Currently, as far as we know, there are nine countries with nuclear arsenals — the nine most dangerous nations on Earth: the US, Russia, China, the UK, Israel, India, Pakistan, France, and North Korea. Collectively, the axis of evil. And madness. And war. And ecocide. And abuse. And vacuity… You get the idea. The point is we’re not in safe hands, and the closer you look the more troubling it gets.

Brace yourself. 

Here are 10 terrifying truths about nukes.

10. Nuclear-armed nations spend $156,000 per minute on their bombs

Ever wondered why so many people in wealthy nations languish in abject poverty? Look no further than military spending, in particular on nuclear weapons. In 2021, amid a global pandemic — not to mention a climate crisis — the nine stupidest countries “squandered” $82.4 billion on their arsenals, the equivalent of $156,000 per minute. Besides maintenance, management, disposal, and so on, this includes spending on lobbyists to lie to the public. As the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons pointed out, this extreme expenditure has so far yielded zero (some would say less than zero) improvements in global security. 

The record gets worse. Between 1940 and 1996, the US alone spent an estimated $5.8 trillion on nuclear weapons and related programs. This figure — which is a conservative estimate, the minimum it could be — places nuclear weapons spending third overall in federal government spending, behind other Defense (in first place) and Social Security (in second, although a large part of Social Security spending is from recipients essentially paying for themselves, e.g. retirement funds). Meanwhile, nuclear weapons spending exceeds that on education, social services and employment, agriculture, the environment, science, community development (including disaster relief), law enforcement, and energy combined. Stacked in dollar bills, nuclear weapons spending would form a 459,000-mile-high tower of cash — reaching almost to the Moon and back.

9. Hiroshima and Nagasaki represent less than 0.1% of all detonations

Only twice have nuclear weapons been used for their intended purpose, the indiscriminate murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians. But Truman’s war crimes in Japan were only the beginning. Together, the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki represent less than 0.1% of all nukes ever detonated on Earth; there have been over 2,000 nuclear tests since.

Until the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, many took place in the atmosphere, spreading cancer-causing radioactive materials far and wide. Then tests largely moved underground — but continued to irradiate the atmosphere. Others have occurred at surface level, on land or at sea, far from the bombers’ backyards — usually in the homelands of indigenous people. The iconic test at the Bikini Atoll, for instance, left the island chain uninhabitable and, to this day, natives are unable to return. The UK’s nuclear testing, meanwhile, centered on Aboriginal land in the Australian outback.

8. There are more than 12,000 nukes in the world

Although the Axis of Stupidity’s stockpile of nuclear weapons has been greatly reduced since their peak in the Cold War era (when there were 60,000 bombs in the world), the number of nukes remains high. In early 2023, it was estimated that the nine nuclear-armed countries have roughly 12,500 warheads between them. The US and Russia have the most — 89 percent of the total or more than 5,000 each. 

The other seven countries, including China, see no need for more than several hundred. But many are proliferating regardless. The UK, for example, recently increased its cap on nuclear warheads by 40%, from 180 to 260. It has also decided, like the Biden administration (despite its pledge for nuclear transparency), not to disclose stockpiles in the future.

Of the 12,500 worldwide, only 2,000 are on high alert — ready to launch in an instant. But to put this in perspective, just one of the US Navy’s nuclear-armed submarines, with its 24 warheads, carries “seven times the destructive power of all the bombs dropped during World War II” — including the nukes dropped on Japan.

7. Many are in continual transit

Thankfully, America’s mind-blowingly idiotic Chrome Dome operation ended in 1968 — though not without catastrophe. The sub-hare-brained policy of keeping a dozen nuclear-armed bombers in the air at all times led, unsurprisingly, to a number of flirtations with oblivion, including the 1966 Palomares disaster (more on that later) and the 1968 Thule disaster, where a B-52 carrying four nukes crashed through a Greenland ice sheet.

