Forty years after 'The Day After,' rethinking war and nuclear weapons through film

Paris Alston is co-host of Morning Edition at GBH News.

Gal Tziperman Lotan is a digital producer for GBH’s Morning Edition.

November 27, 2023

Updated November 27, 2023

Paris Alston: This is GBH's Morning Edition. These days, there's no shortage of disaster genre films such as 'The Day After Tomorrow' or 'Contagion,' which ended up being a little too real. Forty years ago this week, ABC Television aired a film that harnessed the very real fear about a possible nuclear attack amid the Cold War.

Previously recorded: I don't believe this is happening. We have a massive attack at the U.S. at this time.

Alston: 'The Day After' focused on the city of Lawrence, Kansas. A record audience estimated at more than 100 million Americans tuned in, including then-President Ronald Reagan. To this day, it is one of the highest-rated television films in history. A new book is out detailing the impacts of this film. It's titled Apocalypse Television: How 'The Day After' Helped End the Cold War. Its author is David Craig, a veteran TV producer who is a clinical professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and currently a visiting scholar at Harvard and the Berkman Klein Center. Craig explains how 'The Day After' was able to tap into viewers' psyche by bringing a massive global threat right into their living rooms.

David Craig: You go to a movie sometimes to leave where you are, and escape where you are. You turn on the channel on your TV or on your streaming platform to flip from news to entertainment. So these large disaster genre films have their place in the box office. But the point here was around: How do we reach the largest possible audience for a movie that foregrounds a message that is of great urgency?

Alston: In this case, the message was to end the Cold War, a move Craig describes as bold for a television network.

Craig: The man who conceived the idea was an ABC executive who had already become known as the father of the mini series, creating high-concept television projects that could reach the largest possible audiences, but also gain a lot more attention out in the news sector because they were tackling profoundly important critical issues. And the most pressing issue of that time was the threat of nuclear war, which was escalating. Really, everyone in America, really around the world, fully expected that World War III would break out at any moment and the world would come to an end. And it was almost fatalistically understood. There was nothing they could do about it. And he was convinced that as long as he had the power to use this medium in this format, he would try.

Alston: And yet the White House, the Reagan administration at the time was really worried about how this film was going to be perceived. Why was that?

Craig: It's a very interesting thing that the Defense Department was concerned from the get-go that the project was not very clear politically that the Soviets had caused the attack, and would only participate and provide resources to the production if they changed the script, which they refused to do. They wanted it to just be about what could happen to everyday Midwestern Americans in the event of a nuclear attack. And they didn't want to make this a war film. But then the White House became very aware of it because both religious and political conservatives came out against the movie months in advance when they heard of it, convinced that this would be not only a huge event, but that it had the risk of persuading people to align around a nuclear freeze. And they also had a reason to be concerned that this movie would cause panic out in the streets. We had some instances in the past where things like 'War of the Worlds' radio broadcasts had, you know, convinced people that aliens had landed.

Alston: And did it cause that? I mean, how did people respond to it?

Craig: It did cause a nominal shift in public opinion. But the truth is, public opinion was already very much in favor of nuclear disarmament. And that's where we saw the biggest shift, which was unbeknownst to most of us, including me, doing this research. President Reagan did not align behind the views of his military in terms of the possibility of a winnable nuclear war or the continuing escalation of the arms race. He was actually a nuclear abolitionist. And this film, according to historians, led to a whole reversal in his rhetoric, his tone, his policy. One other extraordinary thing that followed: The White House convinced ABC News they should air a news Viewpoint special immediately after the movie.

Previously recorded: This is an ABC News special edition of Viewpoint. We are now reporting from Washington. Ted Koppel.

Ted Koppel: There is, and you probably need it about now, there is some good news if you can take a quick look out the window. It's all still there. Your neighborhood is still there. So it was Kansas City and Lawrence and Chicago and Moscow and San Diego and Vladivostok.

Craig: The world's most well-known public intellectuals, a bunch of older white men who were all experts in their area, sat around the table for the next hour and carried on a very civilized debate over whether or not the world was about to end. It was shocking because they couldn't decide who was right. But then they open it up to questions, and the audience and everyday people stood up and asked all the questions. We were all desperate to learn and better understand.

Alston: In the age of streaming, we don't necessarily have these big television events like 'The Day After' was. But is there anything that you think encapsulates what happened with 'The Day After' today?

