On this day in 1983 a hundred million people watched a movie on ABC television called The Day After.
The plot line centered around a 1980s era Kansas town called Lawrence in a story of cold war escalation which may only be characterized as being well within the finest tradition of apocalyptic horror, death, and destruction.
Following several episodes of military conflict culminating in small scale nuclear attack, the people witness the apparently abrupt launch of nuclear missiles from their silos along the Kansas – Missouri border. The citizens then hear from Air Force officers that 300+ Soviet ICBMs are inbound to the U.S.
Many are killed outright but even more face the danger of radioactive fallout.
Various characters suffer the resulting barren, devastated world without power, drinking water, and food — filled with radioactivity, starvation, and disease in the horrible aftermath of the attacks.
Being a child of the 60s and all too familiar with the doomsday scenarios of ‘us and them’ and ‘the bomb’ it was an eerie enthralling provocative piece of television for the time, however tame by today’s standards for sure.
Regardless of that being ‘then’ and this being ‘now’ the program kept good pace with the hype which proceeded it. Since then the wall has fallen, the Soviet Union is no more, and hopefully we’ve all learned something about getting along.
Tags: Things