Between 1968 and 1991, lessons learned, nuclear-armed bombers were on ground alert instead. However, Bush the First ended that with his Presidential Nuclear Initiative. Nowadays they’re back in the air. Whenever they need shifting from military bases to storage facilities and back again, depending on the day’s paranoid aggression, they’re loaded onto C-17 and C-130 cargo planes. 

They’re also moved by road on booby-trapped tractor trailers, as well as by submarine. The UK, for instance, has ten nuclear warheads on continual undersea patrol. It’s an accident waiting to happen — especially as warheads are moved to frighten enemies. This was recently seen in Russia’s strategically useless but psychologically intimidating relocation of nukes to Belarus.

6. UFOs have control of the missiles

In some ways, this is actually reassuring; although we don’t know who or what is piloting these craft, or what their interest is in nuclear bombs, they can’t be more disastrous than humans… Can they?

Ever since Roswell in 1947, UFOs have been associated with nukes. Roswell Army Airfield was in those days home to the only nuclear bomber squadron in the world, the 509th Bomb Wing, which nuked Japan two years earlier. Since then, many credible military witnesses have had encounters at nuclear sites. The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) has gathered testimony and other evidence of more than a hundred incidents. One is from the former USAF ICBM launch officer Robert Salas who said that in 1967 an “orange flying disc” deactivated, one by one, 10 warheads at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana. It left the weapons “unlaunchable” for several hours. Another report, from 1964, claims a flying saucer shot beams at a test missile traveling thousands of miles an hour causing it to fall from the sky. There was apparently video footage but the CIA covered it up. The so-called “Chinese spy balloon”, which in early 2023 also flew near Malmstrom, may be the latest in a decades-long string of nuke-related UFO visits.

Although deactivating nukes is benevolent enough, UFOs have also demonstrated the ability to activate them. In 1987, claims the Russian colonel and radio expert Boris Solokov, “up to five” UFOs were seen by dozens of Soviet soldiers at a nuclear base in Ukraine. At the same time the control panel lit up with launch codes for activated nuclear missiles.

5. An unknown number of nukes are unaccounted for

You may have heard the term “Broken Arrow event”. It’s the US military’s euphemism for an “accidental event that involves nuclear weapons or nuclear components but does not create the risk of nuclear war” — which itself is a euphemism for endemic incompetence threatening all life on Earth. 

That Palomares incident mentioned earlier? That was a Broken Arrow event. It occurred when a USAF B-52 bomber carrying four nukes collided with a refueling aircraft over the southern coast of Spain. Both planes exploded, shaking buildings below, especially in the fishing village of Palomares where “shrapnel sliced towards the ground” and “body parts fell to the earth.” The 1.45 megaton nukes weren’t armed, so they didn’t detonate. But only three were recovered; the fourth lies somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea.

This terrifying incident is just one of the 32 Broken Arrow events that have happened since 1950. And these are just the ones the US has declassified. There may have been more. As for how many nukes the US still hasn’t recovered, it’s somewhere between 3 and 30. Equally troubling is how little is known about other countries’ incompetence. “We don’t really know anything about the United Kingdom or France, or Russia or China,” says non-proliferation expert Jeffrey Lewis.

4. Nukes are more destructive (and usable) than you think

Since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons have also become more destructive. The US nuclear arsenal, at its peak, had the destructive equivalent of 1.4 million Hiroshimas. A lot more. The nuke that wiped out Hiroshima, the larger of the two, had a 15 kiloton yield — roughly 3,000 times weaker than the most destructive nuke ever tested: the Soviet Union’s 50 megaton Tsar Bomba.

But what about nowadays? Amid escalating tensions in Ukraine, exactly what level of destruction is Russia actually threatening? According to experts, a full-scale nuclear exchange over Ukraine (ICBMs, submarine-launched missiles, and bomber-launched cruise missiles) is nowhere near as likely as the limited use of low-yield nukes. But “low-yield” is misleading. While on average it means something like 10 kilotons (five kilotons short of Hiroshima), Russia has up to 6,000 of them.

