Nuclear war films/books

[Gman]

I've been watching a bunch of nuclear war/WW3 movies lately, having just re read Red Storm by TC for the umpteenth time, along with The Third World War by Hackett, two of my favorites.  Team Yankee by Coyle is next.

For films or movies made for TV, I've watched The Day After, and my favorite, By Dawn's Early light.  I've also recently watched that 10 part series from Youtube called "World War 3, the Movie", which is a fantastic amateur put together project featuring so much great footage from the Cold War of the 80s that I grew up on.


I've always been very interested in the subject, as I said, I grew up on the books and games at the end/height of the Cold War in the mid to late 80s, and ate up anything I could get my hands on.  My parents even became concerned, and sent me to a "councilor", fearing I had some unhealthy death fascination or something - the psych and I ended up talking for an hour about Tom Clancy's latest book which was Cardinal of the Kremlin, and the SDI projects - hah.


Anyone have any recommendations or favorites for either genre, film or literature?  I realize Team Yankee isn't so much a WW3 book, more of a limited Soviet/Nato clash with very limited nuclear exchange near the end, but there has to be some I've not read that others have which I've missed over the years.

One question I have about the subject matter in general - do any of you consider it a real threat still, nuclear warfare in terms of strategic exchanges vs cities and civilian populated areas?  Discussing current events with a neighbor friend, she was going on about what she would do if the news came that nuclear warfare might be immanent, and didn't take it to well when I told her she would likely not have ANY warning - historically when the USA and USSR had close calls, the US gov officials invariably chose to NOT inform the public trouble could be on the way.  Couple that with a less than 30 minute flight time for ballistic missiles/re entry vehicles, plus the fact that we sleep around 1/3 of the day - odds are we'd either be dead, or wake up and wonder why the airwaves were absolutely berserk, or off the air completely, at least IMO. 

I really hope there is some diamond in the rough books or films/shows I haven't seen yet that others have tat I can gobble up.

[Masherbrum]

Fail Safe is one of my favorite movies.     

[SysError]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIoBrob3bjI

[pembquist]

The 1959 production of "on the beach" is pretty good. "The Bedford Incident", 1965, isn't strictly about nuclear war but about how things get out of hand. These are older movies,(obviously.)

As for is it a real threat I would say that of course it is. This is my thinking: The world runs on probabilites so most of the time nothing to out of the ordinary happens. We design things based on probabilites but we are really bad at intuiting them. The fact that nuclear weapons on top of rockets still are operational means that it can happen, the odds may be remote, they might not be so remote. I don't know. But one thing for sure is that I have read physicists turned financial engineers complain that the financial crisis was a 25 sigma event which is so remote that I can only assume that they are saying it didn't really happen. My point is that it doesn't matter what the risk is with nukes as if they get used it is game over.

[Rich46yo]

The Day After also showed a very limited exchange of weapons. And rather small, unrealistically small, weapon yields. If the genie was let out of the bottle in a strategic exchange there just wouldnt be anyone around in those states to tell the story of. At the height of The Cold War there were 70,000 deliverable nuclear weapons. 90% of them belonged to America and the Soviet Union. We both had over 10,000 strategic weapons on alert each and I'd bet the average yield was somewhere in the 350 to 500 kiloton range. If not more. "Hiroshima" was 16 kilotons.

America and Russia would have been mostly "gone".

[Wolfala]

Read the Nuclear Almanac by MIT Press

[FLOOB]

I thought the flim Threads was better than The Day After.

[pipz]

The 1959 production of "on the beach" is pretty good. "The Bedford Incident", 1965, isn't strictly about nuclear war but about how things get out of hand. These are older movies,(obviously.)

The Bedford incident was a good movie. I havnt seen it in some years.

[Wmaker]

One question I have about the subject matter in general - do any of you consider it a real threat still, nuclear warfare in terms of strategic exchanges vs cities and civilian populated areas?

Considering the fruitcake currently at the helm of Russia, yes unfortunately it is a real threat. As horrible as the whole thought sounds, that is the way I see it.

"Vladimir Putin has said Russia was so fearful of attack at the height of the Ukraine crisis that it was preparing to arm its nuclear weapons, in extraordinary claims aired on state TV on Sunday night."
Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vladimir-putin-says-russia-was-preparing-to-use-nuclear-weapons-if-necessary-and-blames-us-for-ukraine-crisis-in-crimea-documentary-10109615.html

When this guy really starts to find ways to be properly be left in the history books...well...I don't even want to think the lengths he might go.

[Wmaker]

Some very dark humour regarding the subject in a blast door of a minuteman silo:


I'm sure many have seen it before.

[Wmaker]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIoBrob3bjI

Ouch!

Thanks, hadn't heard that at all!

What a song....ouch...

Guy's a genious!

[ridley1]

I thought the flim Threads was better than The Day After.

I agree wholeheartedly.  Actually, in university, I took an elective called "War and Society".  We watched that film for a couple of lectures. The BBC production puts day after to shame.

[Wmaker]

I agree wholeheartedly.  Actually, in university, I took an elective called "War and Society".  We watched that film for a couple of lectures. The BBC production puts day after to shame.

Have seen Day After but unfortunately not this Threads. Sounds like I gotta get hold of it.

[FLOOB]

Threads

[FLOOB]

Speaking of nukes, I found this is illuminating.

A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945