While The Day After was shocking, it stopped too soon. As bad as the few days after would be that is not the real tragedy of a full nuke exchange.
The BBC made Threads about the same time and it did not stop The Day After but continued to show the after effects for decades to come.
If you are only going to watch one of these, watch Threads but be warned, you will have trouble sleeping the night after you watch it. Not because it is gory and graphic but because its subdued documentary style makes it all too real.
Threads will stay wtih you for weeks after as you contemplate that while the cold war has been over for decades, the nukes are still in their silos ready to make Threads a reality today.
Threads was brutal. Slow burn then it gets bad. Not quite The Road bad, but kind of a prelude to that
Threads is absolutely amazing and awful to watch, pure anxiety
Good movie.
Came here to suggest Threads. Brutal.
See also: Testament.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Next to the moon landing, it’s hard to think of a TV moment that had a bigger impact on the collective psyche than The Day After, ABC’s white-knuckle drama depicting the aftermath of a nuclear strike on the United States.
He supposedly got the idea for The Day After while watching The China Syndrome, the 1979 Michael Douglas movie about a near-meltdown at a nuclear reactor, which, in a harrowing example of life imitating art, happened to be released just before the actual Three Mile Island disaster.
Somehow, after much compromising — Stoddard originally wanted a two-night event but settled for a one-night movie — the picture was put into production, with a cast including Jason Robards, John Lithgow, JoBeth Williams and Steve Guttenberg.
Conservative groups went on the warpath against the network, claiming the movie was Soviet propaganda designed to undermine America’s nuclear deterrent (even though Hume’s script never identified who launched the strike against the U.S. or why).
Ted Koppel devoted an entire news special to The Day After, lining up an all-star bench of panelists — William F. Buckley, Carl Sagan, Henry Kissinger, Robert McNamara, Elie Wiesel — to debate America’s nuclear policy.
It’s very effective and left me greatly depressed.” Four years later, in 1987, Reagan would fly to Reykjavik, Iceland to iron out that ICM treaty with Soviet premiere Mikhail Gorbachev that resulted in the dismantlement of thousands of nuclear missiles.
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