It’s the End of the World
Four films to watch about life after nuclear war before you die.
Can I interest you in a nice glimpse into the future of humanity in these trying times? With war in the Middle East seemingly both intractable and ever-expanding, what better time could there be to ponder whether running towards or from the mushroom cloud is the better option?
Here I’m reviewing four (in)famous nuclear war films that detail, with varying levels of accuracy, what might start it and how it might end. We start with The Day After (1983), lauded by many Americans as the definitive post-apocalyptic nightmare. We move on to The War Game (1966), a British pseudo-documentary that outlined just how quickly our government would turn on us. We have Threads (1984), which took everything that came before and ironed out nearly all the flaws. Then, lastly, we have When the Wind Blows (1987), a British cartoon that hits probably harder than any of them.
I’ve included links for getting copies of these films — none of them are affiliate links, I won’t get anything if you click them or buy from them. Other retailers are all available.
Start the countdown to launch.
The Day After (1983)
What is it?
A realistic look at exactly what a nuclear strike on the USA would look like, directed by Wrath of Khan’s Nicholas Meyer and set in a series of small town locations in Missouri and Kansas.
Why does it matter?
For many Americans, particularly kids in the early 80’s, this was the first time a TV film would show them what a nuclear war would look like for the average schlub. The results were not pretty.
The film goes to great lengths in its first third to explain the situation — how the USA got to this point with a rival that nuclear weapons are exchanged. Despite that, the actual atomic strikes are realised through stock-footage and some seriously dated effects. The strikes, in fact, are secondary to the story. The story is what comes after.
As such, it isn’t a war movie — the focus isn’t on characters Fighting the Good Fight on the front lines. There are no dogfights in the skies between ace pilots, no death-or-glory sorties into enemy territory, no over-the-top for King and Country valour. It’s just a small town that gets hit by Russia (then the USSR) with atomic weaponry, and then nearly everybody dies.
Some are killed outright in the initial blast, others die more slowly from radiation poisoning. Still others die after it becomes apparent that the USA, as a meaningful political democracy, no longer exists. Habeas Corpus is suspended indefinitely, Marshall law is instated and government forces are given powers to enact summary on-the-spot executions.
Those that do survive are condemned to an extremely hard life trying to continue living in the rubble of the old world. The film ends on the sharing of food between squatters and the last remaining main character — implying that human generosity is still alive.
An outro text card was added in the following years to dash that hope, stating that, in actuality, a real nuclear war would be far, far worse.
What Works
The film works well on an academic level, as a fairly accurate portrayal of the outcome of nuclear conflict as it was understood circa 1980. Its political explanations for the war hold up well, with nothing about the crisis standing out as implausible or outrageous.
The Day After doesn’t even particularly assign blame to The Other, in this case the Soviets. It’s left vague as to who starts what and in what order, although there is an implication that the USSR kicked it off.
What Doesn’t Work
Well, sadly, most of the rest of the film. It suffers from three distinct issues that, whilst not diminishing its impact, interlock to make The Day After feel like a missed opportunity.
Firstly is its timing: it started production just as scientists started considering the prospect of Nuclear Winter and, as such, makes no reference to it. That hurts it, for reasons we need to understand Nuclear Winter to be able to see.
Nuclear Winter is the theory that an atomic war would generate so much fire, rubble, dust and heat that for months afterwards the global climate would be affected. Worldwide temperatures would descend, crops would fail and humans and animals alike would starve. Despite back-and-forth arguments between academics about exactly how bad a Nuclear Winter would be, it was a stake through the heart of the political views of the time.
Previously, the USA had generally worked under the belief that should a nuclear war happen, then the USA would probably be mostly okay. A few nukes might sneak through, but the American military had the ability to mostly shoot down incoming missiles. Developments in guidance and multi-warhead missiles had made it almost impossible for the USA’s target to evade destruction. Nuclear war was seen as a very viable strategy which the USA could use to win.
The theory of Nuclear Winter sent that idea back to hell where it belongs. Even if you shoot down all your enemy missiles and they shoot down none of yours, the mass exchange of thousands of warheads will likely doom most people in the world. A human-made mass extinction event.
Reagan is said to have watched The Day After and been deeply unsettled by it, but it was Nuclear Winter that truly turned the tide. It’s omission from The Day After is unfortunate, albeit unintentional.
