The Day After

The Day After
Airdate	November 20, 1983
Written by	Edward Hume
Directed by	Nicholas Meyer
Network	ABC
Style	180-minute science fiction drama TV movie
Company	ABC Circle Films
Origin	USA

The Day After (1983) is a TV movie about the destruction wreaked on rural Kansas and Missouri after the devastation of nuclear attacks on Kansas City and nearby missile silos. At the time of its airing, it was the most successful and highest rated TV movie of all time in the USA, and it was cited by Reagan Administration officials as having played a role in subsequent nonproliferation treaties signed between the USA and the USSR.

Cast: Jason Robards (Dr. Russell Oakes), JoBeth Williams (Nurse Nancy Bauer), Steven Guttenberg (Stephen Klein), John Cullum (Jim Dahlberg), John Lithgow (Joe Huxley), Bibi Besch (Eve Dahlberg), Lori Lethin (Denise Dahlberg), Amy Madigan (Alison Ransom), Jeff East (Bruce Gallatin), Georgann Johnson (Helen Oakes), William Allen Young (Airman Billy McCoy), Calvin Jung (Dr. Sam Hachiya), Lin McCarthy (Dr. Austin), Dennis Lipscomb (Reverend Walker), Clayton Day (Dennis Hendry), Doug Scott (Danny Dahlberg), Ellen Anthony (Joleen Dahlberg), Kyle Aletter (Marilyn Oakes)

Supporting Cast: Alston Ahern (Cynthia), William Allyn (Professor), Antonie Becker (Ellen Hendry), Pamela Brown (Nurse), Jonathan Estrin (Julian French), Stephen Furst (Aldo), Arliss Howard (Tom Cooper), Rosanna Huffman (Dr. Wallenberg), Barbara Iley (Cleo Mackey), Madison Mason (TV Host), Bob Meister (Cody), Vahan Moosekian (Mack), George Petrie (Dr. Landowska), Glenn Robards (Barber #2), Tom Spratley (Barber #1), Stan Wilson (Vinnie Conrad)

Plot Overview

At an Air Force base in Nebraska, the men go about their routine errands. At Memorial General Hospital in Kansas City, Dr. Russell Oakes goes about his rounds with his colleague, Dr. Sam Hachiya. Airman Billy McCoy plans for the month's leave he intends to take with his wife in New Orleans. On the Dahlberg Farm in Missouri, Denise Dahlberg and her family—father Jim, mother Eve, younger sister Joleen and youngest brother Danny—prepare for her upcoming wedding to Bruce Gallatin. They are unaware a seeming "farmhouse" nearby is actually Oscar Control Mission Launch Site, a Minuteman nuclear missile silo. Oakes is also mostly unaware of impending danger as he spends the day at an art museum with his daughter Marilyn, who announces her intention to move to Boston with her boyfriend. On the Hendry Farm in Missouri, young mother Ellen Hendry hangs her washclothes mere yards away from the silo where McCoy is stationed.

Dr. Oakes tries to cheer up his wife Helen with romance, but she is upset Marilyn is leaving. They are interrupted by a news report of the closing of the border between West Berlin and East Germany. Meanwhile, Jim is also disturbed by the same news reports.

Airman McCoy is called in to base for an alert, but he assures his wife nothing bad will happen. However, on the helicopter ride to his station, he and his comrades are less certain and more tense. Dr. Oakes' colleague, Dr. Landowska, reveals people are evacuating Moscow and Kansas City. At the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Bruce is among the students enrolling for their classes. Dr. Hachiya is also there to give the new students health inspections. One of Dr. Hachiya's patients, Stephen Klein of Joplin, Missouri, decides to hitchhike home when news arrives that Soviets have invaded West Germany. Meanwhile, Nurse Nancy Bauer checks in Alison Ransom, a young first-time pregnant woman whose due date is imminent.

While he is getting a haircut, Bruce runs into a professor, Joe Huxley, who warns everyone that, with the nearby missile silos, Kansas is not as safe from nuclear attack as they would like to believe. While stuck in traffic on I-70 on his way to Lawrence, Dr. Oakes learns the Federal Emergency Management Agency has issued an emergency warning to people in the Kansas City area. Meanwhile, there are runs on the grocery stores as news comes across that mutual attacks have been launched on American and Soviet ships. As Jim loads up his cellar to serve as a fallout shelter, Eve is in denial and preparing for the wedding. When residents across the area see the American missiles fire from their silos, they realize the war has begun. Jim drags the hysterical Eve into the cellar.

