Posted on 06/25/2024 11:38:52 AM PDT by ChicagoConservative27
CNN — In November 1983, the US, Soviet Union and the rest of the world were teetering closer than ever on the edge of nuclear war. A NATO military exercise had spooked the Soviets, who thought the exercise was merely a cover for a real nuclear strike on the USSR, prompting them to ready their own nuclear forces.
Who knew, then, that an ABC movie-of-the-week would play a significant role in potentially preventing nuclear war?
“The Day After,” a two-hour epic following a few weeks in the lives of small-town Midwesterners before and after a nuclear strike, was one of the most controversial and most-watched TV movies when it aired on November 20, 1983.
In its first hour, the people of Lawrence, Kansas, go about their lives as the threat of nuclear war looms. But when the nuke finally comes to Kansas, the devastation is immediate: Acres of crops are singed and poisoned, homes are leveled, a fifth-grade class is vaporized at school.
Characters we come to know in the film’s first half are obliterated in an instant or barely clinging to life as they succumb to radiation poisoning. Even those who survive the attack by the film’s end will soon die, viewers know.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Art Bell didn’t seem the type type, to me, to write a book like that...
This was on TV when I was 16. No big deal. The Cold War was overhyped and mostly ignored except by Hollywood and Washington.
I call BS.
It was badly made, badly acted and Tull of propaganda.
I thought it was laughable.
“Thus, it was perhaps the most important movie ever made.”
I would add in “The China Syndrome” which did more to destroy nuclear power than the minor event at Three Mile Island, which happened less than two weeks after the movie came out.
In the constant search of ways to show “Ronnie Raygun” as a sort of passive figure instead of the master planner of the bringing down of the Soviet Union, the left describes this movie as profoundly changing the WWII veteran, leading Cold War warrior, 3 time presidential candidate, and sitting President of the United States, and evoking a “golly gee, I didn’t know that nuclear war was really so bad” reaction that led him to reverse himself and seek peace instead of trying to make the Russians kill us all with nuclear missiles as he had been doing.
Mt favorite was all our missles were in Kansas. Not even close.
There were more missed silos east of Ft. Smith Ark than in Kansas.
I knew were several weee.
I knew where several were.
I watched it as well- i was in college at the time...it freaked me out yet i doubt it had anything to do changing the cold war.
‘The Coming Global Superstorm’ is the name of the one Art Bell wrote with Whitley Strieber.
I never understood it. Despite all the weird topics and people he covered, he always seemed to keep some distance and a certain amount of skepticism.
But he went all in with the ‘climate catastrophe’ business.
Maybe Whitley Strieber affected him.
I didn't know anyone who didn't watch it. Entire families did together. Most of America.
Isn’t that Dorfman from Animal House at the 55 minute mark??
Should’ve stayed in school...
100%. The real documentary of nuclear apocalypse.
The silliest thing about the movie is where they showed a packed football stadium right when the missiles are flying. As if that would happen.
Fat drunk and stupid is no way to go through life.
It was unnerving.
“Threads” was crazy as well. Filmed in Sheffield, UK where I lived at one time.
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