The Day After depicts the effects of nuclear war on the residences in and
around the town of Lawrence, Kansas.
They include Dr. Russell Oakes, played be Jason Robards, Nurse Nancy Baker,
played by JoBeth Williams, a grad student named Stephen Klein played by Steve
Guttenburg, an academic named Joe Huxley played by John Lithgow, and a farm
girl/bride to be named Denise Dahlberg played by Lori Lethin.
The first part of the miniseries depicts the run up to the war, shown by
increasingly more and more alarming news reports. It appears that some sort of
tension in Central Europe, caused by the Reagan era
deployment of Pershing and cruise missiles, is getting out of control. Then the
war starts, with bombs going off everywhere, including over Kansas
City where a group of people in an underground shelter
are vaporized instantly.
The last part is about the aftermath, the day after if you will. Dr. Oakes
vainly tries to set up a casualty center for those people injured by the
attack. But as radiation levels rise and more and more people come in, only to
die, he and his fellow doctors and nurses are completely overwhelmed.
There are some horrific scenes. One is when the people of Lawrence
watch as the missiles launch from the nearby silos, realizing that the Soviet
missiles are on their way to vaporize them. Another when the farmer Dahlberg
has to drag his wife kicking and screaming down to the cellar from the bed she
is trying to make in denial of what is about to happen. And then, in a steal
from a scene from Gone with the Wind, a wide shot of the thousands of
casualties lying near the hospital, waiting in vain for help.
The Day After was, of course, a protest vehicle. President Reagan was going
to destroy the world, according to some. It was no accident that the film was
broadcast just before the 1984 election year. Still, it remains a powerful
alternate history of what might have happened.