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As a young teenager, I watched this on television when it first aired. The fact that not a single commercial was to be aired during the broadcast once the missiles were launched was unprecedented. Now, as a 50+-year-old, the scariest part about this movie is that it is a heavily toned-down version of the result of a nuclear war.
@charliewerchan7252 As an adult, the most despicable thing is the realization that the people who are most likely to survive nuclear war are the same people who provoked nuclear war in the first place
@@JulieannesAnimalsAndNature A bunch of them will be. But also, they will lose alot of family and friends due to the fact they are not part of the govt infrastructure.
As a young person born and raised in the UK, we had 'Threads' where the US had 'The Day After'. 'Threads' is many times more grim than 'The Day After' (which is a difficult enough watch anyway) - 'Threads' does not sanitize thermonuclear war nor - importantly - its aftermath. Where 'TDA' implies internal injury from radiation sickness, 'Threads' shows deformed births after rape. It shows graphic depictions of people burning to death and voiding their bowels/bladders as the firestorm rages. No sentimentality, unremitting and horrific, it remains without question the most terrifying thing I ever saw as a child and is no less impactful 40 years later when watched as an adult. Now I am become death - destroyer of worlds.
@@XXSkunkWorksXX I watched both. Both show rather dismal results after the war, but both also did not show the aftermath as bad as it will be. Darkness, and death. There is no writing a script for something so utterly heinous as completely destroying the world God created for us.
As a kid, this movie scared me more than any 80's horror film. Freddie, Jason and Michael Myers had nothing on this reality. And yes, I've seen Threads. This is far more realistic, has better acting and special effects.
Exactly what I was thinking. It was pretty scary, especially in those cold war days. Not even the Excorsit was as scary, and that was a terrifying movie in itself.
We were at a friends house smoking a joint watching this movie. Just before the first nuclear explosion, with all the tension, my friend tapped me on the shoulder to pass me the joint, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
Well my friend , the terror is back !! This situation in Ucrania second me not are a good finish ! My hugs to you in Brasil my brother and , God blessed and protect we !!
They need to have a remake/updated version of this, where the missiles launch due to the software being so outdated. It's a very real possibility it malfunctions in the coming decade, and people don't seem to care until they see the horror on the screen.
Yes everything stopped. Next day at school (jr high) there were counselors available and whole class discussions. I think it scared a whole generation.
You should read a book titled On the Beach, it's by Neville Shute. It's about the last days of the last survivors on earth after global nuclear war. It was written over fifty years ago by the same author who wrote A Town Called Alice.
I was a junior in high school. Watched this while babysitting. The kids were already sleeping when the movie played. I distinctly remember when the movie ended, hearing John Lithgow’s character calling on a ham radio…”This is Lawrence Kansas….is anyone out there…anyone at all…”. Ted Kopple hosted a discussion after the movie. He looked at the camera and said, “Take a deep breath, look outside. It’s still there…”. Still brings me to tears after 40 years.
The issue is now we're looking at global extinction in 2 years. Already 80% of life has gone extinct, and 50% of that is since 1980. So now we know it's happening and we can see in front of our eyes in slow motion.
@@rainbowwarrior2635Sure. We will all be dead in 2 years. If there is a nuclear war due to the constant warmongering from both political “sides” then yes everything could be done. Rachel Carson said we would have a Silent Spring in 1963; we were to have an ice age by 1980, acid rain and no ozone layer in the 90’s and the oceans were supposed to be hundreds of miles inland now. Just stop with your environmental doomsday fairytale. I’ll come back in 2027 and point out we are still here, unless Zelensky, Trump, Putin, Biden and all of them take us out.
Don't worry, the scumbag elite and their slaves will endure, miles underground with all the supplies they bought with our tax dollars. D.u.m.b. is the acronym
@@rainbowwarrior2635 get a grip rainbow. So, “we’re looking at global extinction in two years”? I’ll be back in four, God willing, and the Creek don’t rise, and we’ll see how that global extinction thing worked out for you. The only threat we face, is from a global elite who fancy you living in 15-Minute Cities, desperately wondering when your next protein laden cricket meal will arrive. All this because “farms, cow flatulence, and food storage deep freezers”, are bad for the environment. Read up on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs - a ravenously hungry population is easier to control.
What is more scary for me than the explosion itself is the amount of effort and technology the human race is able to put in the most wrong and useless things like war and destruction. Mind blowing
What's even scarier is how few people are involved in actually causing the wars. Many countries and hundreds of millions may fight and die in a war, but 99.999999999% of them have a hand in causing it, or the desire to continue it. It's just a handful of evil people pulling the strings.
At the end of the day, we’re just smart apes that learned to use our brain and hands to create things, We are still animals on the inside. We just need to take a Psychedelic to help us find our higher consciousness self so we can realize that war is not the answer but loving one another and advancing as a human civilization is the way towards peace and harmony...
@@DMTEntity88 I'm glad we didn't have that mindset in the era of WW2, or most of the world would have been enslaved by Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany and the USSR.
They need to broadcast this movie again right now worldwide for free. Scared the hell out of the public when originally broadcast and now more important than ever before.
World leaders should be forced to watch it, those with the authority to press the buttons. They may be safe in their bunkers short term but they’d have to come out at some point !
I remember sitting at the dinner table during the Cuban Missle crisis and my dad wondering if we were gonna be around tomorrow. That feeling never left me. Still hasn't.
You should see our Southern Border at the moment.....This is why many young men....just out of High School have said they were going MIGTOW.....Never to marry and never have kids. It's not that they are weird in some way....they just think by going migtow they have a better chance at survival.
@@danielbrown3461 And sadly who would want to bring a child into this world as it is now... These poor young men have been so maligned and vilified in Western culture as well. I feel bad for them, but then again, many will be better of without the sort of 'women' out there nowadays. Too many loose, sleazy and superficial girls with NO common sense or curiosity or empathy.
@@Reshigekko Men going their own way. It's men who have often been Divorced so they have decided never to marry again and downsize their responsibilities in life. In Japan they call it..."The Herbivoure Man"...And many young men roughly ages 18-25-26 have decided never to marry and not date. They have seen what happens in Divorce courts to their Fathers and Grandfathers.
I had just joined the US Navy in September of 1983 and was in My Tech School when this movie came out, I remember watching it the “TV Room” In our Barracks with the other students. During the attack and right after it you could have heard a pin drop, everyone just sat there in silence taking it all in. This movie helped to bring home the reality that there are No Winners only losers in a Nuclear War.
Have you seen Threads? It's just as terrifying. Also, Sarah Connor's dream scene in Terminator 2 is nightmare fuel. It's actually been cited by scholars as being an accurate interpretation of what would happen in a nuclear war.
Same on both points. I remember antinuclear rallies that some of our teachers invited us to. This movie scared the crap out of me then and it still hits hard. It came up in my UA-cam feed seemingly out of nowhere!
It was terrifying then and is more terrifying now. May God protect us but I know if it happens then Bear and I will be above in Heaven with my beloved Jerry and Sugar Bear.
More relevant now. Since Feb 22 we are living in a extended drawn out nightmare, where nuclear threats are casually made daily. That happened perhaps three times in the previous seventy years
yes, but with defense weapons about 100 times as powerful and smart as back then. If we could destroy the world with nukes before, now we can 100 times over plus all the other tech we have( rail guns, pulse lasers, Project Thor( nicknamed "Rods From God") tons of other things we probably don't now about.) The environment has changed pretty drastically. I thinks that's why we have gone so long without nuclear war. Besides, the west as a whole would decimate the enemy. ( with the exception of China. that would be a hard one)
I watched this on TV the night it broadcast. I remember this as if it were yesterday. This video brings back all the terror. The irony is that I met my boyfriend in 1985. He worked in the Airforce as a Missile launch officer. He was one on the guys that sat in the silos and turned the keys to launch the Nuclear Missiles. We were together for 33 1/3 years until he died from complications of a stroke. And the world continued.
I was 11 yo when this came out. We all watched it on one tv in my house and the next day spoke about it in class. I remember so vividly the silence in my classroom as the poor teacher attempted to explain things to us. Of course kids were talking about how it would be much worse than even the movie depicted, which made me more anxious. The scene of all the flashes of people just evaporating haunted me for so long. My 11yo brain couldn’t grasp it. I ended up having to sleep in my parents room for months. No Horror film ever got me like this made for TV movie in 1983.
What a lot of people that weren't around back then, don't understand, is that there were only 3 main channels in the U.S. and EVERYONE in the country watched the same shows. This one was horrifying growing up as a kid in the 80s.
I watched this movie when I was the mother of a small child, and I literally shook when when the missiles came out of their silos. It was too real at seeing that.
If your market was big enough you may have had an independent station as well as PBS giving you five channels. My folks were ruffians we had a booster on our antenna allowing us to pull in Twin Cities stations as well as our in market stations
Problem is a lot of them do not give a fuck. They've got their luxury bunkers fitted with just about any creature comfort you can think of. While the people are left to suffer and die on the surface. Thus paying the ultimate, final price for the personal enrichment of the officials they elected to represent and serve them. When this inevitably happens on US soil I hope I am as close to the epicenter as I can get. They will be the lucky ones
@@jonnyblayze5149 В конце-концов,у них есть дети,родители,друзья...И,вообще,невозможно долго сидеть в убежище...Рано или поздно придётся из него вылезать...Хотя...политики = это какая-то особая категория...Они уже не люди....
I was in the USAF when this came out on TV. I retired from the service in 1994. This came out in 1983. I was stationed at a SAC Minuteman missile base in South Dakota a couple of months before and we had just moved to Turkey so I didn't get to see it until my wife's parents sent it to us on VHS tape. When we returned to the states in 1985, I was stationed at the Omaha SAC Headquarters and I was on the HQ staff in the Command and Control division until SAC was deactivated in 1991, so I am very very familiar with the details of this whole movie. They cut out a few scenes in this production. Mostly very graphic scenes. There are a few other full versions of the whole movie on UA-cam but they are a little bit grainy. This was more of a documentary than a dramatic movie. All of the scenes at the beginning involving SAC aircraft and the missile launch facility scenes, both above ground and below ground were real. Most of the actors were actual Air Force personnel and all of the scenes of the Airborne Command Post with the General on board were real with real people. All of this is still in play. SAC was deactivated but now it is replaced by the AF Global Strike Command. The missiles are still on alert and the B52s are still on alert as well. Everything is ready to be launched at a moments notice. The number of weapons have been reduced but they are still there.
the depiction of missiles being launched and rising into the air with contrails behind them as shown at 3:46 is meant to show what might have been visible from Lawrence, KS. The missiles being launched from silos near Whiteman AFB. Whiteman is located near Sedalia MO and is about 120 miles distant from the KU campus. Whiteman now hosts a wing of B2 bombers and has deactivated all the missiles as a result of the START treaty signed in 1991. This treaty eliminated the Minuteman II missiles in inventory which Whiteman had 150. Its probably a little doubtful that the missile launch would have been that visible from the KU campus and only the ones located close to Whiteman would have been visible at all. The missile launch facilities where located mainly to the south of Whiteman for a pretty long distance. BTW missiles were never launched for any reason since they were always on alert. The only time they would have been launched would be a a result of launch orders being issued by the president. Missiles were test launched at times by pulling randomly selected missiles without the warhead from their launch silos and transported to Vandenberg AFB located on the Pacific ocean north of Santa Barbera. These were test fired and targeted at empty atolls in the south Pacific. Since this test firing was a one way trip it was only done infrequently. There are clips in this movie of missiles being launched from Vandenberg. There were no missile silos hidden or otherwise anywhere close to the KU campus. Or any other location not on a very tightly controlled launch facility.
@@uberlpn Thank you for your service too. When were you on Guam? My wife was there as a military brat from 1967 to 1969. She said they always watched the B52's come and go from Viet Nam and Thailand. Some were pretty shot up when they came back.
It’s Sunday night, 17 November 2024. This year I became a grandma, to a little girl. She made me young again. I beg on hands and knees to the powers that be , please let our baby girl grow old!❤
This movie was absolutely riveting. I will never forget watching this on network TV back in 1983. It makes you realize that for a nuclear attack there is absolutely no safe place to go.
