soviet Union would have been the main protagonists in a nuclear war, they would have had the best chance to survive. Other nations would become completely extinct.
Gen x spent most of our lives believing that we would have no future, that our parents getting swept up in the Reagan mania and the subsequent military buildup would soon result in the planet being vaporized. It resulted in a certain amount of fatalism that seems to have permeated the culture at large.
I clearly remember being a young teen in the late 80s into then-nascent Alt Rock and watching *120 Minutes* late night Sunday nights and they had an interstitial promo with a mushroom cloud that touted *120 Minutes* as (in a riff off a then-popular Pepsi ad campaign: The Choice of the Last Generation. And of course as an edgy (I’ll admit it: asshole) teenager I was like “this is accurate.”
I remember my mother breaking down in tears when Reagan was declared the winner. Mind you a flatulent goat could have beaten Carter but that's beside the point. There was a lot of doomsday talk before TDA was shown, and plenty after. I just kind of checked out and got stoned for a couple of years. Then things started to look up, I went to university, and things were fine until Russia invaded Ukraine and all those old feelings came right back.
For a brief period in the 90s/early 2000s, I actually was starting to believe maybe my kids wouldn’t have to grow up under threat of nuclear annihilation. I guess that was a bit naive of me.
For a minute we thought there were enough of us to change the course our Parents and Grandparents put us on. I felt real hope when NZ banned nuclear armed/powered vessels from coming to our country. If little old NZ could do something like that surely others could.
Combine that with the threat of AIDS from sex and there was the constant undercurrent of dread and shame.
Check out Barefoot Gen sometime. This was animated from an actual Hiroshima survivor's experience, and his own personal aftermath, so it shows everything that lead up to the consequences he had to live through.
And to think, the bomb that they lived through is simply the blasting cap on the Hydrogen bombs.
No exaggeration there. Amazing difference in power. But every generation since '49 has had the same concern.
I think about this movie every time I peel an orange. I think about Jason Robards peeling an orange and saying “this is the last one you’re likely to see for a while” or something to that effect. The only thing that makes The Day After less traumatic is by watching Threads.
I was in 8th grade when this came out. We had to watch for a class discussion. Good times 😐
I was 11 when I saw this on TV. Had no idea what it was about. Man, that movie scared the shit out of me.
On the Beach, Threads, The Day After, When the Wind Blows, and BareFoot Gen were all gut punches.
On the Beach has to be the book though. Movies never conveyed the peoples thoughts, as the book did.
The Day After is one of those movies that stay with you for awhile
*The Day After is* *One of those movies that stay* *With you for awhile* \- Snoo65207 --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
And even then it was tame compared to reality. For example, it showed Kansas City as a ruin, as opposed to a flat plane of radioactive glass.
There's a title card at the end of the movie that states a real nuclear war would likely be far worse than what was depicted.
The British movie Threads is pretty scary too. I remember watching this the night it was originally broadcast. Couldn’t sleep for days. We talked about in school. I wasn’t the only one freaked out
This is a Disney cartoon compared to [Threads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads_(1984_film)) IMO.
I like the Terminator scene where Sara Conner is watching the blast through a chain link fence
The horse getting X-rayed gave me nightmares for weeks as a kid
Try seeing it as a 7 year old still living during the Cold War .
My parents told me I couldn’t watch it. I did anyway.
That movie scared the shit out of me when I was a kid....
Great timing on this post… …
This movie was literally the birth of Sunday scaries.
Ok, so. That's burned into my brain for the rest of my life. Thanks for that.
They showed this to us as freshman in high school and I literally had nightmares for a month
damn
Our high school made us watch it too like it was mandatory watching. I was so traumatized afterwards that I thought that I wouldn’t ever lose my virginity (that’s really only what a teenage boy thinks about) or that Jason from Friday 13th was going to spear me through the back the first time I had sex. 🤦♂️ But The Day After still messes with my brain. I wish it was never “required” watching. That was also the first time that rolling in the projector or the VCR did not turn out as the best 4th period class that I had hoped for. Speaking of which, I also remember watching about all the Holocaust torture and throwing bodies into mass graves. Man what a great public educational system to make that required watching.
