Nuclear War Movies

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A hydrogen bomb is tens, and sometimes hundreds of times the explosive power of an atomic bomb. As nuclear weapons go, atomic bombs of the yield of Hiroshima (approximately 14 kt or the explosive yield of 14,000 TONNES of TNT) is actually pretty rinky-dink.

The most powerful ones now are about 5 MT (5 megatons; or the the explosive yield of 5,000,000 tonnes of TNT).

The USSR in 1961 or thereabouts tested the Tsar Bomba (King of All Bombs) with an explosive yield of 54 MT in Novalya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean. It was supposed to be 100 MT but legend has it the Soviet leadership had the yield reduced in fears that the full yield would create a hole in the atmosphere. It had to be dropped from a very strong airplane and the dropped slowed by a parachute to allow the plane and crew to survive and not get vapourised.

As for the bomb that destroys living tissue while leaving physical structures intact is called the neutron bomb. It releases a strong burst of radiation that quickly dissipates. It's main uses would be for genocide or on the battlefield. It would literally cook soldiers on the battlefields, including people in tanks, while leaving the equipment unscathed. The United States produced them but they were decommissioned in 1977 under President Carter.

Israel is widely reputed to have a sizable arsenal of neutron and other nuclear weapons in their arsenal. Israel can deliver them via Jericho I and Jericho II missiles on SSBN's. Of course, Israel formally denies their existence.

You are correct on "The Day After". The movie was shown on ABC in September 1983.

"Threads" was also a made-for-TV movie. It was produced for the BBC and shown on that channel in the UK in 1984.

"The War Game" was also made-for-TV as a docudrama in 1965. However, broadcast executives and sensors believed it to be "alarmist" and "too frightening" so it was banned from broadcast and effectively shelved. In 1985, the ban was circumvented by screening it in cinemas as cinemas are not subject to broadcast bans.

I agree with you regarding your comparisons of "Threads" to "The Day After".

That aside, I think "Threads" has a better blast sequence compared to the stock footage on "The Day After". However, both leave you with goosebumps.

"The Day After" DOES have a better mushroom cloud effect and a better pre-blast pandemonium scene although "Threads" gives it a run for it's proverbial money.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_design
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/

An atomic bomb (Fission bomb) uses plutonium as fuel (though uranium can also be used). Plutonium is unstable, its atoms are always falling apart, relasing energy and sub-atomic particles and when they do they hit other atoms causing them to split. Below a certain mass the reaction will decrease over time, this is called a sub-critical mass. A critical mass is when you have enough to create a sustained reaction, one atoms decay products strike the next, that one strikes the next, etc, this is the basis of nuclear power, it creates heat which is used to evaporate water. Nuclear weapons depend on creating a super-critical mass, in which the decay products exponentially increase- one hits two, two hit four, and so on. Eventualy this blows the weapon apart in an explosion. It does this by using a carefully focused explosion to force the atoms close together so when they split the decay products will hit several other atoms.

In a Thermonuclear weapon, or Hydrogen bomb there are several different designs the simplest method, known as gas boosting is to put a very small ammount of deuterium and tritium (both isotopes of hydrogen thus- H-bomb) inside the hollow core of plutonium. The extreme ammount of heat and pressure in the core causes the isotopes to fuse into heavier elements and release sub-atomic particles. These increase the efficiency if the weapon either increasing explosive yield or allowing the use of less plutonium for the same yield.

If you include "Red Dawn" on your list then you have to include all post nuclear war
movies. I guess they would be call Post-apocalyptic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dy ... pocalyptic

Mad Max anyone?

And while your at it all dystopian movie are cool!

Do you like documentaries? The movie Trinity and Beyond is great and has tons of info on the US nuke program with lots of cleaned up footage of blasts and effects.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114728/

I like Saving Private Ryan. I don't know if that would count, though.

I totally liked "Wargames", it was really cool. I guess if you see it now it would appear a bit tame or something, but back when it came out it was definently cool! Global Thermonuclear War, Hacking, Phreaking, Supercomputers... great!

so crazy. i cant believe something like that actually exists

When the wind blows

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090315/

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq1.html

This is a common misconception, and you're wrong on both counts.
The Neutron bomb or more formally 'Enhanced Radiation Warhead' is designed so as to release a great ammount of ionising radiation. is does this by using a Deuterium-Tritium gas mixture as the only fusion fuel because this reaction releases 80% of its energy as neutron radiation and using case materials such as nickel or chromium which are invisible to neutrons. The weapon was designed for a very specific purpose: defending West Germany during the Cold War. If the USSR had invaded, the main thrust would have occured through the Fulda Gap, an area of relatively flat terrain near Frankfurt. Soviet forces would be concentrated in this area and frendly forces would be close, so small ER weapons would have been more useful than larger weapons with a bigger blast radius. Despite their greater radiation release ER weapons are still just as destructive as any other nuclear weapon. civilian buildings can be destroyed by as little as one pound per square inch of overpressure even a 1Kt ER warhead creates this to a considerably further distance than either its blast radius, or the lethal range of radiation. In addition, though Carter suspended research in '77, Regan restarted it Bush finaly shut it down in 1990 all existing warheads in US inventory were decomissioned by 1992 after all, there was no further need for them.

Last edited by T-rav20 on 13 Feb 2007, 2:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

Hi, T-rav20!

Thanks for improving my knowledge on nuclear weapons! I greatly appreciate your help and I always seem to learn something new here on Wrong Planet!

Take care!

You're welcome, Nukes were my primary interest when I was fourteen, actualy part of a lifetime interest in military technology, and I'm always happy to discuss them. The NW archive is an excellent site and is what I usually use as a reference, so if you haven't run across it before I'd suggest checking it out:
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/

Cheers,
T

Whats the movie with a black president of the usa? I think it had a 1 word name that started w/ 'E' but i could be wrong. I have wanted to see this but never could remember the name.

I think you MIGHT be referring to "Deep Impact". It's not exactly a nuclear war movie but close enough as it involved meteor strikes which produce nuclear-sized explosions themselves plus the usage of nuclear weapons in outer space in an attempt to prevent the apocalypse.

The president in the movie was named Tom Beck and was played by Morgan Freeman.

Only one off the top of my head was Deep Impact. As for the Mad Max films, according to the canon for the series only Thunderdome was set after the nukes flew. In Road Warrior, it was the loss of the Mideast oil fields due to conventional war that caused all the butt-less chaps and mohawks.