The Day After

The Day After postulates a fictional war between the NATO forces and the Warsaw Pact countries that rapidly escalates into a full-scale nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. The action itself focuses on the residents of Lawrence, Kansas, Kansas City, Missouri, and of several family-owned farms near nuclear missile silos. Dr. Russell Oakes (Jason Robards) maintains his busy schedule at the hospital, Denise Dahlberg prepares for her upcoming wedding, and Stephen Klein (Steve Guttenberg) is deep in his graduate studies. When the unthinkable happens and the bombs come down, the town's residents are thrust into the horrors of nuclear winter. More than 100 million people, in nearly 39 million households, watched the program during its initial broadcast. At the time of its release, the film was the seventh-highest-rated non-sports show and set a record as the highest-rated television film in history—a record it held as recently as 2009.