The only places to go in my opinion would be places like Latin America that always stay neutral and very far away from everyone else. Places like Argentina, Chile, they have no political, military, or economic value in a global scale. You would have to be pray you are not in direct blast when it hits and inside some kind of bunker at least 30 feet deep with enough food and water last you at least one year. 30 minute warning is nothing. Best thing to do when shit like this starts to escalate is leave the country. If you wait till the last minute no way in Hell you will be able to leave. You will have to stay inside the bunker minimum 4 weeks before it is safe to go outside. Those people that live close to an active Nuclear reactor are Shit out of luck they will never be able to go out Remember Chernobyl? that place is still not safe to live. I would not even visit if you paid me.
@@eduardomaldonado1647Also, Chernobyl is safe to visit, the main rule is DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING AND FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS. The radiation level seems to be (almost) safe, but once the device is near some object or construction (especially metal), it starts to crack like crazy
In response to the OP's comment, Exactly, so when this happens, it's just a matter of time, there's no use in trying to run, hide, etc., just accept the end is nigh.
Those in the know complained this TV movie was far too reined in compared with what the reality would be. Yes, the British “Threads” was more intense and realistic, showing people doing things we never thought would be allowed on TV. A few decades later, our puny attention spans have consigned global nuclear war to the archives - no longer exciting. What “Threads” brought home to me that our civilized society is three meals away from chaos.
@johntechwriter Living on the coast of South Carolina, I've witnessed first hand what you speak of ," three meals away from chaos." With an approaching hurricane thousands of miles away with a speculative forecast that may or may not bring landfall nearby, people lose their minds and empty the shelves of food and water and buy up all plywood, chainsaws and generators within a 400 mile radius. Pre-planning isn't anything near a concept for most people. I'm always prepared for many months of being without.
Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader after Stalin, said that after a nuclear war, the living would envy the dead. There is no way that I would want to survive a nuclear war. I would rather be at ground zero than 'living' in a bunker somewhere.
I cried when I saw this movie back in 1983. Now in 2024, all I can do is pray so people who "rule" the world are wise enough to never deploy these weapons. May God protect us all. 😢😢
We had "rulers" in 1983, too. Reagan was a senile bag of flesh. Even a vigorous leader has always worked w/global partners. I hope you are right about corporate overlords because they like money and nukes ruin that
God will not allow nuclear missiles to destroy our home. Psalm 104:5. Putin, started war with Ukraine in 2022. He has been threatening to use nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Other countries have them too.
I remember we were assigned to watch this for homework in the 8th grade. Ironic that it's even more terrifying now, 40 years later, given the present circumstances.
It was no more a possibility then than now. It's never gonna happen as the same people who run Russia and China run us. They also run Ukraine. There's no money in nuking the world. It's a game to them and it's all for profit.
@@tacticalpossum7090 It's actually younger people more in favour of funneling arms to Ukraine, risking escalation to a nuclear war. The only old people pushing for it are the Biden's, Obama's, etc.
US President Ronald Reagan watched the film more than a month before its screening on Columbus Day, October 10, 1983. He wrote in his diary that the film was "very effective and left me greatly depressed" and that it changed his mind on the prevailing policy on a "nuclear war". The film was also screened for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A government advisor who attended the screening, a friend of Meyer, told him: "If you wanted to draw blood, you did it. Those guys sat there like they were turned to stone."
Apparently the Soviet Premier also saw it shortly after, and came to same conclusion. They were both horrified when seeing the realities. This film played a big part in stopping nuclear war.
That's romantic, but if a fictional TV movie/miniseries had any effect it was the exact opposite of what the producers intended. They wanted it to galvanize public support for the Democrat in the next election to defeat Reagan, who was growing more popular each year. The backfire was that people decided strength was a better defense than diplomatic appeasement (a lesson from pre WW2). Reagan won every state in 1984 except the opponent's own state and DC...a handful of electoral votes. As it turned out Reagan didn't start WW3 but diffused it, to the point that Gorbachev said so at Reagan's funeral. Remember that FDR authorized and funded nuclear bomb development. Truman had them dropped on two cities and authorized a UN war against Communist North Korea. Johnson committed US troops to fight in Vietnam. Kennedy had almost overseen a nuclear exchange over Cuba, which was armed because US missiles to target Moscow were placed in Italy and Turkey the year before...and JFKs CIA orchestrated a failed partisan invasion of Cuba in 61. This is what Americans remembered in 1983, not the whitewash of history the media later painted. As it turns out, the Hollywood prediction of what would trigger or diffuse the Cold War was exactly backwards.
@@STho205yep you're spot on it was to go after Reagan, and Reagan turned around and threw it in their face because it wasn't that much longer that he met with Gorbachev and try to stop this cold war, and did.
@@STho205 you know the partisan derangement has hit you hard when you feel compelled to fabricate a narrative about the movie producers' intent because you feel threatened by their presumed politics. Bonus points when you tack your fabrication onto a post that is actually conciliatory towards the politician whose side you're taking because even a conciliatory position isn't good enough for you.
In May 1987, this film was shown in the Soviet Union on the main TV channel, and I watched it with my parents. I was 11, and the details were remembered for a long time; this film was then perceived almost as a documentary. And I’ll tell you what: no matter what they say about Gorbachev, his policies at least removed the fears of nuclear war for many years.
@@free322001 No, I think that “Perestroika” had already gained momentum that year, and this film was shown on TV in order to emphasize that we need to be friends with the United States, and not fight. In those years, the Posner-Donahue “teleconferences” were already in full swing, and in general the narrative was promoted that for the sake of world peace it was necessary to establish a dialogue with the United States. This film turned out to be appropriate in the general outline of Soviet anti-war rhetoric, they say, “look, the Americans themselves made a film about the horrors of nuclear war, which is what we have always talked about.”
@@free322001Because it’s about greed. Be careful with who you call a Leader because most of them are not they are being told what to do by someone else not seen.
For its time, the high altitude detonation for EMP and the first strike impact in scenes moments later with Robards’ character taking shelter inside his Volvo while the explosion is visible in the distant background really got the point across. May we never experience nuclear war…🙏🏻
If you time it, it is exactly 30 seconds between the EMP detonation and the arrival of the first nukes. In the movie detail, it was revealed that the EMP burst was to disable ABM facilities at nearby Whiteman AFB.
That EMP blast is so sinister. Imagine hearing that Nuclear missiles are on their way to you and will impact your city within minutes. And as you try to get away… your car, motorcycle, plane, helicopter, etc. won’t start. It basically sealed the fate of almost everyone in Kansas City.
It's a miracle they achieved what you see here on a tiny for-TV budget. A lot of public domain stock footage, but also some nice mushroom clouds generated in a cloud tank, combined with cel animation.
I remember watching this film when it came out too. I was 13 and remember laughing so hard at how ridiculous this really was. Time has only proven that to be more so
I was 26 when this first came out on tv, and recently gave birth to our first daughter 3 months prior to the movie. I had no idea how realistic it was going to be or I wouldn’t have watched it. My emotions were still right at the surface and it took me weeks to be able to get through the day without crying and being hypervigilant. I actually could just barely watch this again, but I think they should show it again as I don’t think the war in Ukraine is being taken seriously enough. Putin is an extremely dangerous and evil man.
I was 11 when this came out on TV and we were all excited to see it because it took place in Kansas, where we were from. We gathered as a family to watch it at my grandparents house, and by the time the missiles fell and the aftermath was shown, we were horrified. I had nightmares for months of my parents being vaporized or dying slowly of radiation sickness. This was one of those moments that changed a generation.
John Lithgow is such an underrated actor. He could play the captain of the Titanic. He is so stoic and calm. The realization there is no recall no way to stop what comes next.
While the whole of Threads is by far the more horrifying, the launch and ascent sequence here is the most purely terrifying scene for me of the two. A pleasant mundane afternoon and the apocalypse is beginning over there on the horizon. John Lithgow's character know's he's looking right into the abyss.
I remember being 9yrs old watching this. It was a huge TV event. Scared me as a kid. The UK Threads movie that came out year later was also equally chilling at this time in the 80s
I’ve noticed that the young black girl heading into the building with her grandfather gets trampled to death in the stairwell when people are panicking from the nukes going off. You can see her body in the forefront of the scene. A very sad but noticeable detail about what happens when people panic.
I was in middle school when this movie came out and it scared the shit out of me to the point of having nightmares for many days after watching it. Even now I am almost 55 years old and it makes me very uneasy rewatching it. The scariest part of all is that at any moment this can happen in real life.
yes, and with the megalomaniac vlad put-HITLER-in charge of russia as a DICTATOR FOR LIFE and his fellow russian oligarch sycophants. xi jinping in china is just as INSANE! the real problem is BRANDON who has NO IDEA what planet he is on let alone wat time of day it is!
I was 19, nightmares on and off for weeks, I'm glad it showed the horror, we think it will be like the movies, nothing could be further from the truth, just seeing the skin deteriorating was horrific.
It already happened. Twice. Nagasaki and Hiroshima, remember? Only unlike in the movie there _were_ no "air raid" sirens to warn them of the bomb, not that it would have done them much good any way.
I saw this in HS... couldn't sleep after... My dad RIP was in the Dutch Air Force, in the 1960's he worked for NATO in the Netherlands before we immigrated (legally) to the US. He finally told us what he did for NATO after he was 75 yo.... Miss you Papa..
I was born in USSR in late 70's, honestly we haven't had this kind of movies in cinemas, but a lot of documentaries and real pictures from Hiroshima were demostrated during special course of co called "civil safety" courses at scool. I remember how shocked and impressed I was, even having nightmares when I had 10-12 years. I do remember this constant feeling of possible eventual catastrophy. The problem is that we never saw the same deception of American people, which is a way of manipulation and artifical creation of enemy perception. I hope those who remember and understand that may make effort to reduce actual tension and progression to madness. We share same values of family and peaceful life, and we sould never forget that we have same uniqie home - Earth.
USA and Sweden can wear this eventuality with the expansion of NATO after the Republicans Reagan and Bush promised not to for the end of the cold war. Boris Johnson, Macron add Zelensky added to the mess. Can't blame Putin only. He asked for no more sticks in his eyes. What would Biden do if Russia put sticks in Mexico?
The younger generations have NO idea what the situation was like during the cold war. The real fear people had. The fact a lot of us got warned about what to do if the bomb fell and so on. How close we've gotten on at least two occasions.
I worked the missile fields during the time this movie came out and before it did one of my worst nightmares was of working out on an LCF on a bright sunny day and suddenly on the horizon, seeing all the missiles in the wing start flying into the sky. At that moment you know that life as we know it is over.
There are some hard nosed people with experience in the defense industry who have talked like an attack could be "shrugged off". I don't think you could ever model or simulate everything from the human factors to the scale of destruction. Nothing even close to a two way nuclear war has ever happened so I wouldn't doubt there are consequences no one has even thought of yet.
@@Roddy556- nobody can imagine entire cities of million+ people entirely engulfed in the flames of a firestorm. ...then the long, cold, grey sickness and starvation if you survived it all.
When my ex and I watched this the first time it was aired, after huge media promotion, we stared at the TV screen for the entire movie and never said a word to each other. It was a state of shock that I have no words to describe...
The realism in this movie beats any other..back then they didn't have the technology but they sure knew how to make you feel everything was real. You can feel the sadness, the fear and realism in this movie. I remember seeing it at a cinema in the south of Italy with my family..I was 11 I think
This is the type of stuff that makes me want to go back way before any advanced weaponry was ever made, especially the nuclear ones. The fact something is capable of leveling a whole city and more in a matter of moments is terrifying, and the fact that this is a very real possibility is even more so.
It’s rather unlikely believe it or not. The problem is, any leader can decide they want to nuke another country. It’s not up to them to push the button. Those actually in charge wouldnt want to kill all of their family and friends
There would be a lot more wars though. The threat of nuclear war has prevented a major European war because everyone is too afraid of the consequences.
@@Avalon_1991 You realize that there is a major war going in Europe at the time of your comment and is still going on to this day. Your logic makes zero sense.
I was 10 when this movie came out. Nothing before or after has scared me as much. I did not sleep for days after this. Nothing but nightmares. What a terrifying time.
I was 24, and with my only child, on the way. The whole thing, had me speechless, and scared, for the next day. ( Not the movie. Real life ) I have not seen it, since that night, and gave me goosebumps, at 65. I'm not trying to one up, anyone commenting here. I just hope, it never happens, for real.
@johnnix862 that's extra terrifying really because you can tell your kids there are no such thing as monsters or ghosts but there is now and always will be a possibility of nuclear war.