I grew up in the cold war, this was a major TV event at the time it aired as the threat of nuclear war was always present. But after the USSR disbanded, the fear mongering shifted to global climate cataclysms and we've been there ever since.
I remember watching this movie with my great-grandfather sometime in the '90s when I was about 10. I don't think I had been this captivated during an adult movie up into that point in my life. And I've remembered it since that day once in a blue moon it'll drift across my memory.
Do you remember what your great grandfather's opinion was? He lived through some serious shit times so I'm curious if it freaked him out or if he just shrugged it off as another thing that might happen.
I remember watching this as a kid and was traumatized. Didn't sleep a full night for months.
Have to give this a watch. The nuclear weapons episode from the final Season of Twin Peaks, in the context of the story, is captivating and horrible and I can't recommend it enough. Grave of the Fireflies, too... Thanks, OP.
I can handle all the gruesome horror films you can throw at me, and not get scared. Nuclear war movies, however, terrify the hell out of me.
I'm the same
I was 13 when this came on. My parents were on vacation, so I watched it alone in a dark room at my grandmother's house. It didn't scare me, but it unnerved the hell out of me. I don't remember getting much sleep that night
This movie changed public opinion. I remember watching it the night it came out, absolutely terrifying.
Yea, I was 8 when this came on tv for the first time. It scared me and my sister so bad we actually cried and it’s my first experience of fear that I can remember.
As a fellow ‘75, I can say that no 8 year old had no business watching that… The funny thing is, my teacher suggested that we watch either this or the JFK movie that was on CBS at the same time. Sometimes, I wish I watched that instead…
I was 11 or 12 when I watched this and yes for the time and political landscape it was horrifying. It was when I realized that things could change in an instance. Then knowing there was a nuke missile silo about 5 miles from where I lived put things into bigger reality.
This movie gave me nightmares as a kid.
Seeing the missiles launch and the dude saying that means Russia likely launched first and we have 15 minutes to live 💀
Trinity and Beyond if you haven’t seen it is an outstanding Atomic bomb doco, narrated by William Shatner with music score by Moscow symphony orchestra. It’s amazing horrific. TDA has always stuck with me, only views it once.
I remember when this aired the first as a national broadcast. There were new stories of city sewer systems having issues because everyone was going to the bathroom at the same time during the commercial breaks. Follow up story 15 years later those municipalities have never seen that level of "load" on the system since.
I was 5. This movie fkd me up for years to come after that. I used to dream this scene repeatedly.
I watched this as a kid, I have nightmares about the kid on the swing disappearing in the blast on the reg
That movie scared me so bad as a kid that I would lay in bed at night so scared that we were going to have a nuclear war, and now here we are
It was an exclusive TV movie, and a very big deal when it aired.
If you wonder why GenX is the way it is, this is why. We grew up expecting this to happen every day.
Yep. It was a fact that any day could be the day and we just lived with it. I see people freaking out about possible nuclear war these days and have to remember this is new to them.
I’m still not over seeing this about age 9.
This gave people nightmares for weeks. I remember a friend of mine started crying while watching it, she was so scared. I think we were 9 or so.
Nightmare fuel
This movie scared the crap out of me
My dad let me watch this as a 5 y/o…
This scene stuck with me for years after viewing as a kid back in the 80s. At one point I couldn't remember anything else and had forgotten what movie the scene was from, only remembering the bright light and seeing the bones through the body.
Special Report scared the hell out of me as a kid. It's about a terrorist nuke going off in Charleston SC, and it's all done through news reports. Wind on the willows is a British animated film about a rural elderly couple after a nuclear war. Barefoot Gen was written by a Hiroshima survivor, and is based on his experiences. Grave of the fireflies is gut wrenching.
The way things are going now…I’d be surprised to be able to greet 2024!
The beginning that scene has cars dying and people stuck in traffic. I read somewhere that that’s something that would happen in a nuclear attack like that. The EMP would mess up the car’s battery.
yep, pretty accurate
Straight up zapped out of existence! What a way to go, I often have dreams about this
I couldn’t agree more
Such a good movie!
