# Most harrowing scenes in Nuclear War movies **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** movies\ **Created:** [February 22, 2022, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927 "2022-02-22T07:08:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927/21 "2022-02-22T16:50:26Z")
> [@dorvann](#): > > Not really a nuclear war movie per se but the end of _Planet of the Apes_ where Charlton Heston… And then there’s Paul Frees’s voiceover epilogue to _Beneath The Planet of The Apes_: **”In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead"** ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927/22 "2022-02-22T17:18:45Z")
I found Lord of the Flies (1963 version) extremely depressing when I first saw it. I was 14 at the time, so susceptible to such a movie, and I thought it was all about the brutality that children and adolescents could fall into. Then I realized that what was happening on the island was a microcosm of what had happened in the world, and while the boys might get rescued, there was no rescue for the world. This fits into this genre, perhaps, and for those who aren’t familiar with the film, because the events are part of the aftermath of a nuclear war. The boys were on a plane evacuating them from Britain when the plane went down and the survivors ended up on the island. ---
**Author:** ![veryfrank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/87869e/32.png) [@veryfrank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/veryfrank)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927/23 "2022-02-22T17:23:17Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > I found T3 incredibly depressing, knowing that all the damage from the early chases, all the lives damaged by the terminators, ultimately means nothing, as war comes in the afternoon. “Honey, I got a call into the insurance company, should be fine. Hmmm…What’s that light? Oh. We don’t have to worry about the car any longer.” I acknowledge that T3 is one of the low points in the franchise, but it does get some stuff very right. Particularly on a second viewing, watching the action unfold when you already know they won’t beat Skynet, there’s an oppressive and really effective sense of doom that permeates the film. Mostow eschewing score music for much of the second half also helps, you don’t have that as a crutch to give you false hope. ---
**Author:** ![Staggerlee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/staggerlee/32/3134_2.png) [@Staggerlee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Staggerlee)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927/24 "2022-02-22T21:20:02Z")
I haven’t read When the Wind Blows for probably thirty years (don’t think I’ve seen the film). The most moving aspect I thought was the old couples’ naive sense that this was another WWII-style ‘blitz’ they were living through, and that they would ‘tough it out’ like the last one. ---
**Author:** ![Pavelb1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/439d5e/32.png) [@Pavelb1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pavelb1)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927/25 "2022-02-22T22:16:06Z")
If we’re doing literature, I must say I was very grateful that the ending of the short story “Fermi and Frost” was multiple choice. ---
**Author:** ![Briny\_Deep](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/briny_deep/32/17188_2.png) [@Briny\_Deep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Briny_Deep)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927/26 "2022-02-22T22:30:31Z")
The moment when the old man tosses his dinner dishes into the trash, because the radiation has affected his brain. You know it’s downhill from there. Good times. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2022, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927/27 "2022-02-23T04:23:22Z")
> [@Pavelb1](#): > > Failsafe…all of it… When they get the pilot’s wife on the radio frantically begging him to stop the attack… _“You’re asking me to do what I’ve been specifically been trained not to do!”_ (paraphrased) … I’ve always thought that he knew he had to abort, he knew it was a mistake, but had to follow his training. A scary thought. Lots of implications. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2022, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927/28 "2022-02-23T05:04:19Z")
Dated but scary as hell. > **[The Bedford Incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bedford_Incident)** > > Pages for logged out editors learn more > > > > The Bedford Incident is a 1965 British-American Cold War film starring Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier and co-produced by Widmark. The cast also features Eric Portman, James MacArthur, Martin Balsam and Wally Cox, as well as early appearances by Donald Sutherland and Ed Bishop. The screenplay by James Poe is based on the 1963 novel by Mark Rascovich, which borrowed from the plot of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick; at one point in the film, the c... ---
**Author:** ![Pavelb1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/439d5e/32.png) [@Pavelb1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pavelb1)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2022, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927/29 "2022-02-23T05:19:40Z")
You’re conflating a little dialogue, but yes…gawwd that scene kills me. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/KULM72PoaOo/hqdefault.jpg "Fail-Safe") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KULM72PoaOo) ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2022, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927/30 "2022-02-23T06:50:22Z")
> [@Cervaise](#): > > The scene that sticks with me, decades later, is in _Testament,_ which is in the “ordinary people trying to survive the aftermath” genre of nuclear war stories. > > One of the running threads in the film is people watching helplessly as family members die around them. The specific scene I’m thinking of has a mother holding her young radiation-sick son in a sink, weeping quietly as he defecates himself to death. > > It is not a pleasant film. Powerful. But very difficult. Agreed, I was going to post Testament as the most haunting post nuclear war movie ever, even though it doesn’t even show any nuclear bombs going off. The part when she then wraps her son in a towel and hes bled through it was hard. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2022, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927/31 "2022-02-23T13:24:12Z")