There’s a reason for this focus (in the US as well) on low-yield nukes, and it’s not humanitarian. Because they’re developed to significantly limit long-term radiation, they’re more imminently usable in war. In other words, the nuclear-armed nations are building low-yield bombs not for deterrence but deployment. Needless to say, their first use will set a terrible precedent and risk escalation beyond anyone’s control.

3. Your children are unlikely to live out their natural lives before nuclear war

According to Martin Hellman, cryptologist and Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, “a child born today may well have less-than-even odds of living out his or her natural life without experiencing the destruction of civilization in a nuclear war.” Critics say it’s not possible to determine the likelihood of something that’s never happened, but Hellman disagrees. Conceding that it’s not possible to give a precise figure, he says it’s nevertheless possible “to upper and lower bound it.”

A risk of one percent per day, for example, he considers too high, since that would make nuclear war “almost certain within the next year.” A risk of one in a million per year, meanwhile, he considers too low because it suggests the current nuclear deterrence strategy, aptly named MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), can prevent nuclear war for the next million years. This is highly unlikely given the amount of near misses we’ve had in less than 80. As Noam Chomsky puts it, “it’s kind of a miracle that we’ve survived. Miracles don’t go on forever.”

Having established these upper and lower bounds for the risk of nuclear war (next year or in a million years’ time), Hellman drew on his “extensive study of nuclear risks” to narrow the range. Ten percent per year is a closer upper bound, he says, based on having survived 60 years of MAD nuclear deterrence. And 0.1 percent is a closer lower bound, suggesting we can survive another thousand — during which time he’d expect 10 major crises (like the Cuban Missile Crisis), 100 lesser crises (comparable to the Taiwan Straits Crisis, Russo-Georgian War, or the conflict in Ukraine), and many other events leading to nuclear threats. So between a yearly risk of 0.1 and 10 percent, we have a risk of roughly one percent per year, or 0.3 to 3 percent per year. This, he says, is unacceptably high.

2. The Doomsday Clock is closer to ever than midnight

These days it can sound like the boy who cried wolf, the Doomsday Clock that’s been ticking down the last few minutes for the past seven decades. But a lot of research goes into the placement of those hands. And now they’re set at 90 seconds to midnight — the closest we’ve ever been to global nuclear catastrophe — closer than any time during the Cold War.

Explaining their decision, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists cited the ongoing war in Ukraine and its destabilization of post-WWII European security arrangements, not to mention wider “norms of international conduct.” Leaders on both sides (i.e. Biden and Putin) have issued nuclear threats, but even if neither of them launches a strike, there’s still a risk of accidental escalation. The Atomic Scientists also point out the proximity of fighting to nuclear reactor sites, which risks the release of radioactive material. Furthermore, the only nuclear weapons treaty still in place between the US and Russia is set to expire in a few years time. When it does, Russia will no longer have permission to inspect American stockpiles (and vice versa), which could lead to a new nuclear arms race.

But Ukraine is just one factor pushing us closer to midnight. There’s also the conflict between India and Pakistan, both of which are nuclear-armed. This already febrile situation is made worse by India’s perceived need for a deterrent against China potentially leading it to increase its arsenal, prompting Pakistan to do the same in response. Then there’s Israel, which continues to pretend it has no nuclear weapons when it actually has more than a hundred — increasing the urgency with which its Middle Eastern enemies seek to build arsenals of their own. China’s also a threat, as is North Korea. But the greatest threat of all is the US. Unlike China, which has (for now at least) a “no-first-use” policy, American nukes are bound by no scruples and are always on high alert.

1. Life on Earth is basically entrusted to the President of the United States

Most of the nuclear-armed nations have safeguards against their leaders single-handedly ending the world. India and Pakistan both require authorization from a council like a board of directors. Every member must agree before a strike can be launched. Israel is thought to have comparable controls. 

