The Day After


The Day After is a 1983 American television film directed by Nicholas Meyer. The war film postulates a fictional conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact over Germany that rapidly escalates into a full-scale nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. The action itself focuses on the residents of Lawrence, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, and several family farms near American missile silos. The cast includes JoBeth Williams, Steve Guttenberg, John Cullum, Jason Robards, and John Lithgow. The film was written by Edward Hume and produced by Robert Papazian.
More than 100 million people, in nearly 39 million households, watched the film when it first aired on November 20, 1983, on the ABC television network. With a 46 rating and a 62% share of the viewing audience during the initial broadcast, the film was the seventh-highest-rated non-sports show until then, and in a 2009 Nielsen TV Ratings list was one of the highest-rated television films in US history.
The film was broadcast on Soviet state television in 1987, during the negotiations on Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The producers demanded that the Russian translation conform to the original script and that the broadcast not be interrupted by commentary.

Plot

Dr. Russell Oakes works at a hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, and spends time with family as his daughter Marilyn prepares to move away. In nearby Harrisonville, farmer Jim Dahlberg and family hold a wedding rehearsal for his eldest daughter Denise. Airman Billy McCoy, serving with the 351st Strategic Missile Wing, is stationed at a Minuteman launch site in nearby Sweetsage, one of 150 such silos in western Missouri. Next to the site, the Hendrys tend to their farm chores and mind their children. Background television and radio reports reveal information about a Soviet buildup on the East German border. East Germany blockades West Berlin, and the United States issues an ultimatum and places its forces on alert, recalling McCoy from his family at Whiteman Air Force Base.
The following day, NATO attempts to break through the blockade at Helmstedt-Marienborn. Warsaw Pact MiGs hit Würzburg, West Germany. Moscow is evacuated. At the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, near Kansas City, the word goes out that the Soviets have invaded West Germany. Soviet forces drive toward the Rhine in an armored thrust. Pre-med student Stephen Klein decides to hitchhike home to Joplin, Missouri, while Denise's fiancé Bruce witnesses a crowd of shoppers frantically pulling items off the shelves as both sides attack naval targets in the Persian Gulf. Jim prepares his cellar. People start to flee Kansas City, and the Emergency Broadcast System is activated. NATO attempts to halt the advance by airbursting three nuclear warheads over Soviet troops, while a Soviet nuclear device destroys the NATO headquarters in Brussels. US Air Force personnel aboard the SAC Airborne Command Post receive notification of an incoming wave of 300 ICBMs. The launch order comes in from the president for a full nuclear strike on the Soviet Union. People in and around Kansas City watch in horror as hundreds of ICBMs are launched. While the film makes clear that NATO was the first to use nuclear weapons, it is left deliberately unclear who launched the first major attack.
McCoy flees his now-empty silo, telling his fellow airmen the war is effectively over. A high-altitude nuclear explosion's EMP disables vehicles and destroys the power grid. Nuclear missiles rain across the region on both military and civilian targets. Kansas City's last minutes are frantic. Bruce, Marilyn Oakes, the Hendrys, and McCoy's family are among the thousands of people incinerated, while the young Danny Dahlberg is flash-blinded by a nuclear detonation many miles away. Dr. Oakes, stranded on the highway, walks to University Hospital at Lawrence, takes charge, and begins treating patients. Klein finds the Dahlberg home and begs for refuge in the family's basement.
Oakes receives fallout reports by shortwave from KU professor Joe Huxley in the science building: travel outdoors is fatal. Patients continue to come and supplies dwindle. Delirious after days in the basement shelter, Denise runs outside; Klein retrieves her, but both are exposed to the thick radioactive dust. McCoy heads towards Sedalia until he learns of its destruction from passing refugees. He befriends a mute man and travels to the hospital, where he dies of radiation poisoning. Oakes bonds with Nurse Nancy Bauer, who later dies of meningitis, and a pregnant woman pleads with him to tell her she's wrong to be hopeless.
In a radio speech, the U.S. President announces a ceasefire, promises relief, and stresses no surrender and a reliance on American principles, set to shots of filthy, listless, or dead Americans among the ruins. Attempts at aid from the National Guard and infrastructural redevelopment prove fruitless, and summary executions become commonplace. Jim Dahlberg is eventually killed by squatters, while Denise, Klein, and Oakes are wasting away from radiation sickness. Returning to an irradiated Kansas City to see his old home one last time, Oakes witnesses National Guardsmen blindfolding and executing looters. He finds squatters in the ruins of his home and attempts to drive them off, but is instead offered food. Oakes collapses and weeps, and one of the squatters comforts him. The film ends with an overlying audio clip of Huxley's voice on the radio as the screen fades to black, asking if anybody can still hear him, only to be met with silence until the credits, as a Morse code signal transmits a single message to the viewer: M-A-D.
Most versions of The Day After include a textual ending disclaimer just before the end credits, stating that the film is fictional and that the real-life outcome of a nuclear war would be much worse than the events portrayed onscreen.