I served in the Strategic Air Command in the Air Force back in the seventies. I was stationed on missile bases. This movie was pretty spot on as to what would happen. Scary.
I was a kid back then and nuclear war was always in the back of my mind. When Gorbachev allowed the Berlin Wall to come down I breathed easier for the first time.
Wow... I got chills. Felt like 9/11 when the whole world stopped and went silent. Instead of people going outside like in this film, it was televised and people were near the TVs. Crazy memory to have. I can't ever forget that feeling. I don't think anyone can for those who remember that time.
No movie has ever demonstrated such authentic raw material, being followed by our worst thoughts and feelings in case of a nuclear attack. 40 years have passed and I'm astonished like the first time for the realism i watch. A unique documentary film like no other!
I remember being terrified after this aired when I was in third grade. My step father tried to calm me down by telling me that nobody in charge would be dumb enough to start a nuclear war. That was the first time I ever saw him in context as a person. We both knew that human beings are stupid enough to destroy ourselves. We both knew there was nothing we could do about it. I was crying about a reality that he knew and accepted. We stood under the madness of the bomb together and I stopped my crying. Live as well as you can until the fools take it all away.
I was 12 years old when this aired on TV. I begged my parents to watch with them, but they knew how scared I usually got with horror movies, so they said no. I snuck up the stairs and watched around the corner. I had nightmares for months, and was terrified everyday back then, that this would happen to us. Always listen to your parents!!
When this first aired (and this was even announced in advance several times), zero ads played after the strike. It is the only time in television history of which I am aware, that such a move was made. The impact was the point, the networks aided it, and the world heard it. Now, we just need to remember it.
@Doug Lee I remember that distinctly. I was 23 and recently married living in NYC. It was kind of eary to see little traffic in the city and very few people around. Everyone stayed home to watch this movie. Like everyone else, we were pretty dumbfounded by the quality of it. I also remember Reagan speaking of it in a interview in which he pledged to eliminate the nuclear arsenals as long as the Soviet Union agreed to meet and speak of the consequences of a nuclear war were there will be no winners. 6 years later the Berlin Wall came down and communism was no more. There's another nuclear disaster film called Testament with Jane Alexander in the leading role. I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it.
@@md-ps2hx It was worse than fear porn. It was deliberate propaganda from left-leaning Hollywood to help stop communism from collapsing. This movie had only one purpose, and that was to cause snowflakes in the west to agitate for the US to give up their nuclear weapons. The soviet union was in its final days, and this was a way of encouraging idiots and left wing radicals to undermine the West.
There’s actually an even more disturbing movie called “Threads”, which came out at the same time as this…1983. British version of nuclear holocaust. Very disturbing
Постройтесь вспоминать об этом чаще, когда отпровляете танки и бронемашины на Украину. Вы верите что Россия проиграет? Если мы почуствуем возможность проигроша у нас не будет выбора мы применим ядерное оружие по Украине и по тем кто полезет в наши внутриние разборки. Что бы чуствовали Американцы если бы у них отобрали бы Техас и еще пять штатов, которые раньше были Техасом и превратили бы их во враждебное государство. А Украина это не Техас который вы отняли у Мексики, Россию и Украину связвает гораздо более долгая история, раньше Украина называлась Малая Россия, это позже она получила название у края( не знаю поймете ли вы с автопереводчиком) Смысл названия Украина звучит на русском у края на границе России. Мы в России воспринимаем происходящие как гражданскую войну и незабудем вмешательство во внутрение разборки, "Циркон" с ядерным зарядом летит до Америки 8 мин. для подготовки к запуску американских ракет надо 40 мин. Помните об этом. Ваши ракеты могут просто быть уничтожены в шахтах. "Сармат " несет несколько термоядерных зарядов.Способен уничтожит штат средних размеров. "Пойседон" поднимает волну в пять сотен метровона пройдет в глубь континента на тысячи километров, притом вода будет радиоктивная. Прекращайте лезть во внутрение дела русского народа, не накликайте беды.
@@scottdunkirk8198 Yeah there’s nothing currently happening in eastern Europe or the Middle East right now to justify stress. Definitely no nuclear powers currently in a conventional land war, no sireee!
I remember the local churches hosting the initial screening of this as a way to lessen its emotional impact in our neighborhoods. My church showed it and hosted a lengthy Q&A discussion afterward. I was more frightened from the discussion than I was the actual movie. The pucker-factor was great with this one.
There's a review by a couple of Americans here on UA-cam, comparing 'Threads' with 'The Day After'. One of them said the former made the latter look like a Disney movie ... I was 10 when 'Threads' was shown on the BBC, here in England, in 1984. My parents sent me to bed early, so I missed it, as, iiirc, it was shown at 9.30pm. But that didn't stop other kids in my class from watching it. It wasn't until a couple of decades later I bought a bootleg copy off the Internet, that I finally got to see it. It has been many years since I saw it, but some scenes are still in my memory, especially the ending ... Funny thing is, I live only a few miles from Heathrow Airport, well within the blast radius of just a 1MT warhead, though I suspect way more than one would've/would be targeted on it. Living on the 3rd floor (4th if you count Ground Floor as 1st), I'm just high enough to see the flash, before the heat, then shock wave hits. Given the likely overpressure, the remaining three floors above my flat would collapse on me ... ... or at least I hope so ... I would highly recommend 'When The Wind Blows'. Based off of a children's book, of all things, the animated version is not graphic. per-se, but it is as chilling as hell ... even that alone should be enough to make people realise that a global thermonuclear war is unwinnable ...
@@nigelft did you buy that bootleg copy from me? I sold a bunch on ebay... only £15 but I did author a marvelous dvd video menu screen and had extras.. even printed a good cover and disc... the extras included the protect and survive manual from the time.
@@thevikingwarrior Wrong, dying from radiation sickness is a much worse fate than instant death, if you have any doubts just watch the mini series Chernobyl.
During this time computer animation wasn’t yet developed well enough to use for movies. So what you’re seeing is a lot of films that the army made when they were testing real nuclear weapons. This was really common back in the 70s and 80s… To use footage from World War II or footage from the government in regular movies and TV shows to save on the cost of special effects. In order to make special effects back then you literally had to make models, and then try to blow them up. So what they’re doing here is they film the picture of the town and then they lay on top of that footage of bombs going off probably from some old military film.
@@latsnojokelee6434 - Oh come on. Star Wars A New Hope was 6 years before this. Star Trek The Motion Picture was 4 years before. 2001: A Space Odyssey was 15 years beforehand. All had much better special effects than The Day After because their budgets were much higher. It was well within Douglas Trumbull & Industrial Light and Magic's capability at the time to do a few mushroom clouds over a matte backdrop and make it look a million times better than this. The rest as you say would have been models blown up like in T2. Threads used old quality stock military footage of nuclear tests. The Day Today did it from scratch and it hasn't stood the test of time. The bombs are incredibly unrealistic for a start. You'd see the light and explosion of a 1 megaton nuclear explosion, but you'd only hear the sound about 48 seconds if you were 10 miles away like here.
@@Jimbo8012Considering this was made in 1982, on a tv budget, i’d say the F/X were actually pretty good. They were also effective enough to scare the living crap outta millions of Americans including Ronald Reagan himself. And it’s a movie not a documentary. So there was no need to be ultra realistic about noise levels or length.
@@latsnojokelee6434It’s true that they used actual WW2 footage of atomic bomb destruction. But I think the mushroom clouds were actually F/X that the filmmakers came up with.
I watched this in 1983 as a teenager, and I remember thinking that I would want to be one of the people who died instantly, rather than go through the horrible suffering that came afterwards.
I heard a mother say they hoped her young son got sucked into a DC-10 jet when 9 got pulled out of the plane. Over just being thrown out into nothing. There were 2 or 3 in the engine. They couldn't tell.
This was a TV movie I first saw in 1983. It was galvanizing, depressing and very scary. It brought understanding of what the aftermath of a nuclear strike would do to civilization and no one liked it. Until then, Hollywood had a rule of always having a happy ending in movies. This production changed all that.
This was the first time I ever felt depression and had no idea what it was or what to call it. I remember feeling that life was pointless and hopeless and it was inevitable that the Soviets would kill us all and this was how it would play out. I think I was in 2nd or 3rd grade?
"Threads" may have been more intense as far as the depiction of the aftermath. However, "The Day After" will always be THE NUKE FILM that contains the BEST depiction of the very frightening build up to the attack, as well as the very terrifying attack scenes themselves.
A year later, the BBC made a docu drama called Threads it was about the build-up and aftermath of nuclear strike on the northern English city of Sheffield. It depicted life before, during, and after nuclear war .It follows a group of characters, although one is waa central to the story . It pulls no punches and shows in graphic detail the horror of a nuclear strike and ten years into post-apocalyptic Britain . Nightmare fuel.
Three years later, there was an chilling mini-series that was made in direct response to The Day After: Amerika. It was about life in the United States under Soviet occupation.
Why isn’t there a new movie like this nowadays? We are in a terrible period, 1 inch close to WWW3 but most of the population seem not to care. All our lives, everyone we love, our family and beloved ones, our science achievements and our civilisation will all be gone. Forever. Where are we heading to?
hardly, nukes are strategic weapons. no one is dumb enough to use them and they have so many failsafes in place that the only way to launch them is for an entire echelon to desire the extinction of humanity unanimously, simultaneously
I saw this movie when I was 11/12 and I remember asking my dad what would we do. Living near Washington DC and military bases he said, “stay in God’s good graces”
I remember watching this when I was in high school. At the part where the missiles launch my stepsister ran upstairs to her room screaming in terror. I don't blame her. Bear in mind that 1983 was right after the death of Leonid Brezhnev and a nuclear war with the Soviets was a distinct possibility. We had no idea at that time that the whole Soviet system would come crashing down eight years later.
It sort of reminds me of the part of the movie, where the farmer's wife is more worried about making the bed and her daughters wedding, so her husband has to restrain her and escort her into the basement. Meanwhile her denial turns into sheer panic, and lets out the worst scream.
I'm not sure I wouldn't rank Threads's version of an actual attack over this one. Certainly, for the horror of the long-term aftermath, Threads exceeds The Day After. But Threads covers a much longer time period.
@@marysueeasteregg I've seen threads, it's laughable at best. The UK would have few survivors after an attack like this. In The Day After nearly everyone dies in the United States, you really think there would be that many survivors on a tiny island nation like the UK, lol. They did a decent attack scene in Threads, that's where it ends.
@@marysueeasteregg Threads didn't have a particular good attack scene. The explosions in threads were silent. American movies have the best special effects hands down.
@@Kazilikaya For what you are talking about -- "attack" in the sense of impact/blast -- I agree with you very strongly, The Day After is superior. When I said "attack," I meant the effect of nuclear war-in-general, the long term effects. I did not make myself clear enough.
I remember watching this as a kid and going, "Damn, nuclear war sucks." As an adult and I learned more, I realized that this show didn't even come close to how bad it would be.
@@paulboger3101 Yeah, the Day After is the fluffy nice sweet 'most people live happily ever after' Hollywood version of nuclear war. Threads is 'hold my beer'.
Already the US is talking about using a very low yield nuclear weapon in Ukraine against Russian forces. And Poland has just agreed to host US nuclear missiles on its soil. The creatures running the show in the US are as mad as cut snakes and they will do anything to "beat" Russia... even kicking off an atomic holocaust.
7:50 - This little panic sequence was filmed on the Square in my hometown, where I still live. I was very small at the time, and I remember my parents stopping by with me just outside the cordoned off area while they were filming. Hearing the yelling, cars honking, and general running about. Bear in mind, we had nuclear missile silos just a few miles outside of town. People in this movie would have absolutely seen the missiles being launched, just like it was depicted. Even to this day, when I see this movie, seeing the places I know and grew up with, it hits even harder. But for the grace of God, and perhaps even in no small part to the popular impact of this movie, the events depicted did not become our reality.