Not a movie movie (a made-for-TV movie) and not exactly about nuclear war, but still pretty harrowing: “Special Bulletin” in 1983 was shot from the point of view of a news report about a group of nuclear scientists turned terrorists docked in a boat off Charleston, SC, who had a nuclear device. They were demanding that all the nuclear weapons in the area (apparently an important staging ground for nuclear subs was nearby) be disabled or they would set off the nuke. A reporter and cameraman were taken hostage, so the scene alternated from the news anchors to the increasingly desperate scene on the boat with the nuclear scientists (one of whom seemed to be dying from radiation poisoning). Then suddenly a Delta Force team was seen by another news camera outside the boat converging on it. They wiped out the terrorist scientists and a nuke defusing team went on board, but as they were frantically trying to defuse it…static. The shaken anchor team cut to a reporter on a Navy ship a couple miles offshore, which confirmed…Charleston went boom. I remember the show being pretty controversial at the time, NBC being accused of potentially creating another “War of the Worlds” style panic, although they ran a lot of disclaimers throughout that the show was fiction. It was very realistic and well done, and kept you on the edge of your seat the entire time. > **[Special Bulletin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Bulletin)** > > Pages for logged out editors learn more > Special Bulletin is a 1983 American made-for-television film. It was an early collaboration between director Edward Zwick and writer Marshall Herskovitz, a team that would later produce such series as thirtysomething and My So-Called Life. The movie was first broadcast March 20, 1983 on NBC as part of NBC Sunday Night at the Movies. > In this movie, a terrorist group brings a homemade atomic bomb aboard a tugboat in the harbor of Charleston, South C... ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2022, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927/32 "2022-02-23T14:33:17Z")
> [@solost](#): > > but as they were frantically trying to defuse it It reminded me of that t shirt that says, on the back, “I am a bomb disposal tech. If you see me running, try to keep up.” No one can run that fast. Though he was clinically nuts, it bothered me that he made the bomb improperly, for his stated goals. You don’t make so tamper-resistant that one false move makes it easy to trigger, if you don’t actually intend for it to go off. Because the movie is what you get in that case. Just use a dead-man switch. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2022, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927/33 "2022-02-23T14:53:45Z")
Just an observation. But isn’t it odd that all of the examples are from films about fictional nuclear war? I have read some, indeed, harrowing eyewitness accounts of the real one in 1945, yet somehow the real thing is less cinematically compelling than those created from whole cloth. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2022, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927/34 "2022-02-23T14:57:55Z")
When the wind blows. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/9pJKdTqYijY/maxresdefault.jpg "When the Wind Blows 1986 Trailer | Peggy Ashcroft | John Mills") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pJKdTqYijY) Nothing remotely graphic, but still gives me chills (as a child of the cold war who grew up in the south of England in an [area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Greenham_Common#Cold_War) which clearly had a big target marker on in it in a map somewhere in the soviet union, and being _absolutely_ terrified of the idea of nuclear war) ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2022, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927/35 "2022-02-23T15:01:49Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > Just an observation. But isn’t it odd that all of the examples are from films about fictional nuclear war? I have read some, indeed, harrowing eyewitness accounts of the real one in 1945, yet somehow the real thing is less cinematically compelling than those created from whole cloth. Maybe because any filmed, documentary style accounts of the actual bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki done soon after the fact were deliberately done in a non-provocative, ‘just the facts’ style? As a kid I certainly remember finding those pictures of people-shaped shadows on ruined walls that were all that was left of people who were vaporized to be pretty harrowing to contemplate. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2022, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927/36 "2022-02-23T15:02:10Z")
I saw _Special Bulletin_ when it aired in 1983, and it was chilling. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2022, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927/37 "2022-02-23T15:04:47Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > When the wind blows. I see I’m not the first poster to mention this. Still totally the most harrowing nuclear war movie even if its not remotely graphic. ---
**Author:** ![Tripler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripler/32/21807_2.png) [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2022, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927/38 "2022-02-23T15:19:22Z")
Seeing the footage from test shots like _[Ivy Mike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Mike)_ or _[Castle Bravo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo)_ send shivers up my spine, 'cause that footage is _real_–no special effects or anything. Want a good collection of them? Try _[Trinity and Beyond](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_and_Beyond)_, narrated by Shatner. Tripler Real-life is scarier than fiction. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2022, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927/39 "2022-02-23T15:23:04Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > But isn’t it odd that all of the examples are from films about fictional nuclear war? To me (again as a kid growing up in the cold war, utterly terrified of nuclear war) this is because it wasn’t the actual nuclear explosion that was harrowing. It was the finality of it, its not some disaster where if you survive it you can expect help to come and to escape to somewhere unaffected (as happened to survivors of Horoshima for all the horrors of that), it was the fact the survivors then have to face something as awful as the explosion itself in the post-nuclear-war world. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2022, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927/40 "2022-02-23T15:33:14Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > I have read some, indeed, harrowing eyewitness accounts of the real one in 1945, yet somehow the real thing is less cinematically compelling than those created from whole cloth. It’s storytelling. One death is a tragedy, a hundred thousand is a statistic. A shadow of a kid playing that is burned into a wall is just an artifact. The Martian Chronicles took the same image and made it a compelling tragic narrative. The holocaust is the same way. Countless millions dead in piles being bulldozed into a ditch doesn’t impact people as much as an anonymous girl in a red coat glimpsed by the movie protagonist does. It _should_, but it doesn’t. Also, the world’s first nuclear war wasn’t filmed in close up in technicolor and Dolby. We don’t get to see the impact, just the aftermath. And they were “the enemy”. The films listed are about “us”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-harrowing-scenes-in-nuclear-war-movies/959927.md?page=3)