Theme: Nuclear War

Nuclear War refers to the detonation of nuclear weapons and the mass devastation they cause. There is a reasonable body of films about the theft and hijacking of nuclear weaponry (although these are almost never depicted as being detonated) – these are covered under the theme The Nuclear Threat. Films set in the aftermath of the dropping of the bomb and collapse of civilisation are dealt with under After the Holocaust Films.

Films about nuclear war began in the 1950s in the aftermath of the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Outbreak of nuclear between the West and the Soviet Union was considered a very real possibility between the 1950s and late 1980s and much genre cinema of this period is tinged with the stark fears this would become an actuality.

The first of these films was Five (1951) depicting survivors of a nuclear detonation trying to piece life together in the ruins. Beginning with On the Beach (1959), these films started to take on a very grim tone showing little hope for the future. The Nuclear War film saw a renewed interest with another cluster of films and tv movies in the 1980s.

With the ending of hostilities with the Soviet Union, the nuclear war film has now almost entirely died out apart from sporadic exceptions. In the depictions we do get, it is usually part of a film that is principally about something else as in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), or where the cause of the war is usually omitted.