I remember: as quite a young woman watching a TV show on, I think, the ABC network. A mini-series. The Day After. Wiki says that was 1983.
This was before the Internet. Before cell phones & long distance calls still required an operator. Before cable tv in my area. I used to do my laundry at a laundromat directly under the end-of-the-runway at Carslwell Air Force Base, a major Strategic Air Command installation. The B-52s went over so low we could read the writing on the planes. I remember that everyone, literally almost everyone, watched that mini-series. People gathered in community centers and in churches to watch it. They had it on in like bars and the window-displays of appliance stores, and on the big-screen TV at the mall. And how absolutely horrifying it was, because it pretty much could have happened at any point back then and people were jolted into realizing that.
It seemed that a lot of people had really only a kind of an esoteric understanding of MAD before watching that TV show. It was changed after it. It kind of was rubbed right into their faces what the actual reality was. People who were older back then, who had lived through the 1940s and 1950s as adults, were much more aware of the threat. Maybe because it was new for them in their lifetimes. For younger people it was just a kind of dull background noise hum that had always been there throughout their lives and was easy to not think about.
So I was toodling around on YouTube and what popped up, but The Day After. [Oh, thanks loads, algorithm.] I watched it again, with the same horror, and realized nothing has changed very much. The sheer number of nukes that MAD dictated have dwindled, thank goodness, but there are still more than enough. It would appear that all the progress we had been making could simply vanish in an instant, if either Putin or Trump goes mental. Or more mental. Or if someone elsewhere does. I really have no confidence in either of them at this point, and there's enough going on around the world that it could well be someone else that starts it. Fallout knows no political boundaries.
Not that you need to see this show. It's a bit dated, and it's "made-for-tv" acting, but maybe you might want to if you're, say, under 50. It's what we lived with back then, every damned day. Knowing that this was hovering just over our heads. I really don't want to see that reality again for my offspring or for you. But I'm seeing familiar shadows these days.
It's here.
