The Day After: Difference between revisions

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'''Alison Ransom:''' Hope for ''what?!'' What do you think's going to happen out there? You think we're going to sweep up the dead and fill in a couple of holes and build some supermarkets? You think all those people left alive out there are going to 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 ''forty years''. [[Somebody Else's Problem|Nobody was interested.]] }}

 

** That was the excuse given. In reality, the network found that it couldn't sell any ads for the last half of the show.

* [[Albert Einstein]]: Referenced by Professor Huxley.

* [[And Knowing Is Half the Battle]]: The ending caption.

* [[Anyone Can Die]]: Played brutally straight; most do.

* [[Apocalypse How]]: Definitely a Class 1, likely a Class 2 due to the [[Inferred Holocaust]] (see below).

** The Hendrys are also seen being engulfed by a fireball.

* [[Middle of Nowhere Street]]: Bruce finds out from Huxley that there is no "middle of nowhere," since the town is sitting near a military base and the state itself is home to a lot of missile silos.

'''Professor Huxley:''' Nowhere? (laughs) There's no "nowhere" anymore. You're sitting right next to the Whiteman Air Force Base right now. That's about 150 Minuteman Missile silos spread halfway down the State of Missouri. That's...an awful lot of bulls-eyes. }}

* [[Next Sunday AD]]: In 1983, at least, thus averting [[The Great Politics Mess-Up]].

** Also done with respect to the music--although there isn't much music to begin with, almost all of it is heard ''before'' the nuclear exchange. What follows afterward is mostly ominous ambiance.

* [[Selective Obliviousness]]: Cynthia refuses to believe the end is near after she sees a multitude of ICBMs launching.

'''Aldo''': [[Oh Crap|So do theirs, right?]] }}

* [[The Sixteen Lands of Deutschland]]: The state of Hessen, Germany, is the first casualty of [[World War III]].

* [[Shout-Out]]: The writer echoes Philip Wylie's ''Tomorrow!'' in having one family (the Dahlbergs) ready and prepared for nuclear war and another (the Hendrys) unprepared and in denial. In Wylie's book, the unprepared family is destroyed while the prepared family thrives; in ''The Day After'', the unprepared family simply dies faster and with less suffering.

* [[Somebody Else's Problem]]: Cynthia argues with her fellow students that the U.S. would ''never'' launch nukes to defend Europe, even as news unfolds of rapidly escalating conflict in Germany.

* [[Staggered Zoom]]: So long, Kansas City ...

* [[Stock Footage]]: Much of the missile launch and detonation scenes make use of footage from actual tests of ICBMs and nuclear warheads.