How Hollywood Taught a Generation to Fear the Bomb

Hollywood's portrayal of nuclear war during the Cold War era captivated audiences and instilled a deep-seated fear in young people. The images and stories told on screen have had a lasting impact, shaping public perception and informing debates about nuclear proliferation.

In the late 2000s, I was teaching a class on nuclear weapons to undergraduates who had grown up after the fall of the Soviet Union. As I tried to explain what it was like to grow up worrying about a sudden apocalypse, a student raised his hand and said: “What were you so afraid of? I mean, sure, nuclear weapons are bad, but …” And here he gave up with a puzzled shake of his head, as if to say: What was the big deal?

I paused to think of a better way to explain that the annihilation of the world was a big deal. People who grew up during the Cold War, as I did, internalized this fear as children. We still tell our campfire tales about hiding under school desks at the sound of air-raid sirens. Such things seemed mysterious, and even irrelevant, to my students in the 21st century. And then it occurred to me: They haven’t seen the movies.

During the Cold War, popular culture provided Americans with images of (and a vocabulary for) nuclear war. Mushroom clouds, DEFCON alerts, exploding buildings, fallout-shelter signs—these visuals popped up in even the frothiest forms of entertainment, including comic books, James Bond movies, and music videos. The possibility of a nuclear holocaust was always lurking in the background, like the figure of Death hiding among revelers in a Bosch triptych, and we could imagine it because it had been shown to us many times on screens big and small.

Ensuing generations have grown up with their own fears: Terrorism, climate change, and now AI are upending life across the globe, and nuclear war might seem more like a historical curiosity than a concrete threat. But at this moment, Russia and the United States each have roughly 1,500 deployed strategic warheads, many of them on alert, with thousands more in their inventories.

This is an improvement over the madness of the Cold War, when the superpowers were sitting on tens of thousands of deployed weapons, but the current global stockpile is more than enough to destroy hundreds of cities and kill billions of people. The threat remains, but the public’s fears, along with the movies that explored them, have faded away.

Americans need new films to remind new generations about the horrors of nuclear war. But Cold War-era movies are not just relics. The horrors they depict are still possible. From the 1951 classic The Day the Earth Stood Still to the 2011 reboot of Planet of the Apes, filmmakers have explored the consequences of nuclear war in ways that continue to captivate audiences.

The 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still is a landmark example of the genre. Directed by Robert Wise and produced by Howard Hawks, the movie tells the story of an alien who travels to Earth to warn humanity about its destructive tendencies. The film's themes of nuclear war and responsibility continue to resonate today.

Another classic example is Testament (1983), a made-for-TV movie that depicts the devastating effects of nuclear war on a small California town. The film features a stark, documentary-style approach, with little fanfare or dramatic music. It’s a powerful commentary on the human cost of nuclear conflict.

The 2008 reimagining of The Day the Earth Stood Still updates the classic story for modern audiences. In this version, Klaatu warns earthlings about ecocide rather than an atomic menace. However, even in its updated form, the film fails to capture the same level of urgency and fear that characterized earlier nuclear war movies.

Today’s films often shy away from depicting the horrors of nuclear war. Instead, they focus on more contemporary threats like climate change and terrorism. While these topics are certainly important, they don’t offer the same level of visceral fear that nuclear war once did.

In the 2011 reboot of Planet of the Apes, the inversion of apes and humans happens not because of nuclear war but because of a faulty pharmaceutical experiment. The film’s take on the classic story is a departure from the earlier films, which focused on the threat of nuclear annihilation.

But some filmmakers continue to explore the consequences of nuclear war in their work. Kathryn Bigelow, who also directed the realistic military dramas Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker, will soon release a movie set in the present day about a surprise missile attack on the United States.

Bigelow told me last year that she was alarmed by the lack of public debate on nuclear peril. Her next film could serve as a modern-day Fail Safe or The Day After, and spur the kind of discussion that was inspired by those earlier movies.

As Adlai Stevenson, John F. Kennedy’s ambassador to the United Nations, remarked after the Cuban missile crisis: “Perhaps we need a coward in the room when we are talking about nuclear war.” And perhaps we still need movies about nuclear war to scare us into talking, and remembering.

The legacy of Cold War-era nuclear war movies continues to shape public perception and inform debates about nuclear proliferation. These films remind us that the threat of nuclear annihilation is real and should not be taken lightly.