Cast

; The Oakeses
  • Jason Robards as Dr. Russell Oakes
  • Georgann Johnson as Helen Oakes
  • Kyle Aletter as Marilyn Oakes
; The Dahlbergs
  • John Cullum as Jim Dahlberg
  • Bibi Besch as Eve Dahlberg
  • Lori Lethin as Denise Dahlberg
  • Doug Scott as Danny Dahlberg
  • Ellen Anthony as Joleen Dahlberg
; Hospital staff
; Others
The Day After was the idea of ABC Motion Picture Division President Brandon Stoddard, who, after watching The China Syndrome, was so impressed that he envisioned creating a film exploring the effects of nuclear war on the United States. Stoddard asked his executive vice president of television movies and miniseries, Stu Samuels, to develop a script. Samuels created the title The Day After to emphasize that the story was about, not a nuclear war itself, but the aftermath. Samuels suggested several writers, and eventually, Stoddard commissioned the veteran television writer Edward Hume to write the script in 1981. ABC, which financed the production, was concerned about the graphic nature of the film and how to portray the subject appropriately on a family-oriented television channel. Hume undertook a massive amount of research on nuclear war and went through several drafts until ABC finally deemed the plot and characters acceptable.
Originally, the film was based more around and in Kansas City, Missouri. Kansas City was not bombed in the original script although Whiteman Air Force Base was, which made Kansas City suffer shock waves and the horde of survivors staggering into town. There was no Lawrence, Kansas in the story although there was a small Kansas town called "Hampton." While Hume was writing the script, he and the producer Robert Papazian, who had great experience in on-location shooting, took several trips to Kansas City to scout locations and met with officials from the Kansas film commission and from the Kansas tourist offices to search for a suitable location for "Hampton." It came down to a choice of either Warrensburg, Missouri, and Lawrence, Kansas, both college towns. Warrensburg was home of Central Missouri State University and was near Whiteman Air Force Base, and Lawrence was home of the University of Kansas and was near Kansas City. Hume and Papazian ended up selecting Lawrence because of the access to a number of good locations: a university, a hospital, football and basketball venues, farms, and a flat countryside. Lawrence was also agreed upon as being the "geographic center" of the United States. The Lawrence people were urging ABC to change the name "Hampton" to "Lawrence" in the script.
Back in Los Angeles, the idea of making a TV movie showing the true effects of nuclear war on average American citizens was still stirring up controversy. ABC, Hume, and Papazian realized that for the scene depicting the nuclear blast, they would have to use state-of-the-art special effects and so took the first step by hiring some of the best special effects people in the business to draw up some storyboards for the complicated blast scene. ABC then hired Robert Butler to direct the project. For several months, the group worked on drawing up storyboards and revising the script again and again. Then, in early 1982, Butler was forced to leave The Day After because of other contractual commitments. ABC then offered the project to two other directors, who both turned it down. Finally, in May, ABC hired the feature film director Nicholas Meyer, who had just completed the blockbuster Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Meyer was apprehensive at first and doubted ABC would get away with making a television film on nuclear war without the censors diminishing its effect. However, after reading the script, Meyer agreed to direct The Day After.
Meyer wanted to make sure that he would film the script he was offered. He did not want the censors to censor the film or the film to be a regular Hollywood disaster movie from the start. Meyer figured the more The Day After resembled such a film, the less effective it would be, and he preferred to present the facts of nuclear war to viewers. He made it clear to ABC that no big TV or film stars should be in The Day After. ABC agreed but wanted to have one star to help attract European audiences to the film when it would be shown theatrically there. Later, while flying to visit his parents in New York City, Meyer happened to be on the same plane with Jason Robards and asked him to join the cast.
Meyer plunged into several months of nuclear research, which made him quite pessimistic about the future, to the point of becoming ill each evening when he came home from work. Meyer and Papazian also made trips to the ABC censors and to the United States Department of Defense during their research phase and experienced conflicts with both. Meyer had many heated arguments over elements in the script that the network censors wanted cut out of the film. The Department of Defense said that it would cooperate with ABC if the script clarified that the Soviets launched their missiles first, which Meyer and Papazian took pains not to do.
Meyer, Papazian, Hume, and several casting directors spent most of July 1982 taking numerous trips to Kansas City. In between casting in Los Angeles, where they relied mostly on unknowns, they would fly to the Kansas City area to interview local actors and scout scenery. They were hoping to find some real Midwesterners for smaller roles. Hollywood casting directors strolled through shopping malls in Kansas City to look for local people to fill small and supporting roles, the daily newspaper in Lawrence ran an advertisement calling for local residents to sign up as extras, and a professor of theater and film at the University of Kansas was hired to head up local casting. Out of the eighty or so speaking parts, only fifteen were cast in Los Angeles. The remaining roles were filled in Kansas City and Lawrence.
While in Kansas City, Meyer and Papazian toured the Federal Emergency Management Agency offices in Kansas City. When asked about its plans for surviving nuclear war, a FEMA official replied that it was experimenting with putting evacuation instructions in telephone books in New England. "In about six years, everyone should have them." That meeting led Meyer to later refer to FEMA as "a complete joke." It was during that time that the decision was made to change "Hampton" in the script to "Lawrence." Meyer and Hume figured since Lawrence was a real town, it would be more believable, and besides, it was a perfect choice to play a representative of Middle America. The town boasted a "socio-cultural mix," sat near the exact geographic center of the Continental U.S., and was a prime missile target according to Hume and Meyer's research because 150 Minuteman missile silos stood nearby. Lawrence had some great locations, and its people were more supportive of the project. Suddenly, less emphasis was put on Kansas City, the decision was made to have the city annihilated in the script, and Lawrence was made the primary location in the film.