@@ChestonU A lot of this was also filmed right in Lawrence. The downtown part of the city, on Mass street was almost entirely used as a set. I was a senior at Lawrence High at the time. We had noticed several different locations around town that were used as well.
the irony that in the movie the Russians cut off West Berlin, but today it's NATO sanctioning Russia and sending aid to a country that has nothing to do with it. NATO is the new USSR
I came off 3 years active duty in the US Navy in 1982, and a little later this movie came out. Let me tell you, this movie sums up things pretty well. We were eyeball-to-eyeball with the Soviets in the early 1980s and were ready for the balloon to go up at literally any moment. My brother was an MP in Germany and they were expecting a Spetsnaz commando attack at any time. I remember coming home for leave, Christmas, 1981. The night before I flew back to the West Cost, where my carrier was homeported (USS Ranger), I made it a point to take one last, long walk around my neighborhood and its environs as I honestly wasn't sure if it, or I, or either of us, would be around in six months when I was to be discharged in the summer (we lived just outside Washington, DC, about 8 miles like of sight from the US Capitol, so if things went south, it was a pretty good bet that DC would end up a smoldering hole in the ground).
I was in the RAF during the 80's/90's/00's. To me, the cold war, although we were toe to toe, made the world seem a much safer place than it is now. i spent most of the 80's in Germany - front line cold war. the UK was actually seen as our training area! it sounds crazy but it was a great time to serve!!
I had just joined and was at PT Loma Subase San Diego, kinda hit close to home cause we worked on the Subs and knew what they carried. MM2 12 yrs 3 ships
And it will always remain so. We will never have only 4 TV channel options (including public television) ever again. At least, not until we nuke ourselves back to the stone age and eventually rebuild back to where we rediscover how to make TV again in another 15,000 years, anyway.
My father was war officer on the SAC Looking Glass plane the they filmed this. They had a film crew on the plane, not flying. His job, if on duty at the time of attack, was to be 2nd in command of the SAC assets in case The Hole at Offutt AFB was blown up. This movie was certainly the talk of the town for quite a while.
6:13 "Over 300 missiles inbound now" As if that statement wasn't terrifying enough already, you have to remember that each of those missiles were likely armed with *multiple* independent warheads, increasing their destructive capability exponentially. You could have up to 10 warheads per missile, so you effectively had THREE THOUSAND nukes coming at the US with no way to stop them. Truly a horrifying thought indeed.
I was 14 years old and our school briefed us the day of the show not to watch it. Of course that just made me watch it. It freaked me out. I became obsessed with reading anything I could about nuclear war.
@@Sugarsail1 I don't know if it was propaganda then but i do see the propaganda now in USA. A whole lotta things have gone REAL weird. people from other countries are laughing at Americans now. Not admiration.
I was also 14 at the time and from the UK. Our school videotaped it and we watched it in school the next day. As well as the English BBC version Threads
@@Sugarsail1 The propaganda was all about scaring the west to give up their weapons. You only have to look at this thread to see how scared it made people. The only ones who might have gained by this was the communist soviet union, which was losing the cold war, which is why left-wing sympathizers in Hollywood put this together. But the soviets were in so much turmoil they collapsed only a couple of years later. If they hadn't, this propaganda film might have enabled the left to persuade the West to give up its weapons, and we'd all be speaking Russian or Chinese today.
I had a teacher who described the end of the world ..she mentioned 2000. It gave me the shock of my life....including films like this. Thank God its 2024 already. Growing old, I learned to accept whatever it is the God permitted to happen. I no longer fear Nucs. With lots of bad guys everywhere in this world...what else can we do. Earth is dying to. The only thing to make life in earth start over again...is to Reboot it. It's just the same outcome even without Nucs. We exist today... tomorrow we will no longer be remembered, only the few dedicated historians will think about us 👍👍👍
This movie came out the day after I had my son it was terrifying. I was seeing commercials for the movie and my heart was broken and I thought what in the heck have I done bringing a baby into this???? It was Awful.. i’m the luckiest mommy in the world I have two amazing boys. I am blessed beyond measure.🙏🏼❤️🙏🏼❤️🙏🏼❤️🙏🏼❤️
I remember it had little to none. There was a lot of hype leading up to the broadcast about how utterly traumatizing it would be and would change the political landscape of the nation. It didn't happen.
@@odysseusrex5908 I didn't ask if it had a political impact. Gun violence is utterly traumatizing to people but politicians continue to do nothing. The two things are often disconnected.
And even so, 80's was the decade registering the highest music composition creation and the best decade in terms of music, singers, styles, etc. That confirms that human beings reach its peak point when they're stepping in the razor edge. Any day could be the last one. Amazing.
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As a young teenager, I watched this on television when it first aired. The fact that not a single commercial was to be aired during the broadcast once the missiles were launched was unprecedented.
Now, as a 50+-year-old, the scariest part about this movie is that it is a heavily toned-down version of the result of a nuclear war.
I agree, what they show on this movie is not even close to what would really happen. What's worse is how close we are to that reality right now.
@charliewerchan7252 As an adult, the most despicable thing is the realization that the people who are most likely to survive nuclear war are the same people who provoked nuclear war in the first place
@@JulieannesAnimalsAndNature A bunch of them will be. But also, they will lose alot of family and friends due to the fact they are not part of the govt infrastructure.
As a young person born and raised in the UK, we had 'Threads' where the US had 'The Day After'. 'Threads' is many times more grim than 'The Day After' (which is a difficult enough watch anyway) - 'Threads' does not sanitize thermonuclear war nor - importantly - its aftermath. Where 'TDA' implies internal injury from radiation sickness, 'Threads' shows deformed births after rape. It shows graphic depictions of people burning to death and voiding their bowels/bladders as the firestorm rages. No sentimentality, unremitting and horrific, it remains without question the most terrifying thing I ever saw as a child and is no less impactful 40 years later when watched as an adult. Now I am become death - destroyer of worlds.
@@XXSkunkWorksXX I watched both. Both show rather dismal results after the war, but both also did not show the aftermath as bad as it will be. Darkness, and death. There is no writing a script for something so utterly heinous as completely destroying the world God created for us.
As a kid, this movie scared me more than any 80's horror film. Freddie, Jason and Michael Myers had nothing on this reality.
And yes, I've seen Threads. This is far more realistic, has better acting and special effects.
Exactly what I was thinking. It was pretty scary, especially in those cold war days. Not even the Excorsit was as scary, and that was a terrifying movie in itself.
Same
True...
We were at a friends house smoking a joint watching this movie. Just before the first nuclear explosion, with all the tension, my friend tapped me on the shoulder to pass me the joint, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
Well my friend , the terror is back !! This situation in Ucrania second me not are a good finish ! My hugs to you in Brasil my brother and , God blessed and protect we !!
It's almost impossible to overstate what a huge TV event this was. Everything stopped the night they aired this.
yes, and many local news stations came on the air afterward to have extended discussions about it because so many people were upset by it.
It was brilliantly done, it shows the absolute horror.
Liar
They need to have a remake/updated version of this, where the missiles launch due to the software being so outdated. It's a very real possibility it malfunctions in the coming decade, and people don't seem to care until they see the horror on the screen.
Yes everything stopped. Next day at school (jr high) there were counselors available and whole class discussions. I think it scared a whole generation.
If this ever happens, I would just take a chair, sit in my front lawn and drink a nice cold beer. Nothing more I can do.
Save a chair and a beer for me.
I would still take my chances to survive.
There's nothing any of us can do except anticipate the fireworks.
You should read a book titled On the Beach, it's by Neville Shute. It's about the last days of the last survivors on earth after global nuclear war. It was written over fifty years ago by the same author who wrote A Town Called Alice.
pray for Allah blessings
I was a junior in high school. Watched this while babysitting. The kids were already sleeping when the movie played. I distinctly remember when the movie ended, hearing John Lithgow’s character calling on a ham radio…”This is Lawrence Kansas….is anyone out there…anyone at all…”. Ted Kopple hosted a discussion after the movie. He looked at the camera and said, “Take a deep breath, look outside. It’s still there…”. Still brings me to tears after 40 years.
The issue is now we're looking at global extinction in 2 years. Already 80% of life has gone extinct, and 50% of that is since 1980. So now we know it's happening and we can see in front of our eyes in slow motion.
@@rainbowwarrior2635Sure. We will all be dead in 2 years. If there is a nuclear war due to the constant warmongering from both political “sides” then yes everything could be done. Rachel Carson said we would have a Silent Spring in 1963; we were to have an ice age by 1980, acid rain and no ozone layer in the 90’s and the oceans were supposed to be hundreds of miles inland now. Just stop with your environmental doomsday fairytale. I’ll come back in 2027 and point out we are still here, unless Zelensky, Trump, Putin, Biden and all of them take us out.
Don't worry, the scumbag elite and their slaves will endure, miles underground with all the supplies they bought with our tax dollars. D.u.m.b. is the acronym
@@rainbowwarrior2635 get a grip rainbow. So, “we’re looking at global extinction in two years”? I’ll be back in four, God willing, and the Creek don’t rise, and we’ll see how that global extinction thing worked out for you.
The only threat we face, is from a global elite who fancy you living in 15-Minute Cities, desperately wondering when your next protein laden cricket meal will arrive. All this because “farms, cow flatulence, and food storage deep freezers”, are bad for the environment.
Read up on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs - a ravenously hungry population is easier to control.
@@rainbowwarrior2635What?
What is more scary for me than the explosion itself is the amount of effort and technology the human race is able to put in the most wrong and useless things like war and destruction. Mind blowing
What's even scarier is how few people are involved in actually causing the wars. Many countries and hundreds of millions may fight and die in a war, but 99.999999999% of them have a hand in causing it, or the desire to continue it. It's just a handful of evil people pulling the strings.
Yet if you question any of it you are called undemocratic or a west hating communist.
Those "useless things", also known as military hardware, saved much of the world's population from tyranny during WW2.
At the end of the day, we’re just smart apes that learned to use our brain and hands to create things, We are still animals on the inside. We just need to take a Psychedelic to help us find our higher consciousness self so we can realize that war is not the answer but loving one another and advancing as a human civilization is the way towards peace and harmony...
@@DMTEntity88 I'm glad we didn't have that mindset in the era of WW2, or most of the world would have been enslaved by Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany and the USSR.
They need to broadcast this movie again right now worldwide for free. Scared the hell out of the public when originally broadcast and now more important than ever before.
World leaders should be forced to watch it, those with the authority to press the buttons. They may be safe in their bunkers short term but they’d have to come out at some point !
Как он называется?
@@Руслан-к6ы9к The Day After
@@Руслан-к6ы9кthe movie name? “The Day After”
Yeap I was a kid when I seen it living in Kansas City. It scared me. But these brain dead elites seem to want a ww3. Crazy time we live in. Much luck
I’m 72 and we are closer now than we ever have been before. It’s mind boggling to me.
We are SO NOT.
😰😭 I'm scared.... very scared.Greetings from Serbia.I hope they gonna stop war.
40 years later, this movie still hits hard.
Yea... because it has a higher probability of happening today than it did then.
@@TheKATON132 my thoughts exactly. :(
@@TheKATON132 to true. back then leaders seemed to have some semblance of a soul. no so now
@@elrond3737 they are all insane--they have their underground shelters,rat holes..we have nothing
@@TheKATON132 I was going to post the same exact thing you did........
I remember sitting at the dinner table during the Cuban Missle crisis and my dad wondering if we were gonna be around tomorrow. That feeling never left me. Still hasn't.
Alarmism has been around a long time. Better off facing up to your own mortality. It can come anytime for many different reasons.
You should see our Southern Border at the moment.....This is why many young men....just out of High School have said they were going MIGTOW.....Never to marry and never have kids. It's not that they are weird in some way....they just think by going migtow they have a better chance at survival.
@@danielbrown3461 And sadly who would want to bring a child into this world as it is now... These poor young men have been so maligned and vilified in Western culture as well. I feel bad for them, but then again, many will be better of without the sort of 'women' out there nowadays. Too many loose, sleazy and superficial girls with NO common sense or curiosity or empathy.
@@danielbrown3461what’s migtow?
@@Reshigekko Men going their own way. It's men who have often been Divorced so they have decided never to marry again and downsize their responsibilities in life. In Japan they call it..."The Herbivoure Man"...And many young men roughly ages 18-25-26 have decided never to marry and not date. They have seen what happens in Divorce courts to their Fathers and Grandfathers.
I had just joined the US Navy in September of 1983 and was in My Tech School when this movie came out, I remember watching it the “TV Room”
In our Barracks with the other students.
During the attack and right after it you could have heard a pin drop, everyone just sat there in silence taking it all in.
This movie helped to bring home the reality that there are No Winners only losers in a Nuclear War.
Ronald Reagan said a nuclear war was winnable. He didn't say who those winners would be. But he seemed to do his dumbest to start a war with Russia
wow
@@snapcutter9596 what, when did i say the emp would affect the car or what ever tf you're trying to say?
