The Bombing Begins in Five Minutes: Early '80s Nuclear Apocalypse Media

Maybe it's the spaces I hang out in, but I don't hear a lot of people talking about how in the '80s a whole huge swath of people were sure - with good reason - that we were going to die soon in a nuclear apocalypse. Well, to some extent people do. I do hear people talking about Able Archer, which of course they didn't in '83, since it was classified. (What's interesting about that is that it's the Russian-aligned historians who are most likely to dismiss the idea that Able Archer could've resulted in global thermonuclear war.)

Maybe it's the underlying belief that I feel like people miss out. I was seven at the time of Able Archer, but I grew up with the implicit assumption that we could all die at any time. My socialist dad believed this particularly strongly, though my liberal mom kept telling him to not say that stuff around the kids. I remember my dad saying "The bombing begins in five minutes" occasionally. (Reagan's actual line was "We begin bombing in five minutes.")

I wasn't really aware of a lot of it at the time. Nobody in my class (which would have been something like second or third grade) was talking about The Day After. I thought of WarGames as a computer hacking film. I didn't remember any Soviet premiers prior to Gorbachev. Kind of a couple of things lodged the idea in my brain - one of the members of This Heat, perhaps Charles Hayward, talking about _Deceit_ being written under the assumption of certain doom, and Alan Moore talking about _V For Vendetta_ assuming there would be a devastating nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union.

There's just so much media from that time in which that spectre seems implicit, even if it's not overtly _about_ that. I was talking about "It's A Fine Day" elsewhere. Yesterday I watched the 1983 anime film "The Ideon: Be Invoked". I've seen some people describe it as "Lovecraftian". I didn't see it that way. To me, the plot involved a divine entity (which just happened to _look_ like a giant robot) manipulating two opposing forces into annihilating themselves and each other with devastating weapons because it had concluded that there was no hope for people who had such hatred and malice in their hearts, a very "human extinction would be a good idea, actually" take. I've been there (and I'm not there now).

There's just _so much_ of it. The Day After, Threads, The Atomic Cafe, the resurgence of 1965's unbroadcast "The War Game", Edge of Darkness, "If the Bomb Drops", When the Wind Blows, in music there's "1999", Two Tribes... Gorby is so associated with the 80s that it was so weird to watch the video and find an actor dressed as Reagan fighting an actor dressed as Chernenko. It seems like there wasn't quite as much media about it after about '86, but the whole idea kind of ossified in my mind and stuck there until 1990. Honestly it's still there now. I'm terrified every time I hear a plane flying overhead - my brain immediately jumps to "oh God they're military and they're going to drop nukes". Most other people don't seem to have that reaction.

Thoughts?

I was slightly too young for this age of fear, which is partly why I revisit so much of the media now - that, and the fact that it could come back at any time (and indeed it seems likely to do so). Attempting to learn from history, I guess (I would however be lying if I said I wasn't also indulging my "wouldn't it be good if everyone died immediately" nihilistic thanatophile side). I do mostly watch the speculative films, but it's also important to learn about the people who it actually happened to - from my research it seems likely that if nuclear bombs were deployed now they would be significantly more destructive than those that were used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the point where the comparison is almost futile, but I think what I watch those for is to cement the idea that this is NOT a speculative thing, this is what humans are capable of doing, this is what we could see happen again. No wonder I'm depressed.

Sun Ra wrote a song about it.

the tv show Whoops Apocalypse is only intermittently funny despite having a great cast, but it did give us a brief scene with Geoffrey Palmer dressed as Hawkman (plus Richard Davies as the Green Lantern)

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZDhmM2ZiMzQtMjViNC00ZjdhLWE0MDQtZGE0ZDA4ODQwYzJkXkEyXkFqcGc@._V1_.jpg

I watched Threads for the first time a couple of weeks ago - only knowing it as the British The Day After I was not ready for a kitchen sink drama that could have slotted in between Kes and Ratcatcher.

A Boy and His Dog is 1975 but loosely fits in here as well

My favorite of these movies is Miracle Mile (a late entry, from 1988 or 1989). Super bleak.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_Mile_(film)

milo, I can't tell from your comment if you were aware that Threads was by the same author as Kes - both Barry Hines.

I have vague memories of Amazing Grace & Chuck - maybe I saw the first half on TV at some point or just pieces of it here and there but what a final third.