The second factor going against The Day After is its dated effects and TV movie budget. The explosions and their immediate effects are all either stock-footage, or spliced in from other films. Even some of the camera work and cinematography betrays its age and, more importantly, its television origin.
Nicholas Meyer is a very fine director, but he can’t save a film from its own 1980 TV Camera quality and grainy footage of MIG fighters in the air. In fact, it almost makes it worse because some scenes do come up to snuff. The cinematography is good, the lighting is good, the direction is good. You start to think that the technical aspects of the film are picking up! But then the next scene takes us right back into a Cheers-esque TV show.
Truthfully, the film would have worked better without the explosions, limited effects and stock footage. Just present the war as a bright flash, and then follow the cast as before. The saved budget could then have been channelled into makeup, lighting and film quality.
Lastly, The Day After is hampered by uneven pacing. The first third is regular people doing regular stuff against a backdrop of recycled footage of tanks and jets and the odd radio report about tensions in Europe. The second third is the nuclear war itself — which is over quickly — and the survivors emerging from the rubble. The final third is a meandering tour through gangs, drum-head military justice and radiation sickness.
Dedicating ⅓ of a film to establishing “the status quo” makes the build-up seem interminably slow. The characters are meant to be normal, boring people and unfortunately that’s exactly what they are. Nothing that happens here particularly effects what comes later. The last third feels like it’s in search of a meaning — like the producers didn’t have the cast-iron manifolds to lean-in to the bleak, savage picture they created and wanted to find some way to imply it wasn’t necessarily all over: humans could bounce back!
It stands out, thematically, and again upsets the pacing. What is the story being told?
Summary
Influential through its infamous TV broadcast in 1983, The Day After terrified many Americans with what the results of nuclear war would actually look like. It wasn’t possible to win, only to lose. Still worth watching in the 21st Century, the film is weighed-down by rough pacing; poor production values and a failure to grasp the true extent of what atomic warfare really means.
⭐️⭐️⭐️ 3/5
Where can I watch it?
It is available on Blu-Ray, published by Kl Studio Classics. It’s available on eBay and other marketplaces, as well as Amazon to whom I won’t link because they’re awful.
The War Game (1966)
What is it?
Predating The Day After by 16 years, The War Game (1966) is a British faux-documentary. The film doesn’t follow characters or a detailed story, so much as it details the aspects of “what to expect” in the event of a nuclear war. It is set, styled and toned after government informational films and, to a modern viewer, evokes the Blitz “Keep Calm and Carry On” credo.
Why does it matter?
The War Game caused uproar at the BBC and in the British parliament. It spent two weeks being shown in London at the National Film Theatre, was toured internationally at a handful of festivals, won the 1967 Oscar for best documentary… and then it was buried for twenty years.
The BBC believed it was too horrific to be broadcast. Parliament hated it. It was banned from television in both the UK and the USA. As with The Day After, it was also accurate to the science of the time and realistically portrayed what would happen to normal people and how quickly the government would descend into totalitarianism.
Because of its style as a fake documentary, the film is more easily able to grasp and explain its concepts without the pacing issues that affect The Day After. We’re walked through Britain’s defence posture and plans, as they stood in 1965, and then shown a build-up of aggression in East Asia around Vietnam and China. The USA and USSR wade in, exchanging threats, and Britain prepares for war.
Regional councils are put in place to manage evacuation, rationing, supplies and care. Stockpiles are collected. Empty houses are taken by the government under eminent domain to house evacuees, and families are compelled by law to take additional people into their homes. Government efforts to build shelters falter and individuals are forced to contend with material shortages.
Then, the war comes. NATO and the USSR go to war, and the USSR begins nuclear strikes on NATO targets in Europe. In Kent, England, a man and a boy are blinded by the flash — melting their eyes as they scream. Whole buildings are blown to rubble and people engulfed in flames. Intense fires burn out of control. The implication is that what we see here is happening across the country.
The mass casualties overwhelm all the apparatus of state and the police are authorised to use lethal force in keeping the peace and in mercy-killing victims of radiation poisoning.
As the days play out, the situation becomes more grave. Supplies and food are reserved for those able to work, with the rest left to starve. Riots and civil unrest break out and the army is deployed to put down the desperate people. Police start using firing squads to deal with dissenters.