@@snapcutter9596 Oh ok...
@@snapcutter9596 Yeah, well if it does happen, I'm in Paraguay. No one cares about that country
After 42 years, it's still the most terrifying movie about a nuclear WW. This is incredible..
Have you seen Threads? It's just as terrifying. Also, Sarah Connor's dream scene in Terminator 2 is nightmare fuel. It's actually been cited by scholars as being an accurate interpretation of what would happen in a nuclear war.
Threads make this look like Barney the dinosaur
True, Threads is absolutely brutal.
Threads makes this look like The Good Life
@@UnearthlyChild757 🤣
I was a senior in high school when it originally aired in November 1983. This movie is still as significant today as it was 40 years ago.
Same on both points. I remember antinuclear rallies that some of our teachers invited us to. This movie scared the crap out of me then and it still hits hard. It came up in my UA-cam feed seemingly out of nowhere!
It was terrifying then and is more terrifying now. May God protect us but I know if it happens then Bear and I will be above in Heaven with my beloved Jerry and Sugar Bear.
This movie that tell us how those weapons are evil
More relevant now. Since Feb 22 we are living in a extended drawn out nightmare, where nuclear threats are casually made daily. That happened perhaps three times in the previous seventy years
yes, but with defense weapons about 100 times as powerful and smart as back then. If we could destroy the world with nukes before, now we can 100 times over plus all the other tech we have( rail guns, pulse lasers, Project Thor( nicknamed "Rods From God") tons of other things we probably don't now about.) The environment has changed pretty drastically. I thinks that's why we have gone so long without nuclear war. Besides, the west as a whole would decimate the enemy. ( with the exception of China. that would be a hard one)
This movie scared the heck out of me as a kid because I knew that it could happen. It scares me now because it still can.
It's inching closer......
I was 7 when this was shown on network TV. F'd me all up, lol.
Live in fear? Not me I live everyday as it could be my last with some regrets but not fearful
Theres LESS of them now, but the fallout is still gonna significantly impact human population for decades and probably centuries to come.
I was aware of that every single day of the four years that we had a madman with this power in his hands
I watched this on TV the night it broadcast. I remember this as if it were yesterday. This video brings back all the terror. The irony is that I met my boyfriend in 1985. He worked in the Airforce as a Missile launch officer. He was one on the guys that sat in the silos and turned the keys to launch the Nuclear Missiles. We were together for 33 1/3 years until he died from complications of a stroke. And the world continued.
Please accept my deepest condolences
How incredibly interesting.
Was he tall , what did you have for lunch ?
🙏✝️❤️
@@peterherrington3300Pete,if you only could get a date with a woman 😉👠
That was the plan 🎬
I was 11 yo when this came out. We all watched it on one tv in my house and the next day spoke about it in class. I remember so vividly the silence in my classroom as the poor teacher attempted to explain things to us. Of course kids were talking about how it would be much worse than even the movie depicted, which made me more anxious. The scene of all the flashes of people just evaporating haunted me for so long. My 11yo brain couldn’t grasp it. I ended up having to sleep in my parents room for months. No Horror film ever got me like this made for TV movie in 1983.
What a lot of people that weren't around back then, don't understand, is that there were only 3 main channels in the U.S. and EVERYONE in the country watched the same shows. This one was horrifying growing up as a kid in the 80s.
Channel 3 ....8.....& 30 in Hartford Connecticut....yep that was it. The skeletons gave me nightmares for a decade
Q
Actually 4. PBS too. But your point is still valid.
I watched this movie when I was the mother of a small child, and I literally shook when when the missiles came out of their silos.
It was too real at seeing that.
If your market was big enough you may have had an independent station as well as PBS giving you five channels. My folks were ruffians we had a booster on our antenna allowing us to pull in Twin Cities stations as well as our in market stations
This film should be shown to all politicians. And, more often ...
Why?
Problem is a lot of them do not give a fuck. They've got their luxury bunkers fitted with just about any creature comfort you can think of. While the people are left to suffer and die on the surface. Thus paying the ultimate, final price for the personal enrichment of the officials they elected to represent and serve them.
When this inevitably happens on US soil I hope I am as close to the epicenter as I can get. They will be the lucky ones
They've seen it. It gives them ideas.
it wouldn’t do any thing they got their bomb shelters and will in them before you know what’s going on
@@jonnyblayze5149 В конце-концов,у них есть дети,родители,друзья...И,вообще,невозможно долго сидеть в убежище...Рано или поздно придётся из него вылезать...Хотя...политики = это какая-то особая категория...Они уже не люди....
I was in the USAF when this came out on TV. I retired from the service in 1994. This came out in 1983. I was stationed at a SAC Minuteman missile base in South Dakota a couple of months before and we had just moved to Turkey so I didn't get to see it until my wife's parents sent it to us on VHS tape. When we returned to the states in 1985, I was stationed at the Omaha SAC Headquarters and I was on the HQ staff in the Command and Control division until SAC was deactivated in 1991, so I am very very familiar with the details of this whole movie. They cut out a few scenes in this production. Mostly very graphic scenes. There are a few other full versions of the whole movie on UA-cam but they are a little bit grainy.
This was more of a documentary than a dramatic movie. All of the scenes at the beginning involving SAC aircraft and the missile launch facility scenes, both above ground and below ground were real. Most of the actors were actual Air Force personnel and all of the scenes of the Airborne Command Post with the General on board were real with real people.
All of this is still in play. SAC was deactivated but now it is replaced by the AF Global Strike Command. The missiles are still on alert and the B52s are still on alert as well. Everything is ready to be launched at a moments notice. The number of weapons have been reduced but they are still there.
3:46 US Air Force and the hidden missile silos right outside the residence halls on the KU Campus.
the depiction of missiles being launched and rising into the air with contrails behind them as shown at 3:46 is meant to show what might have been visible from Lawrence, KS. The missiles being launched from silos near Whiteman AFB. Whiteman is located near Sedalia MO and is about 120 miles distant from the KU campus. Whiteman now hosts a wing of B2 bombers and has deactivated all the missiles as a result of the START treaty signed in 1991. This treaty eliminated the Minuteman II missiles in inventory which Whiteman had 150. Its probably a little doubtful that the missile launch would have been that visible from the KU campus and only the ones located close to Whiteman would have been visible at all. The missile launch facilities where located mainly to the south of Whiteman for a pretty long distance. BTW missiles were never launched for any reason since they were always on alert. The only time they would have been launched would be a a result of launch orders being issued by the president. Missiles were test launched at times by pulling randomly selected missiles without the warhead from their launch silos and transported to Vandenberg AFB located on the Pacific ocean north of Santa Barbera. These were test fired and targeted at empty atolls in the south Pacific. Since this test firing was a one way trip it was only done infrequently. There are clips in this movie of missiles being launched from Vandenberg.
There were no missile silos hidden or otherwise anywhere close to the KU campus. Or any other location not on a very tightly controlled launch facility.
Thank you for your service to our country, I also was in the USAF stationed at Anderson AFB on Guam,
@@uberlpn Thank you for your service too. When were you on Guam? My wife was there as a military brat from 1967 to 1969. She said they always watched the B52's come and go from Viet Nam and Thailand. Some were pretty shot up when they came back.
Like a spectre
It’s Sunday night, 17 November 2024.
This year I became a grandma, to a little girl. She made me young again.
I beg on hands and knees to the powers that be , please let our baby girl grow old!❤
This movie was absolutely riveting. I will never forget watching this on network TV back in 1983. It makes you realize that for a nuclear attack there is absolutely no safe place to go.
Or hide 🙏
The only places to go in my opinion would be places like Latin America that always stay neutral and very far away from everyone else. Places like Argentina, Chile, they have no political, military, or economic value in a global scale. You would have to be pray you are not in direct blast when it hits and inside some kind of bunker at least 30 feet deep with enough food and water last you at least one year. 30 minute warning is nothing. Best thing to do when shit like this starts to escalate is leave the country. If you wait till the last minute no way in Hell you will be able to leave. You will have to stay inside the bunker minimum 4 weeks before it is safe to go outside. Those people that live close to an active Nuclear reactor are Shit out of luck they will never be able to go out Remember Chernobyl? that place is still not safe to live. I would not even visit if you paid me.
@@eduardomaldonado1647Switzerland is an option as well, they are always neutral too and have more than plenty of bunkers
@@eduardomaldonado1647Also, Chernobyl is safe to visit, the main rule is DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING AND FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS. The radiation level seems to be (almost) safe, but once the device is near some object or construction (especially metal), it starts to crack like crazy
In response to the OP's comment, Exactly, so when this happens, it's just a matter of time, there's no use in trying to run, hide, etc., just accept the end is nigh.
Смотрел этот фильм в детстве. Надо чаще показывать такие фильмы. Чтобы люди понимали, как страшна война!
Productive Capitalism,bank capitalism , hypertension bank capitalism, imperialism.Imperialism is war maybe nuclear war.
Americans killed 2000 korean innocent people with the Turks in one month in the war of Korea.Babies children.Wasnt north and south korea this period.
Вот так же смотрел в детстве. Сказать что ОХРЕНЕЛ будет слишком слабо
I concur
Hopefully our arsehole leaders on both sides will stop escalating things.
As an 18 year old watching this movie first run,it scared the hell out me. It changed me. It took months to get back to normal.
Watch the film Threads, it's from the British perspective, and we'd fair far worse than the States, russia would wipe us off the map 😞
@@Drobium77that gave me nightmares.
Thats good 1st Corinthians 15;1-4..Roman's 10;9-13..Ephesians 2;8-9-10..Galatians 1;6-12 ..
Those in the know complained this TV movie was far too reined in compared with what the reality would be.
Yes, the British “Threads” was more intense and realistic, showing people doing things we never thought would be allowed on TV. A few decades later, our puny attention spans have consigned global nuclear war to the archives - no longer exciting. What “Threads” brought home to me that our civilized society is three meals away from chaos.
@johntechwriter
Living on the coast of South Carolina, I've witnessed first hand what you speak of ," three meals away from chaos." With an approaching hurricane thousands of miles away with a speculative forecast that may or may not bring landfall nearby, people lose their minds and empty the shelves of food and water and buy up all plywood, chainsaws and generators within a 400 mile radius. Pre-planning isn't anything near a concept for most people. I'm always prepared for many months of being without.
This movie needs a remake and it should be mandatory for every human on earth to watch it
Why? It won't change anything
Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader after Stalin, said that after a nuclear war, the living would envy the dead. There is no way that I would want to survive a nuclear war. I would rather be at ground zero than 'living' in a bunker somewhere.
I would want to stick around for all the radioactive girls with 3 tits!
My idea exactly.
One UA-cam channel has the full length version of the British nuclear apocalypse movie Threads. And that movie is more disturbing than The Day After.
Living in a bunker? How long for. It doesn’t matter. You will eventually be forced out by starvation and emerge into a poisoned world.
@@danw2112 this film is tame by comparison.
I cried when I saw this movie back in 1983. Now in 2024, all I can do is pray so people who "rule" the world are wise enough to never deploy these weapons. May God protect us all. 😢😢
"I can confirm at this time we have over 300 ICBMs inbound" still blood curdling
Don’t worry, Biden would sleep through the alert and trump would never attack his chums in Moscow
We had "rulers" in 1983, too. Reagan was a senile bag of flesh. Even a vigorous leader has always worked w/global partners.
I hope you are right about corporate overlords because they like money and nukes ruin that
You better be ready to meet God because they will be at the very least using tactile nukes in the next few years.
God will not allow nuclear missiles to destroy our home. Psalm 104:5. Putin, started war with Ukraine in 2022. He has been threatening to use nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Other countries have them too.
I remember we were assigned to watch this for homework in the 8th grade. Ironic that it's even more terrifying now, 40 years later, given the present circumstances.
It was no more a possibility then than now. It's never gonna happen as the same people who run Russia and China run us. They also run Ukraine. There's no money in nuking the world. It's a game to them and it's all for profit.
Why is it more terrifying now than during the cold war? Putin won't do shit.
Too bad your generation didnt learn anything from it, eh?
WEF wants this for us all! Pray for God's Kingdom
@@tacticalpossum7090 It's actually younger people more in favour of funneling arms to Ukraine, risking escalation to a nuclear war. The only old people pushing for it are the Biden's, Obama's, etc.