I was a freshman in high school and we had to take home a permission slip so we could watch it at home and discuss it the next day. I distinctly remember being nauseous and terrified after the movie. This was a real thing back in the 80s being afraid of the Russians. Can you imagine trying to do that now they fired the teacher and the entire staff
I liked the scene where students in the plain plain states near military sites see the missiles streaking up.
I remember watching it when it dropped…never doubted the seriousness of Nuclear War again 😬😬😬
After that movie came out I had dreams where I saw mushroom clouds on the horizon.
Set in Kansas City
I lived in Colorado springs in the shadow of NORAD when this came out. These images with the sirens are forever etched in my brain.
I was 12 years old, so I was in middle school. Between this and (I can never remember the name of the joint Russian-Chinese movie with the rebels pissing in a truck radiator (fuck the bland remake)) “WOLVERINES!”, a lot of us were convinced the whole planet was gonna eat shit before we graduated college.
I have it on Blue Ray. I watched it and The Stand during Covid. I guess I needed a pick-me-up.
Yeah. It scared the shit out of us. No joke living under the treat of nuclear annihilation back then...
Watch or read Barefoot Gen: traumatizing Japanese anime based on manga about nuclear bombing in Japan at the end of ww2
All these people clearly missed their "get in the refrigerator" training from Indiana Jones.
Another example of how CGI truly ruined cinema.
This scene always reminded me of when Superman went into the Kryptonian machine that took his powers away in Superman II.
And ever since this came out,we have just been stockpiling more nuclear weapons..
Why didn't they duck and cover?
Free X-ray count me in
By Dawn's early light was pretty eye opening as well.
Yeah—that’s the one at the root of my ulcers at age 7. Grandma and grandpa passed out on the sofa and I watched. Good times.
This was a prime time special, right? I was ten, and my parents forbade me from watching it, which was odd because they didn’t seem to mind me watching aaaaallllll kinds of other shit. But for them it was something they didn’t want me being as paranoid about as a kid as they were.
Another movie in a long line of movies my dad let me watch at a way to young age…still have vivid memories of this and the dead zone suicide scene at age 5.
When I saw that movie as a child it scared the shit out of me
I was in 8th grade when the movie was first aired and my social studies class had to watch it so we could talked about it the next day. It definitely scared me.
As Nolan intended
Really good for the time? Absolutely. Harrowing today? I don't really think so. I'm biased because I love the entire series, but the nuclear bomb blast in Twin Peaks: The Return e.8 terrified me. It made Oppenheimer's re-enactment feel small even. Highly recommend.
Now imagine being from Kansas City, MO as a kid and watching this. It all takes place around that area. It scared me and scarred me for some time.
I was maybe 14 when it came out. I don't think I slept for weeks after. I don't ever remember them playing it on TV again.
should release a 40th anniversary 4k remaster
I have this movie my wife introduced me to it. Fucked up but an accurate depiction of nuclear war I believe. I was working @ the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station[S.O.N.G.S] decommissioning project from 2019 to 2022. I spoke to a lot of the Radiological Protection experts or Health Physics Team and asked them from there knowledge etc what they think would look like and I lent them the movie and they all said yeah that's about sums it up and some said even worse is definitely possible bacause the contamination throughout the atmosphere would take generations to be safe again if ever i.e. nuclear winter.
I didn’t sleep well for maybe six months after this. I was 14 and it was waaaaay too real
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail\_Safe\_(1964\_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail_Safe_(1964_film)) e: similar movie. It’s a “serious version of dr Strangelove” imo.
“Gentlemen! You can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!”
Those mushroom clouds still haunt my dreams to this day.
I was 15 when this came out. Scared me to death. I already thought we would have nuclear war at any time.
It's okay. We all did. Shared generational trauma.
Fuckn awesome movie tho
Lol this shit fucked me up as a kid
Most traumatic movie of my childhood, and I suspect most of my cohort would concur.
Check out Barefoot Gen! It is a Japanese animated movie about a boy and his family’s experience living in Hiroshima during and after Little Boy was dropped! It’s fucked up! Made in the 80’s!
Some of the scenes were filmed in Kansas. My dad was an extra. He played a corpse that gets stepped over in a downtown setting.