Chuck and Smith face pressure (including physical harm and economic threats) to quit the protests. Eventually the President of the United States personally meets with Chuck, admiring his resolve but at the same time explaining the practical difficulties. Chuck is not swayed and continues his protest. Corrupt businessman Alexander Jeffries fears the movement will destroy his influence in politics and threatens Lynn and Smith. While on flight to San Francisco, Smiths plane is blown up. His death gains wide media attention and Chuck gives a speech in admiration for Smith. In response to the media, he begins a vow of silence which is taken up by children across the world. The vow of silence disturbs national leaders and pressure mounts against the President.

Meanwhile, Lynn and the pro athletes realize Smiths plane was owned by Jeffries, who previously threatened him. In retaliation, they display his name on Goodyear Blimps which attracts attention. The FBI also trace the plane to Jeffries, but cannot provide conclusive evidence he had the plane bombed. The President calls Jeffries and demands all his business practices and ownerships ceased and that he will be under surveillance the rest of his life. The President meets with the leader of the Soviet Union and reach a decision to dismantle their nuclear arsenals as quickly as possible.

Pro athletes return to work, children begin speaking and Chuck returns to Little League. The season opener is attended by his family and the athletes, the press, the President and the Soviet Leader. Before the first pitch they hold a salute for Amazing Grace.

xp - I did not know beforehand!

Testament (1983) is really fucking bleak

Popping back in as I want to strongly rep for Barefoot Gen (1983), which is a harrowing anime about Hiroshima.

pretty good profit!

Night of the Comet grossed $14.4 million in the US on a $700,000 budget.

Two Tribes... Gorby is so associated with the 80s that it was so weird to watch the video and find an actor dressed as Reagan fighting an actor dressed as Chernenko.

Chernenko was played in the video by an actor called Terry Plummer, if Chernenko had lived then maybe Plummer would have been in Rocky IV, The Naked Gun, Billy Crystal: Midnight Train to Moscow etc instead of this guy -

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71N5xViXkRL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg

license plate says Nov 1991, so the photo presumably taken very shortly before the phone stopped ringing

A lot of the usual suspects have already been named -- in that I was nine to fourteen years old between 1980 to 1985, I definitely had my miasma moments. There are three TV movies that haven't been named yet which I remember vividly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Bulletin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn7WC3zsEZk

So this one honestly freaked the hell out of me at twelve years old -- the focus wasn't full on WWIII per se but, as described, "a terrorist group brings a homemade atomic bomb aboard a tugboat in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina in order to blackmail the U.S. government into disabling its nuclear weapons, and the incident is caught live on television," done in the guise of an actual continuing news broadcast. It does not have a happy ending. And it got attention -- indeed, it won the Emmy for best TV movie/miniseries from that season:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGPcfiKLUJw

--

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_to_Looking_Glass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQzgHBjQzf4

This next one was a Canadian production from 1984, but with an American setting, and was shown on HBO here. Unlike Special Bulletin with its conceit of being a regular broadcast throughout, this was a mix of broadcast moments and behind-the-scenes etc, and I watched it a number of times. While you have a clutch of actors like Scott Glenn (first thing I consciously saw him in) and Helen Shaver, they also had a slew of actual newscasters and politicians as themselves, including Eugene McCarthy, Eric Sevareid and, in the first time I ever encountered him in turn, Newt Gingrich, obviously there because the man always liked publicity, but which also skewed how I saw him ten years on and forward. ("Wasn't he just that talking head in the movie?") It also does not end happily.

--

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_III_(miniseries)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-OvptbGhSo

So this one was from 1982 and I didn't watch it then, but I remembered the ads. I've seen bits and pieces since and definitely one I view more as an artifact of that era of TV (David Soul! Rock Hudson!) than anything else. It doesn't end happily either!

--

Plus I'll throw in a ringer that I was thinking about a bit when Kris Kristofferson died but which I didn't see mentioned by anybody, which feels very tempest in a teapot now two years prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall and all:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika_(miniseries)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXPy0bNRK0w

Did I see it, not really. Did I catch bits and pieces, yeah. Do I want to see it again, fuck no.

Even Ian Gillan got in on the act.

https://i.discogs.com/AIALYn7laSe4l4HkP71map3vyIOXh-gAL5-u6IJH1mQ/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:598/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTE4NzY4/ODMtMTI0OTU0NDU2/Mi5qcGVn.jpeg

... and the Vapors.

https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b27360e594fd9a41134979feab3d

Half of all metal albums released between 1980 and 1990 were about nuclear war. (The other half were about how much Christianity sucks. Some were about both.)