Russia also explicitly prevents a single person issuing the command. Despite Western press releases to the contrary, it’s thought the president, defense minister, and chief of general staff all have access to launch codes that may only work in unison. Experts believe even more people may be required to authorize a first (i.e. offensive, rather than defensive) strike. In China, although little information is publicly available, it’s thought (based on a 2004 military text) that the Central Military Commission’s 11 members — senior generals and party officials, including the president — may have to reach a consensus. It’s not known for certain.

What is known for certain, though, is the nuclear launch protocol of the United States — as well as its two nuclear lapdogs France (which possibly needs three people) and Britain (which technically needs the consent of the monarch). In the US, only the president is required to authorize a nuclear strike. That’s right. They don’t have to consult with advisors. They don’t need permission from Congress. They don’t need approval from the Supreme Court, or even the Department of Defense. Nobody in the world can legally stop the senescent Joe Biden (the president at the time of writing; yours may be worse) from ending every single life on the planet. This should terrify you. If not, think of it this way: the power to start a nuclear war is in the hands of the most war-hawkish person on Earth, the cognitively challenged president of an empire in decline, who, as it happens, is the only person to have actually launched nukes in war to obliterate countless civilians. 

Good luck Earth. Let’s hope it doesn’t run out.

Most of us are probably familiar with Dr. Strangelove, the Terminator series, and (spoiler alert) Planet of the Apes. But as nuclear war movies go, not one of them is genuinely disturbing. Dr. Strangelove, for all its razor-sharp political satire, is still just a comedy, and Terminator and Planet of the Apes are both science fiction, taking place in a world that’s comfortably removed from our own.

It’s probably no coincidence that serious nuclear war movies—films with unnervingly plausible plots—tend to fall by the wayside. But considering how many of the films on this list faced heavy censorship, suppression, and even outright bans, we owe it to their creators to take note. Nuclear war may be unthinkable, but only because we push it from our minds. It’s actually a miracle we haven’t had one yet, and it’ll be another miracle if we avoid one in the future.

The following 10 films give us some idea of what to expect—or rather, to avoid at all costs—and should be mandatory viewing for anyone with their finger “on the button” (which, by the way, accounts for many more people than any of us should feel comfortable with, even in the United States alone).

10. Testament (1983)

With their all-American values and Lifetime movie feel, the family in Testament could easily be advertising Cheerios or life insurance for the first twenty minutes of the film. Their ‘Anytown USA’ suburban idyll is so full of sunshine, in fact, that they don’t even know they’ve been nuked until they hear about it on TV. But even then, except for a quick and blinding flash, there’s no obvious damage, no immediate death or destruction; just confused residents wandering out of their houses to the street.

It’s actually a fairly dull movie, but therein lies the horror. Testament takes the everyday familiar dullness of American society and turns it on its head, highlighting the extent to which we take it all for granted. Other plot developments are just as sudden as the original nuclear attack, continually uprooting expectations and casting us adrift in a world where people can simply disappear overnight and in which things are, slowly but surely, bound to keep getting worse.

One reviewer called it “the scariest movie ever made” for the depressingly empty existence it depicts. And Roger Ebert, who gave the film four stars, said that it brought him to tears. Paramount was equally impressed, giving this made-for-TV B-movie with its unknown cast and inexperienced female director an unprecedented theatrical run. Yet very few people nowadays have even heard of it.

9. Der Dritte Weltkrieg [World War Three] (1997)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUg_X5pBKNc&frags=pl%2Cwn

Although Robert Stone’s most recent film, Pandora’s Promise (2013), highlights the advantages of nuclear power for combating climate change, he’s always been critical of nuclear weapons. His first film, Radio Bikini (1987), looked at their cavalier early testing, while his fourth film, World War Three, imagined their use in war.

Uniquely, this alternate-history mockumentary shows the geopolitical build-up to nuclear war in detail but very little of the catastrophic fallout. It relies heavily on stock footage of historical events and actual politicians for realism, amid mounting tensions with the Soviets over Berlin. And while the movie can be a little politically naive at times, especially in its portrayal of NATO as the unequivocal “good guys” and Russia as a stubborn, out-of-control menace—striking (first), moreover, out of petulence and defeat—this is precisely the slant we’d expect from the Western news media anyway, so the film remains plausible throughout.

