1980s Nuclear War Nightmares
August 1st, 2016Reading the piece about the 390th Strategic Missile Wing in Tucson, Arizona reminded me about being somewhat traumatized as a child by seeing news shows on TV discussing nuclear war. Yep, even as a young kid, I used to watch a lot of news on TV and read newspapers and news magazines. I was so into it that my parents would let me stay up to watch Nightline with them, which I did most nights.
There were several Nightline episodes that discussed nuclear war back in those days and I went looking for some of them just now. I found this one from 1985, which I definitely remember watching, about a sudden nuclear attack scenario:
Then I found this one from 1983 about SDI, which I was also obsessed with:
I tried to find an episode from even further back in which Koppel discusses a map of the U.S. that showed Southern California peppered with primary and secondary targets. The place I lived had overlapping red circles. I think that was THE thing that used to give me nightmares. I couldn’t find that episode. There was also a clip from either Nightline or Frontline that showed a B-52 crew pulling their curtains that also featured heavily in my nightmares…
I’m glad I didn’t see Threads back in those days, which probably gave lots of British children nightmares and was much more intense than the polite conversation and military B-roll depictions fed to Americans.
Anyway, that was me. Apple 2e, phone modem, D&D, pellet guns and nightmares about nuclear war. Happy days!
I came across Threads as an adult on Google video. By far the scariest movie I’ve seen. I am so surprised that most Americans haven’t seen it.
Another terrifying WW3 film was the animated story “When The Wind Blows”… The despair of it was very, very disturbing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVq76YvTPMs