This one definitely is about nuclear war. Classic track.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB8ymBZwgOE

Men At Works 'Underground' as another musical entry

Hey, the ending for the video for another Men at Work song is specifically about it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0AxrOUJ62E

And Kate Bush's "Breathing", a hundred more songs I guess at least

when I was about 12 I got a single shot .22 rifle for Xmas (still have it ) and I went about fitting out a little survival kit for when the missiles arrived (there was a naval spy base not far away and the west coast is facing Russia, so I was sure we'd be first)... a small box of .22 shells, some crackers and band-aids, a compass... I planned to start a new society from the ashes of the old

a hundred more songs I guess at least

I've definitely linked it elsewhere but I have a Nuclear Winterval playlist that goes for over three hours (even with youtube frequently randomly deleting videos).

I read that Roland Orzabal’s original lyric for Everybody Wants to Rule the World was Everybody Wants to Go to War, and it was much more specifically about nuclear war. Luckily the rest of the band didn’t like it, and so they ended up with a much more interesting and ambiguous song.

Ned, I watched Special Bulletin when it came out (way too young to be watching it but I was precocious at that age). I knew it was fiction l, though I think I tuned in because I always read TVGuide in advance, lol.

I never saw “The Day After” but I broke up my fifth grade class a couple days later when someone asked me when my birthday was and I said “the day after” (as in the day after tomorrow, which indeed it was).

I was obsessed with all of this stuff as a child.

more examples:
- "Let's Dance" music video
- cover of Midnight Oil's "Red Sails in the Sunset" LP
- The novel 'War Day'
- 'The Third World War' novel which heavily influenced Max Brooks' 'World War Z'

The pen and paper RPG 'Twilight: 2000'

Alex Cox's fascination with the Neutron Bomb and/or Nuclear Armageddon inspired Repo Man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtovFI8etOg

Not forgetting this classic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSQWUZ8a2Ho

xp You couldn't have missed that Special Bulletin was fiction, with all of the red-lettered disclaimers that the legal department insisted on popping up and ruining the excitement. (There was one about every five seconds on the premiere. Most of them have been removed, iirc.)

apparently all the 'panic' about Orson Welles War of the Worlds is total BS, everybody knew it was a fictional program

It had commercials in the middle of the whole thing. (My parents had a record of it.) It was actually about 10 old people in the sticks who thought Armageddon was really what was happening.

I remember mom 'n dad and I tuning in to view "The Day After" in the autumn of '83, but we all got too depressed by the contents to watch more than an hour or so of it. I probably then went to my room to listen to "Led Zeppelin II" or "Are You Experienced?" instead.

I feel The Day After was almost assigned in my school, and then we talked about it the next day

apparently all the 'panic' about Orson Welles War of the Worlds is total BS, everybody knew it was a fictional program

Yeah, the real hoax was that people fell for the hoax and it worked very well

I was too young for this to really sink in (was 6 when the Berlin wall came down) as anything. It wasn’t until the movie Matinee came out that I had any sense of the mass psychological impact effect the nuclear scare had on older ppl.

Nuclear waste incidents kind of creep me out as much if not more than doomsday scenarios, like the incident in Brazil when hundreds of people handled some super radioactive medical radiation container

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident

The opening scene of Wargames with Leo McGarry going through the nuclear launch procedure is incredible.

yeah I was about 5 years younger than Ned but nuclear war & nuclear attack was like an absolute terror of mine, like truly scared the living shit out of me as a kid … “The Day After” was true nightmare-fuel for me as a kid, to the point where I tried rewatching it 15 years ago and had to leave the room bc it gave me a panic attack

Also some pretty influential teen fiction books floating around that theme when I was a kid, like “Children Of The Dust” by Louise Lawrence (1985) and “Z for Zachariah” by Robert C. O’Brien (1974) were two that I definitely read and *definitely* kept me awake at night, oh and the graphic novel “When The Wind Blows” (1982)

Like I cannot even tell you how certain I was that it was going to happen any day, being terrified that it would, and being stressed out beyond belief that there was nothing I could do but listen to Sting’s “The Russians” over & over as though it was a prayer lol i was a kid wtf else was I going to do

oh, I totally remember 'Z for Zachariah' that was a disturbing book that both me & my sister read

being stressed out beyond belief that there was nothing I could do

You just shelter under your desk!
We also had some 1960's Fallout Shelter thing in my little town, under the courthouse... god knows what was down there, probably C-Rations from the Korean War and some ancient flashlights

Popping back in as I want to strongly rep for Barefoot Gen (1983), which is a harrowing anime about Hiroshima.

The manga started in 1973, and was translated into English from 1978: an early version in the US was by L3onard Rif4s' Educom1cs -- and his most recent "nuclear war still impending fyi" comic was just six months ago.