Months later, the people, malnourished and dying of preventable diseases, are interviewed. Harrowingly, several children are asked what presents they would like for Christmas and they look blank, shrug and murmur that they don’t want anything. Still other children are dying from leukaemia, and a pregnant woman is told her baby is stillborn.
The film closes with a brief outro, taking the news coverage in Britain and around the world to task for not making any efforts to inform the people what nuclear war would actually look like.
What Works
The War Game cleverly accrues for itself a great benefit of the doubt thanks to being, nominally, a documentary. There is no plot to pace, no characters needing arcs and no need for compelling protagonists. That’s a lot of rope, and The War Game uses that to its advantage.
What Doesn’t Work
Being filmed in the 1960’s, The War Game can’t help but have a stage-y feel to its performances. They are just a little too theatrical. The man whose eyes are burnt out is a case in point — it feels like it was lifted directly from the stage, and to a modern viewer it really can take one out of the moment.
The film is also not helped by its enormous real-world infamy. Banned by the BBC, Parliament and the USA until the mid-1980’s, one would imagine something far more shocking. Whilst it was undoubtedly a politically inconvenient film, and would have shocked patriotic sensibilities in the 1960’s, The War Game is not as shocking today as its reputation would imply.
Summary
A clever British pseudo-documentary, and unintentional period piece, The War Game draws attention to the chaos, barbarism and violence that would follow a nuclear war. The collapse of democratic government into a callous and cruel tyranny is convincing to the point of seeming inevitable under similar circumstances.
Later developments around Nuclear Winter are, obviously, absent and the stage-oriented instincts of many of the actors sometimes betray the spirit of the film.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4/5
Where can I watch it?
It is available on Blu-Ray published by the British Film Institute (BFI). Link.
Threads (1984)
What is it?
Threads is a story written by British author Barry Hines — famous for his novel “A Kestrel for a Knave”, a portrait of a child in working-class Sheffield who finds a brief respite from a grim life when he finds and raises “Kes”, a kestrel.
Hines approaches Threads with the same keen eye for the working class and their struggles. Like The Day After, which came out only the year before, Threads follows a small group of normal people trying to get by both before and after a nuclear strike. What sets Threads apart, however, is Hine’s grasp of the interconnectivity of modern society and his willingness to follow an idea through to its logical conclusion. Ideas presented at the start have impact and ramifications later.
In Sheffield, amidst rising tensions in the Middle East, a young woman called Ruth discovers that she is pregnant by her boyfriend. They talk, and she insists on getting married. The UK makes preparations for the outbreak of war, whilst shortages and panic-buying begin to grip the country.
As the situation worsens, the government turn to violent suppression of demonstrations against both the war and the running of the nation. Several protesters are shot by police.
Sheffield’s contingency plans are managed by a local council, who have a bunker from which to strategise and best plan for what to do in the event the worst should happen.
As with The Day After and The War Game, the tensions flare to all-out conflict between America and the USSR. The Soviet Union attacks NATO, and Sheffield — due to its proximity to nearby infrastructure — is directly struck. The city of devastated. Ruth survives, but her boyfriend disappears. Many are killed in the subsequent firestorms. Radiation sickness takes many more. The local council are buried alive in their bunker under rubble, and die from asphyxiation.
Some time later, and what’s left of Britain functions as a police state. Nuclear Winter has destroyed British farming, food is scarce, and all the usual interconnected aspects of modern life are severed. There are no more shops, central planning, public transport, shipments of goods or manufacturing. The interlocking nature of modern life is completely undone and, as a result, all aspects of late 20th Century British life are catapulted back to a pre-industrial state.
What little food there is functions as a de facto currency. It is used as payment for services and work, and removed as punishment. The country is under Marshall law, with the implication that a distant government does still exist but that all services and resources have been overwhelmed into total collapse.
Ruth’s baby is born and grows up in a world of ash clouds, twilight, hunger, cold and hardship. People eat whatever they can, including rats. No longer having a school system, young people born after the attack increasingly develop their own pidgin lexicon and grammar in lieu of the increasingly lost vocabulary of their parents. Ruth dies from some combination of exposure, radiation and work — prematurely aged beyond her years. Her teenage daughter Jane must now fend for herself.