Airman McCoy and his comrades realize there is nothing left to do with the missiles fired, and after arguments, they agree to head into an underground bunker, but McCoy leaves the bunker behind and tries to head home. In Kansas City and Lawrence, there is panic in the streets as people race to bomb shelters and anywhere they can. A nuclear detonation in the atmosphere over Kansas City causes an electromagnetic pulse, which blacks out most electronic devices—lights, telephones, Dr. Oakes' car, Airman McCoy's truck, Bruce's motorcycle, etc. Dr. Oakes is on the freeway when twin mushroom clouds rise up over Kansas City and the nearby airfields. The force of each blast instantly incinerates people and buildings caught in its radius. Danny is outside, and he turns to see the blast and is blinded, but Jim knocks him to the ground to avoid the shockwave so they can get to the cellar. Bruce is vaporized on the road from Lawrence. The Hendry family is engulfed in flame. Stephen seeks shelter in an abandoned building and survives the initial blast.

After the blasts, Joe and his students Cynthia and Aldo set up a short-wave radio in the basement of the Basic Sciences Building. Dr. Oakes makes his way on foot to the University Hospital in Lawrence, where he finds pandemonium as the wounded crowd in, the doctors are overworked and there is no electricity. Dr. Oakes restores order in the hospital and tries to find a way to get electricity, but when he learns the effects of the EMP may last for a while, he is forced to make do with what he has. He operates by flashlight with instruments sterilized in boiled water. Joe keeps in touch with Dr. Oakes on the radio and keeps track of the radiation, which is still at dangerous levels.

Stephen arrives at the Dahlberg Farm. Jim is at first suspicious, but when Stephen reveals he has brought his own food, Jim consents to offer him shelter in the cellar. At the five-day mark with no word from Bruce, Denise freaks out and runs to the outside. Jim starts to chase after, but Stephen stops him and retrieves her as repayment for the Dahlbergs giving him shelter.

At the University Hospital, people try to claw their way in as Dr. Oakes worries about looters, infection and dead bodies. Dr. Oakes talks with Alison, who is overdue but now unsure she wants to give birth to a child into a desolate, post-apocalyptic world.

Wrapped in a blanket, on the road home to Sedalia, Airman McCoy runs into a group of refugees who inform him his hometown has been destroyed. He comes across a line of pathetic refugees fighting over a water pump and pushing another man, Cody, out of line. McCoy helps Cody get water with the help of a man armed with a gun, and afterwards, McCoy and Cody travel together and share McCoy's candy bars. Both dying of radiation poisoning, they make their way to a refugee camp, but there is nothing that can be done for them.

With the radiation at safe levels, the hospital opens its doors to allow the uninjured to leave. The Dahlbergs and Stephen go to a church revival, but they see blood on Denise's crotch, so Stephen offers to drive her and Danny to the hospital at Lawrence by horse and carriage. They join throngs of sick and injured trying to make their way into the hospital. The President addresses the nation by radio and announces the war is over, but America will remain defiant against the Soviets.

Exhausted and sick, Dr. Oakes passes out. He comes to in the hospice and realizes he is dying. Outside the hospital, Stephen helps bury the dead in mass graves and witnesses a food riot. Jim gets instructions from local officials for planting new crops, but the instructions seem impossible. On his way home, he comes across a family of refugee squatters on his land. While he is talking to them, the father of the family shoots and kills him.

Back at the hospital, his skin pale and his hair falling out from radiation sickness, Dr. Oakes learns Nurse Bauer has died from a meningitis infection. He announces his intention to return to Kansas City, but Dr. Hachiya refuses to return with him. Stephen arrives to take Danny and Denise home. He finds Denise in a cot, dying of radiation sickness. Stephen removes his cap to show her his bald head and to reveal he, too, is dying. In Kansas City, Dr. Oakes finds the spot where his house used to be, now nothing but a smoking pile of rubble, and he realizes his family is dead. As Alison at last gives birth, Dr. Oakes finds a family of survivors on his house's foundation. He orders them to leave, but the father offers Dr. Oakes food. Dr. Oakes collapses, and the father walks up and hugs him.

Trivia

Allusions and References

• 60 Minutes: The first TV network news magazine, also considered the best by almost all commentators and critics.

Dr. Russell Oakes: Ah, you saw 60 Minutes last night.

• Duel in the Sun: The movie Dr. Russell and Helen Oakes are watching on TV as they clean up the kitchen. The classic 1946 Western stars Jennifer Jones as a half-breed who is sent to live with White relatives when her family dies.

• Cuban Missile Crisis: The confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union over nuclear missiles the USSR deployed in Cuba following the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion by the US. In October 1962, President John F. Kennedy learned of the missile installations in Cuba. He declared an attack launch from Cuba on any nation would be considered an attack by the USSR against the USA, and he ordered a blockade. Outraged, Soviet Premiere Nikita Khrushchev ordered Soviet ships to circumvent the blockade. After two weeks of tense negotiations, the USSR agreed to dismantle the installations in exchange for a US promise not to attempt another invasion of Cuba. The situation was considered the closest the world ever came to a nuclear World War III.

