More Disaster Scenarios

After writing that little blurb on earth2100, I suddenly remembered a movie that absolutely petrified me when I was in either 3rd or 4th grade....The Day After.

"The film portrays a fictional nuclear war between NATO forces and the Warsaw Pact that rapidly escalates into a full scale exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union, focusing on the residents of Lawrence, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri, as well as several family farms situated next to nearby nuclear missile silos. The film was written by Edward Hume and directed by Nicholas Meyer. The film was released on DVD on May 18, 2004."

All that childhood angst did pan out for me, though.  I won first place in my fourth grade essay contest when I poured out my firmly anti-nuke sentiments into a paper that must have ultimately amounted to,"I don't want to be disintegrated into ash, or live on with horrible radiation poisoning....please stop using nukes."

My school thought it was a genius paper and even gave me a trophy to stroke my ego.  I'm not sure whatever happened to it, or the essay I wrote.  They're probably buried in a box somewhere at my mother's house.

All I really remember was that my classmate, Jennifer S., was mad at me because she came in second place and I had just beaten her at the annual Spelling Bee the week before. Sour grapes, I guess. Or maybe she wanted to see us all burn up in a nuclear holocaust. 

As an adult, I have always hated disaster movies.  In fact, I can't watch them without making fun of them:

"Oh no, a giant earthquake is going to kill us all! ....and the government won't listen to the world's expert on earthquakes!"

"Oh no, a super-volcano is going to kill us all!...and the government won't listen to the world's expert on volcanos!"

"Oh no, a category 10 hurricane is going to kill us all!...and the government won't listen to the world's expert on hurricanes!"

"Oh no, a new tropical virus is going to kill us all!...and the government won't listen to the world's expert on infectious disease and microbiology!"

You get the picture.  Thousands die in the first crisis.  The government starts listening to the world's expert in the related discipline.  The world recovers, stunned but full of new promise, having learned the lesson that we must always listen to world experts.

Without further ado.....the awesome destruction from The Day After. 

P.S.  Is it any wonder that The Day After was also shown on ABC?  

ABC--Alarmingly Bleak Coverage