13 years after the war, Britain continues to subsist in a largely Medieval state. The dust clouds have begun to dissipate and a small amount of electricity can be generated from steam engines. In a makeshift school, a group of young people are clustered around a television screen, watching one of the handful of videos still in existence. It’s a grainy, jumpy BBC / Open University programme, discussing the skeletons of animals.
Out searching for food, Jane has rough sex with a young man and becomes pregnant. Nine months later, in a derelict hospital, she gives birth to an unseen infant. The nurse composes herself and wraps the child in a bloody blanket before handing it to Jane. The film ends on a freeze-frame of Jane looking at the child in abject horror.
The credits include extensive details of the researchers, historians and scientists who contributed. The horrific results of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, current research on climate trends and the stark reality of Nuclear Winter are all cited and name-checked. The intent is clear: what you’ve just seen is exactly what will happen. Be afraid.
What Works
In producing Threads, the influence of The War Game is very strong. The director, Mick Jackson, made sure his research was thorough and complete. Nothing about Threads is fantasy, it is played completely realistically as a depiction of what the world will look like after a nuclear war. Amongst the contributions to the research was renowned astrophysicist Carl Sagan.
It is only by coincidence that Threads came out one year after The Day After, but Threads still feels very much like someone asked “what if we did The Day After, but better?” The film isn’t afraid to shy away from the logical endpoint of nuclear war: there is no hope that anything about our lives before will continue into the post-atomic horror. The intentionally vague state of Jane’s baby may even imply that radiation-induced birth defects will doom Jane to be the last generation of humans.
There is some petty drama around The Day After versus Threads, often drawn along national lines. Americans prefer their film, Brits prefer ours. Personally I think this is just the effect of seeing them as kids: Americans were shocked by The Day After and, as a result, believe that to be the better film because of its impact upon them. I watched both films as an adult, and I can only conclude that to my tastes Threads is clearly the superior film. Watching it at 40, for the first time, it still left me haunted in a way that The Day After came nowhere near to.
What Doesn’t Work
Threads uses documentary-style on-screen text to explain some key developments — particularly early on around the International tensions between America and the USSR in the Middle East and some of the longer time-jumps that come later. It’s a little confusing to be pulled from character-focussed drama into a more report-oriented “and now this thing happened here”.
What makes the effect worse is it includes a voiceover narration. This serves only to finish the job of breaking the atmosphere and flow. Barry Hines did not think it was a good idea, the director did. I think Hines was right. The interstitials are bad enough, but with voiceover they are too much.
Summary
Mick Jackson said that, normally, when a production airs on television you get calls of congratulations. When Threads aired, he got none. Everyone was shocked and just sat in contemplation. Some people couldn’t go to sleep that night.
Reagan was said to have seen Threads, in addition to The Day After.
It is the post nuclear war film to beat for its accuracy, impact and message.
⭐⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4/5
Where can I watch it?
Threads was recently re-shown on BBC in October 2024 and is available on the BBC iPlayer. It is also available on Blu-Ray published by Severin. Link.
When the Wind Blows (1986)
There are some films that exist purely to punch you in the heart and, having landed said punch, will continue to punch you until the film ends. Grave of the Fireflies (1988) is like that. Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) and its Japanese remake Tokyo Story (1953) are like that.
When the Wind Blows is like that.
What is it?
Based on a book written and illustrated by Raymond Briggs (of The Snowman and its 1982 short film adaptation), When the Wind Blows is a British cartoon animated in a combination of cel-based techniques and models. Briggs has a habit of being bitter-sweet with his stories, and When the Wind Blows takes us through the whimsical and slightly absurd day-to-day lives of an older couple: Jim and Hilda.
Jim tries to keep up with the news — taking the bus into town from their bucolic cottage in East Sussex to visit the library and read the newspapers. Back at home, he listens to Radio 4 for news broadcasts about international affairs. Hilda frets about keeping the house tidy, making sausages for tea and hoping that their son will call for a chat.
Jim becomes aware that there is a political buildup happening between the USA and the USSR. He’s not entirely clear on the intricate details — or, indeed, the names of the key figures. Both he and Hilda try to remember the current Soviet Premier, with Hilda guessing “Stalin?” before Jim semi-remembering Khrushchev. They have strong, romanticised memories of the Second World War, which they lived through as children. The couple agree that Hitler and the Nazis were rotters, and that Britain had given them what-for. It’d probably be the same this time.
