FWIW, it was something we just lived with. We knew it could happen, but a lot of people could trade this new threat with threats that had been removed in their lifetimes: like when stepping on a nail or getting diabetes = death. And plenty of older people, even supposedly cosseted Americans, could recall the massive killings of the Spanish Influenza. So the concept that everybody on earth could die right away wasn’t “thinking the unthinkable.”
My sister did the honors when she first told me about nuclear bombs. Freaked me right the hell out for a long time. I can’t remember how old I was. Maybe 11 or 12 or around there.
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Sometimes I think even we who lived through it forget just how pervasive the nuclear exchange fear was then. Obviously not as bad as it was in the 50s and 60s, but Reagan added quite a bit of oomph to the imminence of it happening that had drained away with the 70s and Detente.
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Also IIRC the concept of “Nuclear Winter” was becoming popular at the time and was added to the horrors of nuclear war when TDA came out so they worked that in there.
My college housemate and I watched it when it first aired. It was pretty good as far as TV movies went. I liked how they used Lawrence KS as the backdrop instead of the usual NY or LA.
Seeing when the broadcast date was really takes me back. My wedding was the following Saturday. I know I’ve never seen it, but that whole week was filled with SO much stuff to do. I’m PRETTY sure I was in town by Sunday, because we did a pre-wedding session with the photographer, and I think that had to be on a Saturday. Anyway, there wasn’t any time to watch television.
Later, however, my older brother spoke of having seen it, and being so disturbed by it that if nuclear holocaust came to California, he would take his gun and remove his family and himself from the pool of people who.would have to live through it. That was the first time I knew he HAD a gun.
I just realized that the air date was four days before Thanksgiving. I wonder if they had TDA action figures at ToysRUs on Black Friday…
My grade 7 or 8 class watched it a few years after it aired. I thought some of it was kind of tense (like all of the cars dying and the guy getting blinded by the flash of light), but it didn’t have any lasting effect on me. As a kid in the 80s, I wasn’t afraid of nuclear war; it always seemed like a pretty remote possibility.
I thought the books On The Beach and This Is The Way The World Ends were more grim.