Apocalypse then: The forgotten history of 1980s nuclear panic movies

Movies like The Day After and Miracle Mile offer a glimpse at a time when the threat of nuclear war seemed very real

Mel Gibson in the original Mad Max.

It's been more than 30 years, but I still remember the day after ABC aired The Day After in November of 1983. As a friend's mom drove us both to school, we reminisced about the film's nightmarish vision of a world ravaged by nuclear war. "There was blood in the toilet bowl," my friend shivered. Over the years, the image stayed with me as well — an emblem of a decade spent living with the specter of mutually assured destruction.

Of course, here we are in 2015, in a world that isn't a totally irradiated nuclear wasteland. Today, those fears have largely subsided — but anyone who wants a glimpse of what it was like to live in fear of the bomb can look back at the rash of nuclear war–themed movies that were pumped out by Hollywood throughout the 1980s.

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