Director Nicolas Meyer made the most honest movie he could on what a nuclear war could be like .
never forget that Soviet military officer Stanislav Petrov saved humanity from nuclear destruction on September 26, 1983 and this is a true story.
Questa cosa non è provata
Is it what was called the Able Arch exercise ?
And Vasili Arkhipov
And Nickolai Volkoff 🙌
위대한 사람
US President Ronald Reagan watched the film more than a month before its screening on Columbus Day, October 10, 1983. He wrote in his diary that the film was "very effective and left me greatly depressed" and that it changed his mind on the prevailing policy on a "nuclear war". The film was also screened for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A government advisor who attended the screening, a friend of Meyer, told him: "If you wanted to draw blood, you did it. Those guys sat there like they were turned to stone."
Apparently the Soviet Premier also saw it shortly after, and came to same conclusion. They were both horrified when seeing the realities. This film played a big part in stopping nuclear war.
That's romantic, but if a fictional TV movie/miniseries had any effect it was the exact opposite of what the producers intended. They wanted it to galvanize public support for the Democrat in the next election to defeat Reagan, who was growing more popular each year.
The backfire was that people decided strength was a better defense than diplomatic appeasement (a lesson from pre WW2). Reagan won every state in 1984 except the opponent's own state and DC...a handful of electoral votes.
As it turned out Reagan didn't start WW3 but diffused it, to the point that Gorbachev said so at Reagan's funeral.
Remember that FDR authorized and funded nuclear bomb development. Truman had them dropped on two cities and authorized a UN war against Communist North Korea. Johnson committed US troops to fight in Vietnam. Kennedy had almost overseen a nuclear exchange over Cuba, which was armed because US missiles to target Moscow were placed in Italy and Turkey the year before...and JFKs CIA orchestrated a failed partisan invasion of Cuba in 61.
This is what Americans remembered in 1983, not the whitewash of history the media later painted.
As it turns out, the Hollywood prediction of what would trigger or diffuse the Cold War was exactly backwards.
Yep, and it didn't take long for Reagan and Gorbachev to meet, and end this cold war crap,
@@STho205yep you're spot on it was to go after Reagan, and Reagan turned around and threw it in their face because it wasn't that much longer that he met with Gorbachev and try to stop this cold war, and did.
@@STho205 you know the partisan derangement has hit you hard when you feel compelled to fabricate a narrative about the movie producers' intent because you feel threatened by their presumed politics. Bonus points when you tack your fabrication onto a post that is actually conciliatory towards the politician whose side you're taking because even a conciliatory position isn't good enough for you.
In May 1987, this film was shown in the Soviet Union on the main TV channel, and I watched it with my parents. I was 11, and the details were remembered for a long time; this film was then perceived almost as a documentary.
And I’ll tell you what: no matter what they say about Gorbachev, his policies at least removed the fears of nuclear war for many years.
Interesting. Was it to show the "defeat" of the US? What do you think was his purpose in showing it on TV.
@@free322001 No, I think that “Perestroika” had already gained momentum that year, and this film was shown on TV in order to emphasize that we need to be friends with the United States, and not fight.
In those years, the Posner-Donahue “teleconferences” were already in full swing, and in general the narrative was promoted that for the sake of world peace it was necessary to establish a dialogue with the United States.
This film turned out to be appropriate in the general outline of Soviet anti-war rhetoric, they say, “look, the Americans themselves made a film about the horrors of nuclear war, which is what we have always talked about.”
@@JohnBlo76 I see. Thanks. I hate the way relations between our leaders have gotten worse as of recent.
Горбач развалил СССР
@@free322001Because it’s about greed. Be careful with who you call a Leader because most of them are not they are being told what to do by someone else not seen.
I was 8 years old when this movie was shown on soviet tv. Still crying on this scene
Aha, did the Americans sell their propaganda all the way over the Iron Curtain? 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
Los rusos la vieron ??? Pues no parece es como si cuando Putin cada rato amenaza a occidente ellos no entendieran que la final es mutua
I'm amazed at how authentic the acting at the missile silos was
Liar
They just filmed actual Air Force crews doing the endless launch drills they undergo to be certified. They still do these today.
@@tomservo5347 liar
@@ukissrulezliar
@@skulldozer1462 liar
For its time, the high altitude detonation for EMP and the first strike impact in scenes moments later with Robards’ character taking shelter inside his Volvo while the explosion is visible in the distant background really got the point across.
May we never experience nuclear war…🙏🏻
Amen 💯
If you time it, it is exactly 30 seconds between the EMP detonation and the arrival of the first nukes. In the movie detail, it was revealed that the EMP burst was to disable ABM facilities at nearby Whiteman AFB.
Volvo used to air commercials showing their safety features. Some even included crashes ….
This movie was perhaps a part of that promotion…
That EMP blast is so sinister. Imagine hearing that Nuclear missiles are on their way to you and will impact your city within minutes. And as you try to get away… your car, motorcycle, plane, helicopter, etc. won’t start. It basically sealed the fate of almost everyone in Kansas City.
This movie devoid of CGI or AI...for it's time, was very well done. It brought the horror of nuclear holocaust into everyone's living room.
@Don-rl1sm Hey ..we have a SCHOLAR in our midst. Bet you know how to spell masturbation real well.
Всех,кроме тех,которые до сих пор угрожают всему миру ядерной катастрофой
@@user9e42vdNa.. man, it's Climate change now! Get out of the past.
@@darkangelmichael6148what did they say?
It's a miracle they achieved what you see here on a tiny for-TV budget. A lot of public domain stock footage, but also some nice mushroom clouds generated in a cloud tank, combined with cel animation.
I was 8 years old. I remember watching this with my parents. It's affected me till this day. I was way too young to watch a movie like this
I remember watching this movie when it first came out on TV when I was 27. This scene sent chills down my spine. It still does.
Your spine??? 👀
Same here, I was in my twenties when it came out and it had and has the same effect on me, chills down my spine, now more than ever.
@@larvancioramos9748 hahaha
I remember watching this film when it came out too. I was 13 and remember laughing so hard at how ridiculous this really was. Time has only proven that to be more so
I was 26 when this first came out on tv, and recently gave birth to our first daughter 3 months prior to the movie. I had no idea how realistic it was going to be or I wouldn’t have watched it. My emotions were still right at the surface and it took me weeks to be able to get through the day without crying and being hypervigilant. I actually could just barely watch this again, but I think they should show it again as I don’t think the war in Ukraine is being taken seriously enough. Putin is an extremely dangerous and evil man.
I was 11 when this came out on TV and we were all excited to see it because it took place in Kansas, where we were from. We gathered as a family to watch it at my grandparents house, and by the time the missiles fell and the aftermath was shown, we were horrified. I had nightmares for months of my parents being vaporized or dying slowly of radiation sickness. This was one of those moments that changed a generation.
Sorry. But nothing changed. Every generation . The same
Вот вы наивная! Нечего не изменилось. Все ещё может случиться.
John Lithgow is such an underrated actor. He could play the captain of the Titanic. He is so stoic and calm. The realization there is no recall no way to stop what comes next.
And he was hilarious in 3rd Rock From The Sun, the man is one of the most diverse actors there ever was.
And he was in Harry and the Hendersons
....and the bad guy in Dexter!
He's underrated because his face doesn't match most scripts.
He was in the Twilight zone movie at the same time this was made. He was far from stoic and calm.
This movie is a constant reminder to everyone that there are no winners in a nuclear war
While the whole of Threads is by far the more horrifying, the launch and ascent sequence here is the most purely terrifying scene for me of the two. A pleasant mundane afternoon and the apocalypse is beginning over there on the horizon. John Lithgow's character know's he's looking right into the abyss.
Part to take note in “ Threads” is towards the end of the film. Those with guns determine who gets food…
i saw threads when i was younger it scared the shit out of me for weeks and the teachers wonderd why no one was paying attention to school work
Very well done for a TV movie. Scary as shit.
@@insideoutsideupsidedown2218and those who suffer the longest.
I remember being 9yrs old watching this. It was a huge TV event. Scared me as a kid.
The UK Threads movie that came out year later was also equally chilling at this time in the 80s
We NEED movies like this one and Threads. I usually don't like reboots but I wish this one would get a reboot as a warning for younger generations.
I’ve noticed that the young black girl heading into the building with her grandfather gets trampled to death in the stairwell when people are panicking from the nukes going off. You can see her body in the forefront of the scene. A very sad but noticeable detail about what happens when people panic.
We all better start watching this movie. About to become a documentary.
I was in middle school when this movie came out and it scared the shit out of me to the point of having nightmares for many days after watching it. Even now I am almost 55 years old and it makes me very uneasy rewatching it. The scariest part of all is that at any moment this can happen in real life.
yes, and with the megalomaniac vlad put-HITLER-in charge of russia as a DICTATOR FOR LIFE and his fellow russian oligarch sycophants. xi jinping in china is just as INSANE! the real problem is BRANDON who has NO IDEA what planet he is on let alone wat time of day it is!
Yup me too, same age, I remember
I was 19, nightmares on and off for weeks, I'm glad it showed the horror, we think it will be like the movies, nothing could be further from the truth, just seeing the skin deteriorating was horrific.
It already happened. Twice. Nagasaki and Hiroshima, remember? Only unlike in the movie there _were_ no "air raid" sirens to warn them of the bomb, not that it would have done them much good any way.
@@DavidStruveDesigns nope, they dont remember. Thats why it will happen again
I saw this in HS... couldn't sleep after... My dad RIP was in the Dutch Air Force, in the 1960's he worked for NATO in the Netherlands before we immigrated (legally) to the US. He finally told us what he did for NATO after he was 75 yo.... Miss you Papa..
You're Dutch, "legally" was already assumed. 👍
I was born in USSR in late 70's, honestly we haven't had this kind of movies in cinemas, but a lot of documentaries and real pictures from Hiroshima were demostrated during special course of co called "civil safety" courses at scool. I remember how shocked and impressed I was, even having nightmares when I had 10-12 years. I do remember this constant feeling of possible eventual catastrophy. The problem is that we never saw the same deception of American people, which is a way of manipulation and artifical creation of enemy perception. I hope those who remember and understand that may make effort to reduce actual tension and progression to madness. We share same values of family and peaceful life, and we sould never forget that we have same uniqie home - Earth.
The Day After was played in Soviet theatres. Great comment. Thoughtful.
USA and Sweden can wear this eventuality with the expansion of NATO after the Republicans Reagan and Bush promised not to for the end of the cold war. Boris Johnson, Macron add Zelensky added to the mess. Can't blame Putin only. He asked for no more sticks in his eyes. What would Biden do if Russia put sticks in Mexico?
✌❤
We are all truly brothers and sisters
Great technology only for human destruction
The younger generations have NO idea what the situation was like during the cold war.
The real fear people had. The fact a lot of us got warned about what to do if the bomb fell and so on.
How close we've gotten on at least two occasions.
This movie needs to be shown to everyone
It was!!!! 40 years ago along with the other movie called THREADS. We are TOO DUMB today to even care.
@@catherineblack2970 And the conflict in ukrane can make this become real soon more soon than the cupa crises in the 60s
@@Mrbimmer11 Datz fer sho sweet cakez. Dem rooskies are tuff mfers
It's like the movie "don't look up." Most people will deny this outcome.
show it to Putin in Russia 4 times by March 10th.
I worked the missile fields during the time this movie came out and before it did one of my worst nightmares was of working out on an LCF on a bright sunny day and suddenly on the horizon,
seeing all the missiles in the wing start flying into the sky. At that moment you know that life as we know it is over.
There are some hard nosed people with experience in the defense industry who have talked like an attack could be "shrugged off". I don't think you could ever model or simulate everything from the human factors to the scale of destruction. Nothing even close to a two way nuclear war has ever happened so I wouldn't doubt there are consequences no one has even thought of yet.
@@Roddy556"Threads" at least touched on that. Life after nukes will be hell. Pure hell.
@markcritic2409 yeah 9/11 threw the world off kilter and that would be like a few drips of water into a bathtub by comparison.
@@Roddy556- nobody can imagine entire cities of million+ people entirely engulfed in the flames of a firestorm.
...then the long, cold, grey sickness and starvation if you survived it all.
Yes they litterally went back to the stone age quite frightening
When my ex and I watched this the first time it was aired, after huge media promotion, we stared at the TV screen for the entire movie and never said a word to each other. It was a state of shock that I have no words to describe...
