Well, kids - have a taste of what it was like to be a child of the Cold War. A few months ago I watched “The Day After (1983)”. Here’s the sequence of the bombs going off - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyy9n8r16hs&t=3454s
A comment
I think this movie needs to be re-aired by every major network * NOW * so America can be reminded. 2 generations later - people forget.
Here’s some stuff about Reagan and the movie.
US President Ronald Reagan watched the film more than a month before its screening on Columbus Day, October 10, 1983. He wrote in his diary that the film was “very effective and left me greatly depressed” and that it changed his mind on the prevailing policy on a “nuclear war”. The film was also screened for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A government advisor who attended the screening, a friend of Meyer, told him: “If you wanted to draw blood, you did it. Those guys sat there like they were turned to stone.”
In 1987, Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which resulted in the banning and reducing of their nuclear arsenal. In Reagan’s memoirs, he drew a direct line from the film to the signing. Reagan supposedly later sent Meyer a telegram after the summit: “Don’t think your movie didn’t have any part of this, because it did.”
During an interview in 2010, Meyer said that the telegram was a myth and that the sentiment stemmed from a friend’s letter to Meyer. He suggested the story had origins in editing notes received from the White House during the production, which “may have been a joke, but it wouldn’t surprise me, him being an old Hollywood guy.” There is also an apocryphal story which claims that, after seeing the film, Ronald Reagan said: “That will not happen on my watch.”
Honestly I don’t trust today’s libs and reactionaries to be moved by films warning about a nuclear holocaust. A lot of them see media like this and think “Wow that’s so cool! I would get to kill my neighbors and minorities to become a warlord!”
Fascism is a nihilistic death cult. I expect them to act accordingly. They won’t hesitate to push the button because they will isolate themselves from violence. They’ll make sure they have a nice, cushy bunker while the rest of us perish in nuclear hellfire. American exceptionalism isn’t helping this, either. A lot of them really think America would win a nuclear exchange with very little damage done to the US.
‘RIP to the rest of you, but I’ve watched Mad Max/played Fallout/read World War Z’ mentality
In Reagan’s memoirs, he drew a direct line from the film to the signing.
I’m pretty sure those were ghostwritten because Reagan would’ve been way too far down the path of dementia by then, no?
Reagan got a hearing aid in his first term. At that time - I thought nothing of it. I was young (ah) and he was old as fuck. But during his second term I must have watched or read something to make me wonder if it was actually an earpiece. Maybe I saw an SNL skit with that theme or I read some jokey article that mentioned the idea that he was being fed information because he was already losing his marbles. In any case - after he got his “hearing aid” I must have made an effort to watch one or two of his press conferences. That was a super-pain in the ass back in the day. No Youtube. No google. Even the Internet wasn’t a thing yet.
Even though he was skilled at using humor for misdirection and reporters can be dumber than rocks - I was surprised that at times he really did look a bit lost. I had to wonder if the “hearing aid” was actually an earpiece and they were coaching him through the rough patches.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
