Over at the Week, Chris Lites talks about the nuclear panic of the 1980s and the art that came out of it. The panic left its mark on me at the time. If the television was on in the next room, the emergency broadcast system started going off, and I hadn’t heard the disclaimer that it was a test, I would experience a moment of panic. I was in somewhere in my twenties before that involuntary reaction entirely went away. Lites argues that we have forgotten the nuclear panic movies of the 1980s. Well, we have and we haven’t.

Very few people who were not around for the 1980s have seen that decade’s version of The Day After. Good for them. The movie is unbearably boring. The only reasons to watch it would be nostalgia, historical research, or court-ordered punishment. WarGames is moderately amusing to me, but I suspect it looks silly to people who grew up with cell phones that are more powerful than the computers depicted in that movie.

Not all nuclear scare movies have been forgotten, but they aren’t always remembered as nuclear scare movies. The Terminator is an outstanding (and still culturally relevant) movie that includes the nuclear panic of 1982-1983 among its many influences. It just doesn’t get the attention as a movie inspired by the nuclear scare because it puts the story first and the passive-aggressive Reagan-bashing way down among its list of priorities.

We are still getting nuclear panic movies. Watchmen was published as a comic book in 1986 and was adapted to film in 2009, but its heart is in the 1982-1983 nuclear panic.