Helen Oakes: God, it's 1962 all over again. Cuban Missile Crisis. Do you remember Kennedy on television? Telling Khrushchev to turn his boats around?
Dr. Russell Oakes: Full retaliatory response. He didn't bat an eye.

• Hiroshima: The Japanese city which was bombed by the United States with an atomic bomb on August 6, 1945, the first nuclear attack in the history of the world. The initial attack killed an estimated 80,000 people, while 60,000 more died in the coming months of radiation poisoning. The attack and subsequent bombing of Nagasaki forced the Japanese to surrender, ending World War II. However, the nuclear weapons developed by the United States and Soviet Union in the decades following World War II greatly eclipsed the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in potential devastation.

Dr. Landowska: We are not talking about Hiroshima anymore! Hiroshima was... was peanuts!

• The Little Rascals/Richie Rich Show: The cartoon the Hendry children are watching when the news comes out of an attack on Soviet forces. It is during the Richie Rich portion of the show.

Quotes

• Dr. Russell Oakes: What's going on? Do you understand what's going on in this world?
  Dr. Landowska: Yeah. Stupidity. Has a habit of getting its way.

• Bruce Gallatin: Wh-what do you really think the chances of something like that happenin' way the hell out here in the middle of nowhere?
  Joe Huxley: Nowhere? Heh, heh, heh. There's no "nowhere" anymore. You're sittin' next to the Whiteman Air Force Base right now. That's about a hundred and fifty Minuteman missile silos spread halfway down the state of Missouri. That's... an awful lot of bullseyes.

• Joe Huxley: This is Lawrence. This is Lawrence, Kansas. Is anybody there? Anybody at all?

• Alison Ransom: Do you think I'm holding back by force of will, Dr. Oakes? Bad toilet training?
  Dr. Russell Oakes: No, I think you've got to be willing to let your baby come whether you like it or not. You're holding back hope.
  Alison Ransom: Hope for what? What do you think's gonna happen out there? You think we're gonna sweep up the dead and fill in a couple'a holes and build some supermarkets? You think all those people left alive out there are gonna say, "Oh, I'm sorry. It wasn't my fault. Let's kiss and make up." We knew the score. We knew all about bombs. We knew all about fallout. We knew this could happen for 40 years, but nobody was interested.

• Joe Huxley: You know what Einstein said about World War III? He said he didn't know how they were gonna fight World War III, but he knew how they would fight World War IV. With sticks and stones.

DVD Release

Title	Release Date	#
The Day After	May 18, 2004	1	purchase

Awards and Accolades

Emmy Awards, 1983-84

(12 Nominations/2 Wins)

• Nominated: Outstanding Drama/Comedy Special

Robert Papazian

• Nominated: Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or a Special

John Lithgow

• Nominated: Outstanding Writing in a Limited Series or a Special

Edward Hume

• Nominated: Outstanding Directing in a Limited Series or a Special

Nicholas Meyer

• Nominated: Outstanding Achievement in Hairstyling

Dorothie J. Long & Judy Crown

• Nominated: Outstanding Achievement in Makeup

Michael Westmore & Zoltan Elek

• Nominated: Outstanding Art Direction for a Limited Series or a Special

Peter Wooley & Mary Ann Good

• Nominated: Outstanding Cinematography for a Limited Series or a Special

Gayne Rescher

• Nominated: Outstanding Film Editing for a Limited Series or a Special

William Paul Dornisch & Robert Florio

• Won: Outstanding Film Sound Editing for a Limited Series or a Special

Christopher T. Welch, Brian Courcier, Greg Dillon, David R. Elliott, Michael Hilkene, Fred Judkins, Carl Mahakian, Joseph A. Mayer, Joseph Melody, Catherine Shorr, Richard Shorr, Jill Taggart & Roy Prendergast

• Nominated: Outstanding Film Sound Mixing for a Limited Series or a Special

Charles T. Knight, Gary C. Bourgeois, Kevin F. Cleary & Robert L. Harman

• Won: Outstanding Individual Achievement - Special Visual Effects

Robert Blalack, Nancy Rushlow, Dan Pinkham, Chris Regan, Larry Stevens, Dan Nosenchuck & Christofer Dierdorff

WGA TV Awards, 1984

(1 Nomination/1 Win)

• Won: Original Drama Anthology

Edward Hume

Other Awards

• Golden Screen Awards, Germany, 1984
  • Won: Golden Screen Award

• Young Artist Awards, USA, 1984
  • Won: Best Young Actor in a Family Film Made for Television - Doug Scott