The realism in this movie beats any other..back then they didn't have the technology but they sure knew how to make you feel everything was real. You can feel the sadness, the fear and realism in this movie. I remember seeing it at a cinema in the south of Italy with my family..I was 11 I think
@@purefreedom282have you ever watched Threads? Now that was terrifying.
So, are you saying that you are bankrolling her retirement?
Did she have big jugs
Same as the thirty guys in the bar I was in.
This closer to reality today than ever before .
Seems closer but the cold war had it worse
This is the type of stuff that makes me want to go back way before any advanced weaponry was ever made, especially the nuclear ones. The fact something is capable of leveling a whole city and more in a matter of moments is terrifying, and the fact that this is a very real possibility is even more so.
It’s rather unlikely believe it or not. The problem is, any leader can decide they want to nuke another country. It’s not up to them to push the button. Those actually in charge wouldnt want to kill all of their family and friends
Yes haw hard is to set a blaze wooden village
Or the fact that it's actually happened already, twice
There would be a lot more wars though. The threat of nuclear war has prevented a major European war because everyone is too afraid of the consequences.
@@Avalon_1991 You realize that there is a major war going in Europe at the time of your comment and is still going on to this day. Your logic makes zero sense.
I was 10 when this movie came out. Nothing before or after has scared me as much. I did not sleep for days after this. Nothing but nightmares. What a terrifying time.
I was 13 and It scared me as well. It still bothers me today knowing it could still happen!
I was 24, and with my only child, on the way. The whole thing, had me speechless, and scared, for the next day. ( Not the movie. Real life ) I have not seen it, since that night, and gave me goosebumps, at 65. I'm not trying to one up, anyone commenting here. I just hope, it never happens, for real.
@johnnix862 that's extra terrifying really because you can tell your kids there are no such thing as monsters or ghosts but there is now and always will be a possibility of nuclear war.
So did I
No those terrifying times are coming soon. Biden is pushing it.
I served in the Strategic Air Command in the Air Force back in the seventies. I was stationed on missile bases. This movie was pretty spot on as to what would happen. Scary.
Grand Forks 80-83
F E Warren 79-83
Thank you to silo operators. Most horrible position to have.
Think about all the silos going off and then think about Yellowstone blowing up. Same end.
I was born on a SAC base in the early 70s (KI Sawyer). My mom remembers them lying about there being missiles on base.
I was a kid back then and nuclear war was always in the back of my mind. When Gorbachev allowed the Berlin Wall to come down I breathed easier for the first time.
Wow... I got chills. Felt like 9/11 when the whole world stopped and went silent. Instead of people going outside like in this film, it was televised and people were near the TVs. Crazy memory to have. I can't ever forget that feeling. I don't think anyone can for those who remember that time.
I watched this movie at the launch, I was 12 years old. It was one of the movies that marked me the most. That summer I watched these movies 3 times.
No movie has ever demonstrated such authentic raw material, being followed by our worst thoughts and feelings in case of a nuclear attack. 40 years have passed and I'm astonished like the first time for the realism i watch. A unique documentary film like no other!
You should see the British equivalent, the name is "threads" I'm dead serious that TDA looks like a Disney movie by comparison
@@albertoandrade9807 I have just watched it, truly apocalyptic and raw thank you for the answering.
@@albertoandrade9807
I agree
All the visuals are just lifted stock footage of nuclear test detonations.
War is business, and this type of movies will drop the price of shares related to war. Get real.
I was 13 years old! The impact sound alone is a sound I'll never forget! They'll be nothing left to fight for. May God be with us all.
It's not the end times yet this year and 2025
I remember being terrified after this aired when I was in third grade.
My step father tried to calm me down by telling me that nobody in charge would be dumb enough to start a nuclear war. That was the first time I ever saw him in context as a person. We both knew that human beings are stupid enough to destroy ourselves. We both knew there was nothing we could do about it. I was crying about a reality that he knew and accepted.
We stood under the madness of the bomb together and I stopped my crying.
Live as well as you can until the fools take it all away.
You still close with your stepdad?
I was 12 years old when this aired on TV. I begged my parents to watch with them, but they knew how scared I usually got with horror movies, so they said no. I snuck up the stairs and watched around the corner. I had nightmares for months, and was terrified everyday back then, that this would happen to us. Always listen to your parents!!
Good story. Needs more dragons.
When this first aired (and this was even announced in advance several times), zero ads played after the strike. It is the only time in television history of which I am aware, that such a move was made. The impact was the point, the networks aided it, and the world heard it. Now, we just need to remember it.
@Doug Lee
I remember that distinctly. I was 23 and recently married living in NYC. It was kind of eary to see little traffic in the city and very few people around. Everyone stayed home to watch this movie. Like everyone else, we were pretty dumbfounded by the quality of it. I also remember Reagan speaking of it in a interview in which he pledged to eliminate the nuclear arsenals as long as the Soviet Union agreed to meet and speak of the consequences of a nuclear war were there will be no winners. 6 years later the Berlin Wall came down and communism was no more.
There's another nuclear disaster film called Testament with Jane Alexander in the leading role. I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it.
Looking back, from a 2020 perspective, I realise it was just FEAR porn ...
@@md-ps2hx It was worse than fear porn. It was deliberate propaganda from left-leaning Hollywood to help stop communism from collapsing. This movie had only one purpose, and that was to cause snowflakes in the west to agitate for the US to give up their nuclear weapons. The soviet union was in its final days, and this was a way of encouraging idiots and left wing radicals to undermine the West.
There’s actually an even more disturbing movie called “Threads”, which came out at the same time as this…1983. British version of nuclear holocaust. Very disturbing
Постройтесь вспоминать об этом чаще, когда отпровляете танки и бронемашины на Украину.
Вы верите что Россия проиграет? Если мы почуствуем возможность проигроша у нас не будет выбора мы применим ядерное оружие по Украине и по тем кто полезет в наши внутриние разборки.
Что бы чуствовали Американцы если бы у них отобрали бы Техас и еще пять штатов, которые раньше были Техасом и превратили бы их во враждебное государство.
А Украина это не Техас который вы отняли у Мексики, Россию и Украину связвает гораздо более долгая история, раньше Украина называлась Малая Россия, это позже она получила название у края( не знаю поймете ли вы с автопереводчиком)
Смысл названия Украина звучит на русском у края на границе России. Мы в России воспринимаем происходящие как гражданскую войну и незабудем вмешательство во внутрение разборки, "Циркон" с ядерным зарядом летит до Америки 8 мин. для подготовки к запуску американских ракет надо 40 мин. Помните об этом. Ваши ракеты могут просто быть уничтожены в шахтах. "Сармат " несет несколько термоядерных зарядов.Способен уничтожит штат средних размеров. "Пойседон" поднимает волну в пять сотен метровона пройдет в глубь континента на тысячи километров, притом вода будет радиоктивная. Прекращайте лезть во внутрение дела русского народа, не накликайте беды.
Bad thing is too many don’t know what we all dealt with in the Cold War era
Young people: Let's go back to the 1980s!
Me, a child of the 1980s: *laughs in Cold War PTSD*
@@ladysilverwynde it’s funny all the wimps crying about all the stress, they would have been locked in the crazy house in the 70s and 80s lol
@@scottdunkirk8198 Yeah there’s nothing currently happening in eastern Europe or the Middle East right now to justify stress. Definitely no nuclear powers currently in a conventional land war, no sireee!
@ I never said there wasn’t anything going on, according to kamala NO Americans are deployed in hostile areas lol oh like the Middle East or africa
I remember the local churches hosting the initial screening of this as a way to lessen its emotional impact in our neighborhoods. My church showed it and hosted a lengthy Q&A discussion afterward. I was more frightened from the discussion than I was the actual movie. The pucker-factor was great with this one.
here we are today--so damn close--scott ritter,ex marine command and intel officer says we are miliseconds away...ugh,big ugh
The population of the world needs to see this and everything to educate us. The danger is very close and we need to be scared now.
This movie frightened the absolute crap out of me as a teen…
And then I saw Threads…
There's a review by a couple of Americans here on UA-cam, comparing 'Threads' with 'The Day After'. One of them said the former made the latter look like a Disney movie ...
I was 10 when 'Threads' was shown on the BBC, here in England, in 1984. My parents sent me to bed early, so I missed it, as, iiirc, it was shown at 9.30pm. But that didn't stop other kids in my class from watching it.
It wasn't until a couple of decades later I bought a bootleg copy off the Internet, that I finally got to see it. It has been many years since I saw it, but some scenes are still in my memory, especially the ending ...
Funny thing is, I live only a few miles from Heathrow Airport, well within the blast radius of just a 1MT warhead, though I suspect way more than one would've/would be targeted on it. Living on the 3rd floor (4th if you count Ground Floor as 1st), I'm just high enough to see the flash, before the heat, then shock wave hits. Given the likely overpressure, the remaining three floors above my flat would collapse on me ...
... or at least I hope so ...
I would highly recommend 'When The Wind Blows'. Based off of a children's book, of all things, the animated version is not graphic. per-se, but it is as chilling as hell ... even that alone should be enough to make people realise that a global thermonuclear war is unwinnable ...
@@nigelft what i learned from “Threads” was whoever had the guns got to eat.
@@nigelft did you buy that bootleg copy from me? I sold a bunch on ebay... only £15 but I did author a marvelous dvd video menu screen and had extras.. even printed a good cover and disc... the extras included the protect and survive manual from the time.
I saw threads and thought it was 😑
Threads is/was truly terrifying.
I repeat THIS IS NOT A EXCERCISE
I had a 2 year old when this aired. It tore my heart out to see the little child suffering from radiation sickness😢
Better than being barbequed alive.
@@thevikingwarrior Wrong, dying from radiation sickness is a much worse fate than instant death, if you have any doubts just watch the mini series Chernobyl.
@@thevikingwarriorThat's the merciful way to exit a nuclear war.
Special effects in this film were off the charts for that time. Mushroom clouds look so realistic
Some were real. They were taken from tests that were conducted by the military.
During this time computer animation wasn’t yet developed well enough to use for movies. So what you’re seeing is a lot of films that the army made when they were testing real nuclear weapons. This was really common back in the 70s and 80s… To use footage from World War II or footage from the government in regular movies and TV shows to save on the cost of special effects. In order to make special effects back then you literally had to make models, and then try to blow them up. So what they’re doing here is they film the picture of the town and then they lay on top of that footage of bombs going off probably from some old military film.
@@latsnojokelee6434 - Oh come on. Star Wars A New Hope was 6 years before this. Star Trek The Motion Picture was 4 years before. 2001: A Space Odyssey was 15 years beforehand.
All had much better special effects than The Day After because their budgets were much higher. It was well within Douglas Trumbull & Industrial Light and Magic's capability at the time to do a few mushroom clouds over a matte backdrop and make it look a million times better than this. The rest as you say would have been models blown up like in T2.
Threads used old quality stock military footage of nuclear tests. The Day Today did it from scratch and it hasn't stood the test of time. The bombs are incredibly unrealistic for a start. You'd see the light and explosion of a 1 megaton nuclear explosion, but you'd only hear the sound about 48 seconds if you were 10 miles away like here.
@@Jimbo8012Considering this was made in 1982, on a tv budget, i’d say the F/X were actually pretty good. They were also effective enough to scare the living crap outta millions of Americans including Ronald Reagan himself. And it’s a movie not a documentary. So there was no need to be ultra realistic about noise levels or length.
@@latsnojokelee6434It’s true that they used actual WW2 footage of atomic bomb destruction. But I think the mushroom clouds were actually F/X that the filmmakers came up with.
I watched this in 1983 as a teenager, and I remember thinking that I would want to be one of the people who died instantly, rather than go through the horrible suffering that came afterwards.
I heard a mother say they hoped her young son got sucked into a DC-10 jet when 9 got pulled out of the plane. Over just being thrown out into nothing.
There were 2 or 3 in the engine. They couldn't tell.
😥
I saw this years later. I felt the same way.
I too would like to be at ground zero.
Yup just give me a general direction where its going to hit because I want to get as close to the blast as I can
Watched this movie in primary school for a lesson
Never forget
This was a TV movie I first saw in 1983. It was galvanizing, depressing and very scary. It brought understanding of what the aftermath of a nuclear strike would do to civilization and no one liked it. Until then, Hollywood had a rule of always having a happy ending in movies. This production changed all that.