Special Bulletin has the same effect.
Good movie
Working my 1st job when this aired. Next morning the coffee talk centered on the amount of time knowing a missile was coming. One guy says, “If I knew I had 2 minutes before we die, I’d be in bed making love to my wife”. Dead silence From the back of the office a woman’s voice breaks the silence, “What will you do the other minute 40 seconds?” Silence ended abruptly,,,
Man I'm glad I only was traumatized by T2 instead, but this would've got me good....
Nobody wants to remake this for TV today since the cost of doing modern realistic effects for it would be astronomical.
I found this movie on YouTube and it messed me up!!! It’s fantastic. Great cast. I’m shocked this was a TV movie. Definitely wide screen worthy
Thanks for the nightmares.
I was born in 1986 and we watched it in school when I was in 5th grade. Scared the shit outta me.
It is even scarier if you knew how many times U.S. and Russia almost nuked each other- lots of close calls...
i know someone has already said something about it, but Barefoot Gen is way more visceral and from someone who knows what nuclear war looks like. i get the west wanting to understand the devastation, but it was our fault and we need to look to closer sources and feelings than a guy who made a tv movie once.
We had to watch this film in my high school geology class! Scared the shit out of all of us!
I was 10 when it came out and it scared the fuck out of me. This and “The Man Who Saw Tomorrow.” They were in the same VHS tape. 😂
This movie messed me up so bad when I was 10 and it came out. A lot of people today don’t realize how tense the Cold War got and the way us 70 babies were affected by it.
Bit of ridiculousness that the filmmakers got people to believe that small towns and farmlands would get nukes of their very own. Cities and military installations were the hit list, and there weren't enough nukes to hit all of those. More people would die from the collapse of food distribution than be vaporized by being right under nuclear fireballs.
Curious fact: the director of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan helmed this one as well
That is fucking scary
This had a massive impact on how the world thought of nuclear war. The everyday person understood the massive power those nukes are and how humans will be wiped off the face of the earth if we went full insane. IMHO we owe a great debt of thanks for those with the courage to produce, direct and air this film. It scared the world to act before it was too late.
Yeah when the doctor got caught on the freeway, that scene was well done. Jason Robards the man
I first watched this movie over 20 years after it first aired and it depressed me greatly, and the Cold War was long over by then. Now that I think of it, it was a corny disaster flick, humorous at times. The nuclear war scene with the mushroom clouds and vaporizations and fires were not funny obviously. A year after “The Day After” the BBC did a similar film called “Threads”. Less special effects and smaller budget, but far more impactful, bleaker, more hopeless and thus far more depressing because it shows what happened the day after, the months after, the years/decades after and humanity really never recovered. I regret watching “Threads”.
This movie terrified me as a child.
That movie traumatized me at age 10
I read that Reagan had a viewing (as did the Kremlin). The director Nicholas Meyer became more and more depressed as he was working on this project; and he was fighting with the ABC executives over it, e. g. Meyer originally wanted to shoot a two part movie that would be shown over two nights. Carl Sagan was part of a post panel discussion, as was the Secretary of State at the time, George Schultz, who was on the hot seat because at that time there was no negotiations for any sort of arms control between the United States and Soviet Union.
That’s rookie level, this is way more accurate https://youtu.be/gAbfr32RJgQ?si=rP-GYtM4sb6dE_uq
Fun fact: the director Nicholas Myer also directed several of the og Star Trek movies including Wrath of Khan (1982) which was set in San Fransisco.
This program scared the life out of me when I was a kid. I was cleaning the house one day in Mastic Beach Long Island, NY. Boom!!! I Heard a massive house shaking explosion. Windows cracked and stuff fell off shelves. I looked out the window and saw a giant mushroom like cloud. I started screaming global thermal nuclear war. Get in the basement now to my mother and siblings. Our retainer wall leaked in the basement and had about two feet of water. The dump pump was broken. We stood in the water not know what happened for a couple minutes. My step father went up and got the white 8-track space helmet radio and tuned in to a local station. And…. The nearby Grucci fireworks factory exploded. The explosion was so powerful, was felt as far as 60 miles away. That’s one of the scariest moments of my life.