As the potential for a nuclear war increases, Jim picks up a pamphlet from the library published by their local council. It details what preparations they should make and how best to make ready for Britain’s involvement in another war.
Whilst he starts building a lean-to shelter out of doors in their living room, Hilda is concerned about their cushions. It becomes increasingly apparent that neither of them really understand what is going on — they both interpret these events through half-remembered childhood memories and decades of national British romanticism and self-mythologising around the World Wars.
One day, the radio broadcast cuts to an emergency bulletin. Missiles are incoming, and people have approximately two minutes to find shelter and stay there. Hilda doesn’t believe it, and starts pottering about in the kitchen. As the seconds tick down, Jim leaps to his feet and bundles her into the shelter.
Then the world ends.
It’s unclear how far the devastation reaches. After the initial blast, and subsequent aftershocks, we watch as Jim and Hilda emerge from their shelter and survey the wreckage of their home. The windows are blown away, and a firestorm has torn through the house. Everything they own is ruined, in pieces or just gone.
The outside world isn’t much better. The trees are bare and grey. The sun is covered by clouds of dust. In the following days, snow begins to fall. Birds lie twitching in their death-throws on the ground. The grasses and fields are grey mud. The only other living things that they can see are rats.
The couple maintain their spirits. After all, they say, we survived the last war didn’t we? They have some tinned food and a small amount of bottled water. Hilda begins to tidy the house, worried that when the authorities get to them that they will see the terrible mess. Jim is convinced that, now it’s over, the government will be enacting well-structured plans. They fully expect medical treatment and food is already being dispatched.
In fact, it’s probably already available. It’ll just be rationed, you see. There will be people much worse off than Jim and Hilda and it’s only fair that they get it first. But they won’t be forgotten. They’ll get their turn. They did everything properly like they were supposed to, so everything will be okay.
A few days on, and still nobody has found them. The fallout, radioactive dust and snow blankets the countryside. The couple are convinced it won’t be long now… but it becomes increasingly apparent that nobody is coming to help them. In fact, there may not be anybody else left at all… that the whole world is dead.
Hilda begins to sicken, vomiting and losing her appetite. She starts passing blood. Jim follows the same way. Strange blisters and marks begin appearing on their skin. But it won’t be long, now! Soon the authorities will be here to help! They just have to finish seeing to the critically ill, first. Jim comforts Hilda by observing that he’s suffering with all the same symptoms, and he’s a man!
Shortly after, preparing for bed, they notice that their hair is falling out. Hilda wants to get back in the shelter, just in case there’s another blast in the night. Jim thinks that sounds sensible: exactly the right thing to do.
They lie together in the darkness and, with a whisper, Hilda asks Jim if they should pray. Yes, says Jim. The old man partially remembers some of The Lord’s Prayer, and then a little of The Psalms, but his memory fails him and the last words we hear him say are from Tennyson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade: “into the valley of death rode the six hundred”.
As the credits roll, a morse code sequence taps out MAD.
Why does it matter?
Like Grave of the Fireflies, When the Wind Blows is a character study whereby two normal people are thrust into extraordinary circumstances and, despite their best efforts, their twin lights are lost into the darkness. If your eyes are still dry before Hilda asks “should we pray?”, then they will be wet after.
That is the cost of nuclear war.
Nuclear fission and fusion are cosmological forces that have been harnessed by science and then turned to the ends of people who are preternaturally unsuited to wield such power. They do so only for their own ends: out of ideology, fear, hate or just to win. It was used in the murder of tens of thousands in the closing days of the Second World War and, instead of locking it behind a door of insurmountable will, we took it and increased its power a thousand fold. This power is now so great that it could easily destroy the Earth, and has nearly been loosed too many times. Today it is at the beck and call of foolish, ill-informed insects like Presidents and Prime Ministers.
If it is released, then we all die. Perhaps quickly, perhaps slowly. The true scale of that tragedy ranges from the landscape reduced to desert, plants and animals made extinct, through to the quiet little tragedy of an older couple dying from radiation sickness in their ruined house... never even sure who the “enemy” was, or what they wanted.
That is When the Wind Blows. No notes.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5/5.
Where can I watch it?
When the Wind Blows is available on Blu-Ray published by the British Film Institute (BFI).