This was the first time I ever felt depression and had no idea what it was or what to call it. I remember feeling that life was pointless and hopeless and it was inevitable that the Soviets would kill us all and this was how it would play out. I think I was in 2nd or 3rd grade?
It wasn’t the first movie to end in nuclear war. “Dr. Strangelove” did 20 years before.
The actual...much worse
@@5roundsrapid263 I think Dr. Strangelove was meant as a dark comedy and not supposed to be a realistic depiction of nuclear war.
No nuclear winter
"Threads" may have been more intense as far as the depiction of the aftermath. However, "The Day After" will always be THE NUKE FILM that contains the BEST depiction of the very frightening build up to the attack, as well as the very terrifying attack scenes themselves.
Still a chilling movie 40 years ago this fall.
Mee too
😵
A year later, the BBC made a docu drama called Threads it was about the build-up and aftermath of nuclear strike on the northern English city of Sheffield.
It depicted life before, during, and after nuclear war .It follows a group of characters, although one is waa central to the story .
It pulls no punches and shows in graphic detail the horror of a nuclear strike and ten years into post-apocalyptic Britain .
Nightmare fuel.
Given recents events with Russia, uncomfortably contemporary.
Three years later, there was an chilling mini-series that was made in direct response to The Day After: Amerika. It was about life in the United States under Soviet occupation.
It's a nuclear war
Why isn’t there a new movie like this nowadays? We are in a terrible period, 1 inch close to WWW3 but most of the population seem not to care. All our lives, everyone we love, our family and beloved ones, our science achievements and our civilisation will all be gone. Forever.
Where are we heading to?
We just started ww3 today...
People don't understand how close we are right now to this breaking out at any moment.
😐😔 its so damn scary and sad
hardly, nukes are strategic weapons. no one is dumb enough to use them and they have so many failsafes in place that the only way to launch them is for an entire echelon to desire the extinction of humanity unanimously, simultaneously
You were great in ghost .
Especially when you died , I liked that bit
@@peterherrington3300 lol
Lets get it over with. Humanity is done on this planet. Too many People.
I saw this movie when I was 11/12 and I remember asking my dad what would we do. Living near Washington DC and military bases he said, “stay in God’s good graces”
I live in San Diego very close to the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. There would be no hiding from that hell fire around here
@@edwardsavage9782 Hit North Island, Sub Base and 32nd St before Miramar.
@@jeffbeck8993 Yeah, well all of San Diego would be decimated. So many defense contractors in this city
I remember watching this when I was in high school. At the part where the missiles launch my stepsister ran upstairs to her room screaming in terror. I don't blame her. Bear in mind that 1983 was right after the death of Leonid Brezhnev and a nuclear war with the Soviets was a distinct possibility. We had no idea at that time that the whole Soviet system would come crashing down eight years later.
That was the time when the fear of a nuclear war was commonplace in Europe. Is it that time again soon?
Scary at that time I was just graduating High School. It's still scary to think it can happen sooner than we know. It's about to get real.
The Soviet system thankfully failed via the “peace through strength@ doctrine of Ronald Reagan. No revisionist history can change that.
Especially after Able Archer 83 nearly freaked the Soviets out enough to push that button in the first place.
It sort of reminds me of the part of the movie, where the farmer's wife is more worried about making the bed and her daughters wedding, so her husband has to restrain her and escort her into the basement. Meanwhile her denial turns into sheer panic, and lets out the worst scream.
This is the best nuclear attack scene in cinematic history. It shows graphically how awesomely destructive nuclear weapons are.
I'm not sure I wouldn't rank Threads's version of an actual attack over this one.
Certainly, for the horror of the long-term aftermath, Threads exceeds The Day After. But Threads covers a much longer time period.
@@marysueeasteregg I've seen threads, it's laughable at best. The UK would have few survivors after an attack like this. In The Day After nearly everyone dies in the United States, you really think there would be that many survivors on a tiny island nation like the UK, lol. They did a decent attack scene in Threads, that's where it ends.
@@marysueeasteregg Threads didn't have a particular good attack scene. The explosions in threads were silent. American movies have the best special effects hands down.
@@Kazilikaya For what you are talking about -- "attack" in the sense of impact/blast -- I agree with you very strongly, The Day After is superior. When I said "attack," I meant the effect of nuclear war-in-general, the long term effects. I did not make myself clear enough.
I was 12 years old when this movie came out. It scared me more than any horror movie I've ever seen. It still scares me 40 years later.
Says in the Bible that man will beg to die but won't be able too
I was 15 and it scared the heck out of me then still does now as well
That scene on the highway looking back towards the city and the blast is incredible.
I remember watching this as a kid and going, "Damn, nuclear war sucks." As an adult and I learned more, I realized that this show didn't even come close to how bad it would be.
Threads was much closer to the reality. This is still scary enough.
This movie scared the hell out of me. I was 13 years old and I had nightmares about dying from a nuclear attack. I would wake up screaming.
@@David-yo5re The 80's, right? Rubik cubes, Atari, and nuclear war.
@@paulboger3101 Yeah, the Day After is the fluffy nice sweet 'most people live happily ever after' Hollywood version of nuclear war.
Threads is 'hold my beer'.
The War Game was also harrowing. To such an extent the BBC wouldn’t show it for 40 years. They all show the futility of such a conflict.
This movie scared the crap out of me when it came out. I was 13. I was raised in small town Kansas, and went to school at KU
This movie should play every year so Nuclear war never becomes normalized.
They should be banned and it has to be said, that there are no nukes whatsoever.
Already the US is talking about using a very low yield nuclear weapon in Ukraine against Russian forces. And Poland has just agreed to host US nuclear missiles on its soil. The creatures running the show in the US are as mad as cut snakes and they will do anything to "beat" Russia... even kicking off an atomic holocaust.
Oh, it's quite normal to Putolf and Trumpler.
@@RideAcrossTheRiver There are no nukes.
@@air265 Wow, your type is stupid.
This is, without a doubt, the scariest movie I've ever seen.
along with Threads, the UK version
Threads was even more disturbing
@@taraelizabethdensley9475 because Threads showed the aftermath without makeup, and on longer term
7:50 - This little panic sequence was filmed on the Square in my hometown, where I still live. I was very small at the time, and I remember my parents stopping by with me just outside the cordoned off area while they were filming. Hearing the yelling, cars honking, and general running about. Bear in mind, we had nuclear missile silos just a few miles outside of town. People in this movie would have absolutely seen the missiles being launched, just like it was depicted. Even to this day, when I see this movie, seeing the places I know and grew up with, it hits even harder. But for the grace of God, and perhaps even in no small part to the popular impact of this movie, the events depicted did not become our reality.
Wasn't this in Lawrence , Kansas ?
@@soulerflare7 The story is set in Lawrence KS, but filming was done there, in Kansas City, and also in my hometown.
@@ChestonU A lot of this was also filmed right in Lawrence. The downtown part of the city, on Mass street was almost entirely used as a set. I was a senior at Lawrence High at the time. We had noticed several different locations around town that were used as well.
May God and Putin hear you 🙏
the irony that in the movie the Russians cut off West Berlin, but today it's NATO sanctioning Russia and sending aid to a country that has nothing to do with it. NATO is the new USSR
Thank you for bringing this out again.
Thanks. It's a redux version.
I came off 3 years active duty in the US Navy in 1982, and a little later this movie came out. Let me tell you, this movie sums up things pretty well. We were eyeball-to-eyeball with the Soviets in the early 1980s and were ready for the balloon to go up at literally any moment. My brother was an MP in Germany and they were expecting a Spetsnaz commando attack at any time. I remember coming home for leave, Christmas, 1981. The night before I flew back to the West Cost, where my carrier was homeported (USS Ranger), I made it a point to take one last, long walk around my neighborhood and its environs as I honestly wasn't sure if it, or I, or either of us, would be around in six months when I was to be discharged in the summer (we lived just outside Washington, DC, about 8 miles like of sight from the US Capitol, so if things went south, it was a pretty good bet that DC would end up a smoldering hole in the ground).
I'll bet you scoured a lot of toilets.
Just one year later it almost happened.
I was in the RAF during the 80's/90's/00's. To me, the cold war, although we were toe to toe, made the world seem a much safer place than it is now. i spent most of the 80's in Germany - front line cold war. the UK was actually seen as our training area! it sounds crazy but it was a great time to serve!!
Do these silos and missiles still exist and on standby?
I had just joined and was at PT Loma Subase San Diego, kinda hit close to home cause we worked on the Subs and knew what they carried. MM2 12 yrs 3 ships
To this very day, it is STILL the number 1 most watched televised made for TV movie in history.
And it will always remain so. We will never have only 4 TV channel options (including public television) ever again. At least, not until we nuke ourselves back to the stone age and eventually rebuild back to where we rediscover how to make TV again in another 15,000 years, anyway.
My father was war officer on the SAC Looking Glass plane the they filmed this. They had a film crew on the plane, not flying. His job, if on duty at the time of attack, was to be 2nd in command of the SAC assets in case The Hole at Offutt AFB was blown up. This movie was certainly the talk of the town for quite a while.
6:13 "Over 300 missiles inbound now" As if that statement wasn't terrifying enough already, you have to remember that each of those missiles were likely armed with *multiple* independent warheads, increasing their destructive capability exponentially. You could have up to 10 warheads per missile, so you effectively had THREE THOUSAND nukes coming at the US with no way to stop them. Truly a horrifying thought indeed.
at the height of the cold war nuke stockpile the total number of nukes was 60k to 70k. Mind numbing.
And they were hydrogen bombs, first atomic bombs were nothing compared to megaton sized payload in each warhead.
@@after_midnight9592 Hiroshima was a firecracker compared to just one of those warheads.
I was 14 years old and our school briefed us the day of the show not to watch it.
Of course that just made me watch it. It freaked me out. I became obsessed with reading anything I could about nuclear war.
that was their goal...welcome to propaganda land, it starts young.
@@Sugarsail1 I don't know if it was propaganda then but i do see the propaganda now in USA. A whole lotta things have gone REAL weird. people from other countries are laughing at Americans now. Not admiration.
I was also 14 at the time and from the UK. Our school videotaped it and we watched it in school the next day. As well as the English BBC version Threads
@@Sugarsail1 The propaganda was all about scaring the west to give up their weapons. You only have to look at this thread to see how scared it made people. The only ones who might have gained by this was the communist soviet union, which was losing the cold war, which is why left-wing sympathizers in Hollywood put this together. But the soviets were in so much turmoil they collapsed only a couple of years later. If they hadn't, this propaganda film might have enabled the left to persuade the West to give up its weapons, and we'd all be speaking Russian or Chinese today.
I was 17 when this movie came out. I had a fear of nuclear war since the 70’s. This movie left me depressed at the time.
I had a teacher who described the end of the world ..she mentioned 2000.
It gave me the shock of my life....including films like this.
Thank God its 2024 already. Growing old, I learned to accept whatever it is the God permitted to happen.
I no longer fear Nucs.
With lots of bad guys everywhere in this world...what else can we do. Earth is dying to. The only thing to make life in earth start over again...is to Reboot it.
It's just the same outcome even without Nucs. We exist today... tomorrow we will no longer be remembered, only the few dedicated historians will think about us
👍👍👍
This movie should be shown in every level of education, and on every channel! It shows a glimpse of what a nuclear war would look like.
This movie came out the day after I had my son it was terrifying. I was seeing commercials for the movie and my heart was broken and I thought what in the heck have I done bringing a baby into this???? It was Awful.. i’m the luckiest mommy in the world I have two amazing boys. I am blessed beyond measure.🙏🏼❤️🙏🏼❤️🙏🏼❤️🙏🏼❤️
Who else remembers the psychological impact this had on people in the 80s?
It did me as an Aussie and still does today.
I remember it had little to none. There was a lot of hype leading up to the broadcast about how utterly traumatizing it would be and would change the political landscape of the nation. It didn't happen.
@@odysseusrex5908 I didn't ask if it had a political impact. Gun violence is utterly traumatizing to people but politicians continue to do nothing. The two things are often disconnected.
@@sail027li Oh, I'd say by the next day.
Yup..I was in the military....terrifying times.I remember the feeling from 40 yrs ago because I feel it now more than ever
And even so, 80's was the decade registering the highest music composition creation and the best decade in terms of music, singers, styles, etc. That confirms that human beings reach its peak point when they're stepping in the razor edge. Any day could be the last one. Amazing.
This movie holds up remarkably well, 40 years later.