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 ...
You have described every Russian movie I have ever seen.
Yeah. Exactly right.
I didn’t watch it but I remember all the talk about it.
One Second after is an excellent book. Makes you think.
The Soviets and the Reagan haters timed this propaganda to try to hurt President Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign.
I was in high school, didn’t watch it, could tell it was Hollywood garbage from the hype.
Looking back, 1983 was a heck of an eventful year and maybe the decisive year of the Cold War. For Reagan, 1981 was about getting his budget/tax cuts passed and recovering from being shot. In 1982, he started to engage the USSR ideologically (e.g., his speech at Westminster), but he was a bit on defense with the recession. 1983 was key. The Evil Empire speech, announcing SDI, keeping the West together through the commie-led protests in Europe over intermediate-range ICBMs, KAL 007. Then you had all kinds of other stuff going on like Grenada, Beirut, and this movie. By 1984, Reagan actually toned it down a bit for the election year, and by early 1985, Gorbachev took over, and their side started to collapse.
THREADS, the UK version of the Day After was even more frightening.
Chernobyl on a much smaller scale was even more frightening. Those firemen died a horribly painful death. In the end they could not even give them morphine because their veins had all collapsed.
BS
If they stick to the book and don't ruin it, it would make a great movie.
Problem is, often these movie producers take too much liberty to change things.
BACK WHEN THE LEFT LOVED THEM SOME RUSSIA.
No cell Phones back then.
That’s the one about the EMP strike. Heavy stuff.
Found it. Will watch. Thanks.
threads was garbage commie propaganda partially bank rolled by CND and other leftist fellow travelers. I lived in the UK at the time and friends commented that a side effect of fallout must me to kill everyone with an IQ above room temp. There is no way civilization would not pick up the pieces and rebuild unlike what was depicted in threads
In the General/Chat forum, on a thread titled This TV movie from the 1980s helped change the course of the Cold War. Here’s how ‘The Day After’ got made, Vermont Lt wrote: You might be thinking of the Climate movie: The Day after Tomorrow. The article is about “The Day After” which was a TV movie.
Interestingly, The Day After Tomorrow was based on a book co-written by Art Bell of Coast to Coast AM fame. It was about the birth of global “Superstorms” and the impact of climate change on the ocean currents.
Yeah…it sucked. Actually, both of them were hyperbolic junk.
It was the nuclear blast movie. I think they tested the waters to see if the public wanted to go to the movie theatre to watch a woman care for her children as they died of radiation poisoning, one after the other, with no chance of actual medical support. After burying her second child, she runs her hands through her hair in exhaustion, and a clump of hair comes out. Nothing to look forward to. No hope. The 'tough' neighbor kid steals what little food they have left. So apparently a test run proved that I was among the few who actually went to see it, and did so by accident. So it became a TV movie. There's no point in watching that kind of misery- better to feature what can happen if communities help one another.
I was new to the military in ‘83 when I saw it, headed to a “strategic” billet as well. I could see through the disarmament propaganda, and it had the opposite effect on me. I remember thinking I better learn my job well, because we have to win.
I watched Threads on Tubi last night based on this FR “thread”. Same propaganda, IMHO. Interesting peek at living through societal collapse, tho.
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