Remember how I mentioned my ongoing nightmare of dying in a nuclear conflict because St. Reagan had an itchy trigger finger? The Day After didn’t help and was my continuous fear’s source until college.
Before ABC became a monopoly hotel piece in the Disney Empire, I seriously think there were people at the network who really believed in balancing entertainment with the public good. Besides Nightline and trying to get people to see what else the world likes with Wide World of Sports, they showed this terrifying movie. Why? I wish I truly knew. Were they letting us know how high the stakes were? Were they just cashing in? Or did it backfire in their sucking up to St. Reagan on how it wouldn’t be so bad. Obviously, the last two were not correct by a long shot. The last hour or so was commercial free. If they sought favor from the man who used to be the oldest POTUS on record, what followed failed too.
Directed by Nicholas Meyer, the guy who made the best Star Trek movie ever (Khan), Day was a depressing, painful story set in current times (1983ish). The conflict’s origin is never explained beyond the US and USSR playing a game of chicken around the two Germanys’ borders. The events leading to the nuclear exchange are mostly background noise and discussed in a few conversations with all the characters the first hour introduces. A farmer with a missile silo on his land; a doctor working in Kansas City, MO; an Air Force enlistee. I can’t remember the rest. Then it escalates to the point of no return and before the bombs hit, ABC gave a warning which I should’ve heeded. Yet, it was like seeing a car accident, you couldn’t turn away easily.
I still remember how my stomach dropped while thinking, “Shit! This is how I may end!” On an otherwise peaceful, Fall Saturday morning, the US goes to DefCon 1 and the missiles launch. As it’s happening, children watching cartoons see an interruption by a newscaster saying Warsaw Pact forces invading West Germany were killed by a small tactical nuke by NATO. Then the Civil Defense horns goes off. Everyone gawks as the US missiles leave their silos. Someone asks, how long do they have and the answer is grim, at most 28 minutes if the Soviets haven’t already launched. You witness the various reactions: denial, panic, fear, resignation, etc. Looting breaks out. The Air Force personnel are torn between seeing if their underground bunkers will survive or should they flee.
Inevitably, it’s too late. The EMP hits. All motor vehicles immediately die. All electronics are rendered useless. The doctor character knows what’s about to go down while he’s stuck in traffic as he ducks behind his dashboard. Mushroom clouds. Bright light flashes. People are disintegrated instantly. ABC toned the last part down immensely by making it look like the people died via X-rays. The original version showed the awful reality: people catch fire, people melt, people killed by flying glass and the worst, people in a bomb shelter suffocate because the immediate firestorm sucked out all the oxygen.
The survivors begin to die slowly from radiation poisoning; mainly by crapping out their organs and losing their hair. There’s a radio broadcast from the a POTUS who sounded much like St. Reagan telling everyone the US won’t surrender. Someone wants to know, who started it? As if matters any longer! Another person from the Feds instructs the living farmers to start planting again despite at least 30 cm of topsoil is radioactive and useless. It just ends with everyone knowing we’re screwed and humanity dies out with a whimper.
If that didn’t make you go to bed crying, the movie’s tag at the end stating, “This nuclear exchange was the bare minimum. The actual thing would be much, much worse.”
For the audience members sticking around, I vaguely recall being one, ABC followed Day with a round table discussion hosted by Ted Koppel. It was mostly Carl Sagan arguing with war criminals Henry Kissinger, Robert McNamara and Brent Scowcroft. In tow as the evil trio’s cheerleader was William F Buckley. Sagan’s illustrative point of being trapped in a gasoline-soaked room with two bullies holding thousands of matches only caring about which of them has the biggest dick…fell on deaf ears since these four shit birds’s apologist stance, nuclear deterrence will keep us safe. Later, the current Secretary of State George Schultz appeared to assure Koppel and the home audience, it’s all OK, blah blah blah. Now knowing what I learned some time ago about Operation Able Archer 83 nearly ending the world two weeks before this movie airing; you can see Schultz doesn’t completely believe the bullshit he’s spouting off. His eyes darted around too much since he probably crapped his pants on the fateful day I refer to and needed valium to function still.
Attending school the next morning was rough. I felt depressed, sad and scared. The news said thousands of children and teens had headaches, stomachaches and other ailments. My World History teacher, Mr. Peck re-quoted another student from an earlier hour of his class on why all this malaise, “the truth hurts.”
What Day‘s “true” legacy is varies. I think it was the last TV movie or event with over 100 million viewers. America has over 330 million people today and the industry is stoked if 20 million people watch something at once. Critics from both sides bitched. The Left/Anti-War crowd were correct to say it wasn’t horrible enough yet I can’t agree on Day making nuclear war look good nor feasible. Many in those movements received bootlegs of early cuts from Meyer too; he did this to make sure ABC wouldn’t scrap the movie and he was having numerous arguments over the graphic nature (aka reality) of nuclear armageddon. You could count on the Right/Conservative viewpoint to be moronic and weak. It was pro-Soviet, it was unpatriotic and if you agreed with the message, then you must be in favor of a Soviet occupation since nukes were the only thing stopping them. I reserve the most hate for the patron saint of Going Backwards and Liar Emeritus, mega asshole Phyllis Schlafly:
“This film was made by people who want to disarm the country, and who are willing to make a $7 million contribution to that cause.”
It’s amazing how willingly these Conservatives would go to the mat for killing all life due to their irrational fears, namely of people who don’t swallow their bullshit about sky cake, Kapitalism being 100% beneficial and patriarchy. It’s also incredibly untrue.
Now as much as I will always hate St. Reagan, I do hope his private screening the previous October inspired him to reconsider America’s nuclear weapon strategies. Allegedly, Day left him depressed and convinced him to sign a treaty with Gorbachev several years later to reduce both superpowers’ stockpiles.
Sadly, all the lessons Day taught the public are mostly ignored. We have a violent, internal terrorism problem professing America has Soviet-style apparatchiks working within the many Federal agencies and Democratic Party. While the Democrats turned into war-loving NeoLiberals who rubber stamp newer, “upgraded” nuclear weapons to deter the Russian Federation and Red China. I think we need to lock at least the worthless Democrats into a room, force them to watch this or make an updated version. The current Republicans are mostly a lost cause given their fealty to Girth Vader and Evangelical nonsense.