By the end, the message is clear: A policy of nuclear deterrence is a commitment to our own annihilation. The threat of nuclear weapons doesn’t just reflect a commitment to retaliate; it creates one. And, as the film gravely informs us at the end, “there is no further historical record of what happens next.” Suffice it to say there are very few survivors, let alone any winners.

8. Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie (1995)

According to an ominous title card, “some goats, pigs, and sheep were nuked” during the making of this movie—or rather, during the making of the real-life test footage it compiles. Pigs in particular were nuked because of their skin’s similarity to humans’, so burning them alive showed roughly what would happen to us.

While other movies on this list show maybe one or two nuclear detonations (or in some cases none at all), Trinity and Beyond is full of them. From start to finish, from one mushroom cloud to the next, it’s the story of the atomic bomb—from the first ever detonation at Los Alamos in 1945 to the banning of above-ground testing in 1963.

And it represents only a fraction of the 6,500 secret films shot, many of which are still highly classified. Their purpose was to provide a visual record by which scientists could estimate the size and destructive power of nuclear detonations. Interestingly, the demands of capturing these detonations on film necessitated the development, by Hollywood’s finest, of sophisticated new lenses, cameras, and filming techniques that are still in use by Hollywood today—just one early example of Tinseltown’s codependence on the military.

Peter Kuran may be better known in Hollywood for his pioneering special effects work on the original Star Wars and Star Trek movies, but everything in this film is real. Very little has been added. There’s not even much of a moral message—although the epic score, provided by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, was intended to parody the knuckle-dragging “my bomb is bigger than yours” mentality of the Cold War era arms race. Ultimately, though, the verdict is left up to you.

7. The Day After (1983)

The Wrath of Khan director Nicholas Meyer transformed the real-life town of Lawrence, Kansas into a post-apocalyptic wasteland for this movie. Windows were smashed, cars were burned, the streets were littered with debris, and locals were paid fifty dollars apiece to shave their heads and stop bathing to resemble the victims of fallout.

The result was the most-watched TV movie to date, with over 100 million US viewers tuning in for the original broadcast. But The Day After was so hard-hitting and bleak that ABC set up special hotlines to calm viewers down. There was also a whole week of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood episodes focused on the theme of conflict, apparently to help children process the trauma. Adults had to make do with the panel discussion that followed the original airing, in which Carl Sagan likened nuclear proliferation to enemies stockpiling matches in a room doused with gasoline: “One of them has nine thousand matches, the other seven thousand matches. Each of them is concerned about who’s ahead, who’s stronger.”

Meyer himself was so traumatized by his work on the movie that he was ill throughout most of its production. It later transpired that he was suffering from clinical depression.

It even affected the president, who saw it well in advance of the televised broadcast. Writing in his diary, Ronald Reagan claimed to be “greatly depressed” by the film, and sent a long list of editing suggestions to Meyer. The Department of Defense also got involved, insisting that Meyer make it absolutely clear that Russia strikes first, not the US—despite, in reality, the US being the only nation ever to have nuked civilians. The political establishment knew exactly what they were doing, knowingly twisting the point of the movie to suit their own agenda. As Reagan wrote in his diary, “we know it’s anti-nuke propaganda but we’re going to take it over and say it shows why we must keep on doing what we’re doing.” For the most part, they seem to have succeeded.

6. Pisma myortvogo cheloveka [Dead Man’s Letters] (1986)

As a Soviet-made film, Dead Man’s Letters offers an alternative viewpoint to the “US-and-them” overtones of some others on this list. Yet there’s no sense of it being partisan in the opposite direction and portraying the USSR in a positive light. If anything, the religious themes of this movie make it distinctly un-Soviet—although the inclusion of Western consumer goods, American-style assault rifles, and no Russian text whatsoever suggest the movie is set somewhere else, thereby sparing the Soviet Union the humiliation of on-screen defeat.

