The Day After

I just ordered The Day After, the 1983 TV movie about a nuclear war and its effects on a small U.S. city.

I've been reading a lot about the Cold War lately and The Day After is remarkable in many ways:

• It ran just a week or two after Able Archer 83, a souped-up NATO exercise that the Soviets suspected was cover for a nuclear first strike. Able Archer 83 was arguably the closest the world has come to nuclear war. In Arsenals of Folly, Richard Rhodes makes the point that Able Archer was in some ways more serious than the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy's crisis was a game of brinksmanship; Able Archer was more like two belligerent giants stumbling blindly toward each other.
• The Day After made a serious impression on Ronald Reagan and helped change his attitudes toward nuclear war. Reagan apparently responded best to video briefings, so it's probably no surprise that it took a movie to convince him that a nuclear war couldn't be won. According to the Wikipedia, someone in the Reagan administration sent a note to director Nick Meyer saying the The Day After played a role in the '87 INF arms reduction treaty.
• Personally, I missed both The Day After and Threads (the BBC's nuclear holocaust movie) when they originally ran. But I remember nuclear war being a frequent topic of conversation--how much time would we have once the missiles flew? what would we do?--at that time. It's a strange thing, when you're 14, to think seriously about what you'd do if you were suddenly counting down the last 10 minutes of your life.

The Day After isn't available on iTunes, but you can watch the whole thing on YouTube in installments. Here's the money shot, if you will, the nuclear attack scene:

Boom.