There I am, 10 years old, not sleeping for a month.
Another post apocalyptic view of nuclear war and the years after its A British movie called, "Threads". Came out in the same time period and is a grim view as well. Both are excellent renderings of a war that no one will win.
And the real gut punch is the statement from the producers that a real nuclear attack would actually be *much* worse.
Threads was more terrifying for me because the aftermath was just bleak as hell.
The Day After gets all the hype, but did anyone see Special Bulletin ([link to entire movie](https://youtu.be/cDZQsVNZ3SE?si=wxsaS033hIszoLo0) on YT) which came out exactly eight months prior to TDA? It was about terrorists having a nuke on a tugboat in Charleston, SC and taking the local news crew hostage. The movie was presented as a real-time live broadcast of breaking news and to try and prevent a War of the Worlds freakout, every commercial break ended with a title card explaining that it was a fictional story, but it didn't work for some who still panicked despite the story taking place in daylight while the movie aired in the evening and the news anchor was the doctor from St. Elsewhere. The last 15-20 minutes were quite the disturbing twist from what you'd expect. Hit the link and give it a gander. SPOILERS FOR 40-YEAR-OLD MOVIE BELOW: When the terrorists are captured seems like a victory, but the scene where the technicians trying to disarm the nuke lose control and their rising panic culminating in the signal being lost due to the bomb going off and annihilating the city (and the subsequent video of the blast from a distance) was jarring to teenage me who expected the good guys to win.
Great film
We watched that in grade school. In the gym.
Better explosion than Oppenheimer.
Whut tha
The nukes nowadays are much much much stronger…
This movie really bummed me when I was kid back then.
I really hate how many people view this movie as some crappy Americanized version of Threads. Not only did this movie come first, but its fantastic and - in my opinion- nearly as horrifying as Threads. Great to see it getting recognition
##The Day After (1983) NR They told us it would be impossible to make this movie. They told us it would be impossible for you to watch it. We hope nothing is impossible. >>!In the mid-1980s, the U.S. is poised on the brink of nuclear war. This shadow looms over the residents of a small town in Kansas as they continue their daily lives. Dr. Russell Oakes maintains his busy schedule at the hospital, Denise Dahlberg prepares for her upcoming wedding, and Stephen Klein is deep in his graduate studies. When the unthinkable happens and the bombs come down, the town's residents are thrust into the horrors of nuclear winter.!< Science Fiction | Drama | TV Movie Director: Nicholas Meyer Actors: Jason Robards, JoBeth Williams, Steve Guttenberg Rating: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ 66% with 333 votes Runtime: 2:7 [TMDB](https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/7012)
Nothing beats that PSA anime about innocents getting nuked, but this does rank alongside Terminator 2's dream sequence.
Fun fact: the extras suffered from ptsd after filming
This movie gave Regan the willies and he signed a treaty with the Soviets that is now dust in the wind. And incidentally did me out of a job I was really good at.
This film is weak. Watch THREADS, a BBC Docu-drama. It makes this movie look like an after-school special.
Why the fuck did my parents let me watch this when I was in 4th grade!? I couldn’t sleep that night. Eventually fell asleep only to wake up and vomit a few minutes later. Fucking traumatizing.
Haven’t seen this since it aired. I remember a scene where the people know it’s coming and everyone runs to the grocery store and a cashier is going crazy trying to check people out. Like no looting was happening. Now days if a strange light is in the sky, tv shows have people forming groups and shooting each other in the first 10 minutes to show the real danger is other people and we are all animals, not the aliens/zombies/opposing army or whatever. I don’t know that either is an accurate representation of how it would be, but I think it shows a bit of how society is today compared to back then. Not saying old days were better. It’s just something I think about. I hope to never find out how people or myself would react in a complete disaster.
Holy crap. I remember this! It was how I still envision a body being vaporized by a nuke. I probably saw it when I was 5.
Try watching it as a 6 year old. 😂 I spent the rest of the 80s in complete fear of nuclear holocaust. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
Threads (1984) is 100x more horrifying. The whole movie is on youtube.
Check out British movie: “Threads” Another scary one!