Still, Dead Man’s Letters is one of the most depressing, pessimistic films ever made. It’s the story of an old scholar sheltering survivors in the basement of a history museum, while in his mind he writes letters to his son. He knows they’ll never be read, though, and the survivors know they’re all doomed.

There’s really no hope to be found. Everything in this movie has a sickly yellow tinge, from radioactive puddles and realistic corpses to endless piles of rubble and even the sky itself. One reviewer summed it up perfectly as “a portrait of a world in decay, witnessing humanity’s final days through an endless radioactive haze.”

Nothing really happens; we don’t even see the nukes. But Dead Man’s Letters remains an unforgettably dark piece of work that’s every bit as powerful today as it was in the 1980s.

5. When the Wind Blows (1986)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h1lRqUBuSI&frags=pl%2Cwn

Based on a comic by Raymond Briggs—the author and illustrator of the schmaltzy Christmas classic The Snowman—When the Wind Blows is the subtle and moving tale of an elderly couple facing nuclear winter together. It’s about the tragedy of misplaced faith in the powers that be, and in their guidance for surviving armageddon. In particular, the old man (Jim), who makes a habit of reading the dailies despite how depressing they are, has total faith in the government’s ‘Protect and Survive’ instruction booklet. “Ours is not to reason why,” he stoically reminds his wife Hilda. And she, for all her matronly nattering, has just as much faith in him.

Stark, heartbreaking, and relentlessly grim, When the Wind Blows highlights the cruel absurdity of targeting civilians—with their sausages and chips for dinner and their lovingly tended cabbage patches—with weapons of mass destruction. Some called it propaganda for unilateral nuclear disarmament, and they were right. But it’s hard to imagine a positive spin on the effects of nuclear war.

The movie was actually the third adaptation of the comic, following earlier runs as a stage and radio play. But it’s undoubtedly the most effective, artfully combining hand-drawn and stop-motion animation in such a way that the characters, as cartoons, appear increasingly ethereal and ghost-like against the backdrop of their physical house—an actual miniature model reduced in the film to rubble.

4. Kuroi Ame [Black Rain] (1989)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0997IhRPb1s&frags=pl%2Cwn

Shot in black and white with a haunting classical score, Black Rain looks and feels like a much older film than it is. But its special effects were state-of-the-art, contrasting the dated aesthetic with a truly horrifying and unexpectedly graphic depiction of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima. We also get to see the mushroom cloud from a distance, from the perspective of evacuees, affording us an unforgettable sense of the size and scale of the bomb—as well as how awesomely, terrifyingly strange it must have looked.

Based on a novel by Masuji Ibuse, the movie is, after the initial action, mostly character-driven, fast-forwarding several years to focus on the lives of the survivors. But the attack is never forgotten. Indeed, director Shohei Imamura went to extraordinary lengths to keep it at the forefront of the actors’ minds, even forbidding the cast from leaving the set on days off to return to the comforts of Tokyo. 

It paid off, though. Black Rain won numerous awards, and was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

As a side note, it’s most definitely not to be confused with Ridley Scott’s thriller of the same name and year. In fact, since that movie depicts the Yakuza in America as Japan’s vengeance for the bombing, and thereby the Japanese as stubborn and bitter, it may well have been released to coincide, outshine, and obscure Imamura’s movie in the US. That’s the cynical take on it anyway.

3. Hadashi no Gen [Barefoot Gen] (1983)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8XT5kRlDrU&frags=pl%2Cwn

Barefoot Gen is a disarmingly cheerful anime from the start, despite its bewildering themes. Set in the Ghibli-esque pastoral paradise of rural Japan, the movie absorbs us so fully in the innocent, idealistic outlook of six-year-old Gen that we almost forget he’ll be nuked. Of course, this lullaby effect is deliberate; by the time “Little Boy” tumbles from the Enola Gay’s bomb bay high above downtown Hiroshima, you’ll be feeling like a child yourself. 

