The Day After (1983): This TV Movie About Nuclear War Depressed Ronald Reagan

[ChicagoRonin]

A different age of nuclear threats. A different Republican president.

[link:https://medium.com/war-is-boring/this-tv-movie-about-nuclear-war-depressed-ronald-reagan-fb4c25a50044|

[Dave Starsky]

1. That movie depressed everyone.

I remember the night it aired, Ted Koppel had a panel on immediately afterwards featuring Carl Sagan, Robert McNamara, Elie Wiesel, and William F. Buckley, to get their reactions. When they came out of the break, all these men looked ashen and could barely speak.

[Orrex]

2. It depressed Reagan because it threatened his push for nuclear dominance.

It depresses Trump because the aftermath isn't bleak enough for him.

[The Genealogist]

3. I watched that when I was 9 or 10.

My father would just let me watch anything. That movie disturbed me horribly. Literally the night the movie aired, every sound I heard outside I was afraid was a nuclear bomb.

[geo1]

4. Testament - a movie of the same year is the one that terrified me

I don't remember seeing The Day After, but Testament profoundly affected me. Had dreams about it a long time after.

Sorry the link didn't work - I'm not good at this, try google

[ChicagoRonin]

5. Nuclear war films of the 1980s

There was a whole spate of nuclear war/WWIII movies that came out in the mid-1980s.
Strange to think that I was growing up at the tail end of the Cold War (I was born in the early 70s).

In addition, to the Day After, the ones that got the most attention were:
Special Bulletin (NBC, 1983)
Testament (American Playhouse, 1983)
Threads (BBC, 1984)
When the Wind Blows (Recorded Releasing, UK, 1986)

Testament was probably the lowest budgeted and least flashy (It's set in a town far on the outskirts of any metro areas where actual bombs hit). But the gradual deterioration of a nondescript American suburb as its inhabitants succumb to radiation and the loss of normalcy makes it even more depressing.

[link:

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