NUCLEAR ATTACK IS NOT SCIENCE FICTION ANYMORE

 

TODAY, HAWAIIANS EXPERIENCED A NIGHTMARE.

 

FORTUNATELY, IT WAS A FALSE ALARM. SOMEONE PRESSED THE WRONG BUTTON BY ACCIDENT.

 

WHAT IF- IN ONE OF HIS SNITS - DONALD TRUMP PRESSES THE WRONG BUTTON INSTEAD OF TWEETING?

 

WHAT IF, LEARNING OF THE ALARM, NORTH KOREA EXPECTS AN ATTACK AND LAUNCHES A NUCLEAR MISSILE?

 

DO YOU HAVE AN ATOMIC BOMB SHELTER AT YOUR HOUSE?

 

AND AFTER THE ATTACK, WHEN YOU EMERGE FROM YOUR SHELTER, AND YOU SEE ALL THE BURNED AND BURNING BODIES OF YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS, WHAT ABOUT THE RADIATION THAT LASTS FOR CENTURIES?

 

THE LIVING WILL ENVY THE DEAD.


THE SHELTER

It is a typical evening in a typical suburban community. At the residence of physician Bill Stockton, he enjoys a birthday party being thrown for him by his wife Grace and their son Paul.

Also at the party are Jerry Harlowe, Bill's brother-in-law; Frank Henderson and Marty Weiss, Bill and Jerry's former roommates; and the wives and children of Jerry, Frank, and Marty. Bill is well known and liked by this gathering; he attended the State University with Marty, Frank, and Jerry. Moreover, Bill has repeatedly administered to the health and well-being of each one of said guests and/or delivered their children.

Everyone is especially friendly and jovial, even when mention is made of Bill's late-night work on a fallout shelter which he has built in his basement.

Suddenly, a Civil Defense (CONELRAD) announcement overheard by young Paul is made that unidentified objects have been detected heading for the United States. In these times, everybody knows what that means: nuclear attack.

 

As panic ensues, the doctor locks himself and his family into his shelter. The same gathering of friends becomes hysterical and now wants to occupy the shelter.

All of the previous cordiality is now replaced with soaring desperation; pent-up hostility, searing racism, nativism, and other suppressed emotions boil to the surface.

Stockton offers his basement to the guests, but the shelter itself  has sufficient air, provisions, and space for only three people (the Stocktons themselves).

The once-friendly neighbors do not accept this; they break down the shelter door with an improvised battering ram.

Just then, a final Civil Defense broadcast announces that the objects have been identified as harmless satellites and that no danger is present. The neighbors apologize for their behavior; yet Stockton wonders if they have destroyed each other without a bomb.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shelter_(The_Twilight_Zone)


ON THE BEACH

Although there'd been doomsday dramas before it, Stanley Kramer's On the Beach was considered the first important entry in this genre when originally released in 1959. Based on the novel by Nevil Shute, the film is set in the future (1964) when virtually all life on earth has been exterminated by the radioactive residue of a nuclear holocaust.

Only Australia has been spared, but it's only a matter of time before everyone Down Under also succumbs to radiation poisoning.

With only a short time left on earth, the Australian population reacts in different ways: some go on a nonstop binge of revelry, while others eagerly consume the suicide pills being issued by the government.

When the possibility arises that rains have washed the atmosphere clean in the Northern hemisphere, a submarine commander (Gregory Peck) and his men head to San Diego, where faint radio signals have been emanating.

The movie's all-star cast includes: Peck as the stalwart sub captain, Ava Gardner as his emotionally disturbed lover, Fred Astaire as a guilt-wracked nuclear scientist, and Anthony Perkins and Donna Anderson as the just starting out in life married couple.~

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1015530_on_the_beach

 ON THE BEACH

THERE is an initial impulse to say of Stanley Kramer's "On the Beach," the new film that he and John Paxton have refined from the novel of Nevil Shute, that it is concerned with the imagined annihilation of all mankind on this earth, the slow poisoning of the last pocket of surviving humans by radioactive fall-out from a nuclear war.

 

And that would be absolutely accurate, so far as the situation and plot are concerned. For the crisis in this deeply moving picture, which opened at the Astor last night—and in theatres in seventeen other places all around the world—is that which confronts a group of people in Australia in 1964 as they helplessly await the inexorable onset of a lethal cloud of atomic dust.

 

Death and complete annihilation of the human race are certainly the menaces that hang over all the characters in this film. They are specified at the beginning in the most candid and awesome terms.

 

A nuclear war someone started (it is never clarified who) has caused fall-out that has completely decimated the entire northern hemisphere. Now the fall-out is slowly drifting southward; the last people in Australia have five months to enjoy what is left of living and prepare themselves for the end.

 

So, as they grasp the situation, as an American submarine and its crew go north as far as Alaska in hopes of finding a clearing atmosphere and as the final days come upon them (when they learn there is no hope), the ever-present realization of themselves—and the audience—is death.

 

Yet the basic theme of this drama and its major concern is life, the wondrous thing that man's own vast knowledge and ultimate folly seem about to destroy. And everything done by the characters, every thought they utter and move they make, indicates their fervor, tenacity and courage in the face of doom.

 

The American submarine captain will not accept that his wife and children are dead, a young Australian naval lieutenant and his wife look forward to having a second child, a worldly and blasé woman who has wasted life tries to find true love, a seasoned and cynical atomic scientist tunes his cherished possession, a racing car.

 

In putting this fanciful but arresting story of Mr. Shute on the screen, Mr. Kramer and his assistants have most forcibly emphasized this point: life is a beautiful treasure and man should do all he can to save it from annihilation, while there is still time.

 

To this end, he has accomplished some vivid and trenchant images that subtly fill the mind of the viewer with a strong appreciation of his theme. The sequence in which the American submarine goes north to Point Barrow, then comes back by deadened San Francisco and puts a well-protected man ashore in empty San Diego to investigate a curious radio signal that comes from there, gives a tremendous comprehension of the waste of an unpeopled world. And scenes of life in Australia, which follow, point up the joy of carrying on. Even a nerve-tingling sequence representing a suicidal auto race impresses the viewer with the wisdom of man's being careful of his hide.

http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9F01E3D8103CE63BBC4052DFB4678382649EDE