And it’s one hell of a wake-up call when it hits—pulling no punches with its animated carnage and gore: Eyes melting from heads; adults, children, and animals indiscriminately burned alive; and the maimed “survivors”—the so-called “ant-walking alligators”—emerging like ghosts from the dust.

Yet, for all its brutal sentimentality, the film is far more bitterly critical of Japan than it ever is of America. Keiji Nakazawa, who wrote the manga series on which the film is based, actually lived through the bombing himself and recalled the weight of his own brother’s skull in his hands. But he blamed the Imperial Japanese Army for inviting the attack and branded Emperor Hirohito a murderer.

The series was so fiercely critical of the Japanese wartime leadership, in fact, that it remains controversial to this day. As recently as 2013, it was decided by the Shimane Prefecture Board of Education that students should be discouraged from reading it—despite the majority of headmasters disagreeing. Meanwhile, a public library in Tottori Prefecture actually banned the books from its shelves.    

2. The War Game (1965)

It may be the shortest on this list, but in its day The War Game was the most controversial. Not only did it position the West as the instigators of nuclear war, but it ridiculed the government’s advice to build shelters and defend them with guns.

People were also advised to keep hold of their marriage certificates, savings books, and National Health cards, highlighting a woeful naivety about society after the nukes. A soundbite from a nuclear strategist underscores that delusion with the belief that “both sides can stop before the ultimate destruction of cities, so that both sides could retire for a period of ten years … in which World Wars 4-8 could be prepared.”

The War Game brutally mocks all such plans for the future with endless piles of corpses, survivors who look just as dead, and evacuation plans that rely on the kindness of others—a concept jarringly at odds with the policy of nuclear deterrence. When asked for the camera what they want to be when they grow up, a group of zombified kids all say the same thing: They don’t want to grow up to be nothing.

Unfortunately, the BBC decided not to broadcast the film as planned on the twentieth anniversary of Hiroshima. Instead, it was shelved until the 1980s. Although they commissioned The War Game, its realism caught them off-guard. They also worried the government wouldn’t like it. And they were right, of course; senior officials hated the film and made it clear that it couldn’t be screened. However, since the illusion of the BBC’s independence was integral to British public life, the corporation pretended the decision was their own. The official reason, apparently thought up at the last minute, was that “people of limited mental intelligence” might not know it was fiction. Newspaper editors were permitted to view the movie, but it was almost on the condition that they’d publicly lend support to the ban.

Nevertheless, there was serious opposition and debate raged even in Parliament. Yet despite winning the 1967 Oscar for Best Documentary, The War Game remains fairly obscure.

1. Threads (1984)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok4mmOndomo&frags=pl%2Cwn

For its bleak and unrelenting horror, Threads gets the number one spot. It’s the best (or rather, the worst) depiction of nuclear war ever made. It’s also one of the most realistic. Numerous experts were consulted, including defense specialists, physicians, and psychologists, and, since the filmmakers detonated an actual smoke bomb in public without first alerting the police, even some of the on-screen panic may be real.

Unlike The War Game, Threads was aired as soon as it was made. Then it was quietly shelved for decades and almost forgotten about. It was only this year, in fact, that it came out on DVD.

However, aside from the obvious, it’s not an overly political film. The geopolitical reasons for the war are barely touched upon, and the characters themselves aren’t all that interested. The true power of this movie lies in the rapid unravelling of society, and of the many different lives—the individual threads—within it.

It’s a film full of indelible images: The shell-shocked mother and child; the psychotic military and police; and the endless fights over food (to name just a few without giving too much away).

Film critic Peter Bradshaw says it’s the only film he’s ever felt “really and truly scared and indeed horrified by – in an intense and sustained way.” Back when he first saw it, when nukes were on everyone’s minds, he found himself unable to speak or even to look at the screen. When it finished, he and his girlfriend went to bed without saying a word.

And it’s easy to see why. Threads offers nothing in the way of hope. As with Testament, things just keep getting worse. But in this case, things are far more harrowingly believable.

If you can only stomach one film on this list, you should definitely make it this one.