Craig: The example I would give is the HBO series 'Chernobyl,' which was also then streamed, not, I think, legally in Russia, where it changed the way Russians understood their own history around this event. And who knows what the long-term effect may be of having Russians understand their history differently. And HBO's 'The Last of Us' was just a spectacularly brilliant example, by the way, written by Craig Mazin, who also did 'Chernobyl.'

Alston: And part of which is also set in Boston.

Craig: Of course, it's an adaptation of a game. And it's a conceit of a post-apocalyptic world filled with zombies and the threat of disease. But every episode of 'The Last of Us' is in fact a mirror of contemporary society and the issues that we're all dealing with every day the minute we walk outside our door. We think it's a fantasy about the future, but it's actually a commentary about the present. There's always that kind of play and response from Hollywood and storytellers to try to make meaning of these existential and apocalyptic events.

Alston: Well, that is David Craig, who is the author of "Apocalypse Television: How 'The Day After' Helped End the Cold War." David, thank you so very much.

Craig: Been a pleasure. Thank you, Paris.

Alston: You're listening to GBH's Morning Edition.

Forty years ago this week, ABC Television aired a film that harnessed Americans' very real fear about a possible nuclear attack amid the Cold War.

"The Day After" focused on the city of Lawrence, Kansas. A record audience estimated at more than 100 million Americans tuned in, including then-President Ronald Reagan.

To this day, it is one of the highest-rated television films in history.

“You go to a movie sometimes to leave where you are and escape where you are. You turn on the channel on your TV or on your streaming platform to flip from news to entertainment,” said David Craig, a veteran TV producer and clinical professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. “These large disaster genre films have their place in the box office. But the point here was around: How do we reach the largest possible audience for a movie that foregrounds a message that is of great urgency?”

Craig is the author of the new book “Apocalypse Television: How 'The Day After' Helped End the Cold War.” In it, he examines how the movie tapped into viewers' psyche by bringing a massive global threat right into their living rooms.

The project’s format, as a fictional movie painting scenes of what could happen after a nuclear strike, was able to reach larger audiences than news programs about the nuclear arms race, Craig said.

“The most pressing issue of that time was the threat of nuclear war, which was escalating,” he said. “Really, everyone in America, really around the world, fully expected that World War III would break out at any moment and the world would come to an end. And it was almost fatalistically understood.”

Adults and children hold tapered candles as they stand outside for a vigil. — FILE - Carol Dorsch, left, and her 8-year-old daughter during a candlelight vigil held after the premiere of television movie "The Day After," on Nov. 20, 1983, in Lawrence, Kansas.

In Washington, officials in the Department of Defense were concerned about how the film would be received.

“The Defense Department was concerned from the get-go that the project was not very clear politically that the Soviets had caused the attack, and would only participate and provide resources to the production if they changed the script, which they refused to do,” Craig said. “They wanted it to just be about what could happen to everyday Midwestern Americans in the event of a nuclear attack. And they didn't want to make this a war film.”

Religious and political conservatives at the time had come out against the movie because they were concerned that it would persuade people to support a nuclear freeze, he said.

“It did cause a nominal shift in public opinion. But the truth is, public opinion was already very much in favor of nuclear disarmament,” Craig said.

That extended to the White House, he said.

“Unbeknownst to most of us, including me doing this research, President Reagan did not align behind the views of his military in terms of the possibility of a winnable nuclear war or the continuing escalation of the arms race,” Craig said. “This film, according to historians, led to a whole reversal in his rhetoric, his tone, his policy.”

Part of the film’s power came from the programming that followed it, Craig said. It was a special edition of the ABC News program Viewpoint, in which people like scientist Carl Sagan, conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr. and author Elie Wiesel talked about nuclear policy.

“The world's most well-known public intellectuals, a bunch of older white men who were all experts in their area, sat around the table for the next hour and carried on a very civilized debate over whether or not the world was about to end,” Craig said. “It was shocking because they couldn't decide who was right. But then they open it up to questions, and the audience and everyday people stood up and asked all the questions. We were all desperate to learn and better understand.”

In the age of streaming, television events like “The Day After” are hard to come by. But there are still programs with similar messaging, Craig said, like HBO’s “Chernobyl” and the apocalyptic “The Last of Us.”

“It's a conceit of a post-apocalyptic world filled with zombies and the threat of disease. But every episode of 'The Last of Us' is in fact a mirror of contemporary society and the issues that we're all dealing with every day the minute we walk outside our door,” Craig said. “We think it's a fantasy about the future, but it's actually a commentary about the present. There's always that kind of play and response from Hollywood and storytellers to try to make meaning of these existential and apocalyptic events.”