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 ...
LOL!
I have a late friend who was an Xtra in the movie.
Better fat, drunk and stupid to be in the path of an atom bomb....
The media really loves to play with themselves. They cant get enough of stroking themselves off.
Pure left-wing propaganda BS.
Agree- KU football was garbage in the early 80’s...no more than a couple hundred people would attend the games...
I grew up in Detroit, Michigan, when there was still a substantial manufacturing industry. Years before this movie, my friends and I had already understood that in the event of a nuclear exchange we were sitting right on top of a prime target.
You are so right! I saw them both, and Threads was more frightening.
Very true.
Bu if you nuked Detroit today, could you tell the difference?
Whenever I hear Sheffield, it’s always the first thing that comes to mind.
We watch roots about once a year but in reverse so it has a happy ending
It had some moments. When the missiles were launched is one I remember very well. I was a liberal then, but not anti-American. I thought the USSR was evil. I was also kind of obsessed with nuke war for a while in the 80s.
“”””””It was unnerving.””””””
Not to those of us who were already long time survivalists, we already had a good idea of what nuclear war meant, we had grown up with it and the daily reminders and practice of it.
me too loved it
This movie Po’ed me to no end. I was in SAC at the time and saw it as an attempt to try to make us feel guilty about defending the country during the cold war. I didn’t buy the BS.
A few years later Euroweenies were at the height of protesting America just after the USSR raised radiation exposure to almost all of Europe thanks to Chernobyl. Very few protests about that.
At that time I had lived my entire life, except for vacations, on or within the frag pattern of a prime target. I had also learned to recognize Soviet communist propaganda, and to detest the people who promoted it.
It was a well made effective film. Did it change history? I doubt it. Basically it was anti-war anti-nuclear propaganda and those in authority understood this.
Full disclosure: I haven’t read the article or many comments yet, but I remember when this movie came out, my father refused to allow any of us to watch it. “Nothing but bullsh!t propaganda to attack Ronald Reagan!”
Soviet propaganda put out by hysterical Reagan haters.
You are right about the China Syndrome. Total rubbish but the timing was demonic, and it swayed the opinions of all manner of idiots, officials and peasants alike.
Now, had the USSR only bombed liberal cities.........
I am bankrolling a movie called One Picosecond After.
All matter and energy in the universe is cancelled in the first three seconds of the movie.
Then follows one-hour, forty-nine minutes a blank screen in utter silence. Then, roll credits.
I believe, based on the budget requirements alone, I can convince a major movie producer to give me my first directorial debut.
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