This week I revisited an old classic, The Day After - that 1983 TV movie depicting a nuclear holocaust in the Midwest. The scenario has Kansas City obliterated by multiple bombs, leaving Lawrence, Kansas with the only surviving hospital for a hundred miles.
Most of the movie was filmed in KC and Lawrence, and its broadcast was a huge event here in Missouri. It was very powerful for me because I grew up among the minuteman missile silos scattered throughout west-central Missouri. The closest was only about a mile from our house. The movie had several very compelling scenes for us locals. One is a decimated Mass. Street in Lawrence. Another is Jason Robards standing in the pile of rubble that used to be the Liberty Memorial, looking out over a moonscape that used to be Kansas City. Then there is a soldier walking along what appears to be 50 Hwy outside of Holden, asking a passerby about Sedalia and Whiteman AFB. The reply is simply “there ain’t no Sedalia. No Green Ridge. No Leeton. No Nothin.” And then Arrowhead Stadium full of Chiefs fans watching missiles launching out of the ground around them, even though I don’t think there were really any silos inside the city.
Then there are the inaccuracies that are probably inevitible. For example, the movie places the KU Medical Center in Lawrence instead of KC and Whiteman Airforce Base in Sedalia instead of Knob Knoster. It also uses the fictional Sweetsage, MO, even though it includes other real towns like Harrisonville, Joplin, and Sedalia. Plus, the picture quality sucked, especially for a blockbuster event. The picture was fuzzy and grainy at the same time, and the colors were terrible. Did all TV look this bad in the 80s?
A new reaction to the movie was the similarities with the current tsunami disaster in southeast Asia. There were thousands of people with homes or even towns to return to. Literally nothing left. No hope of finding family or loved ones might have been just one or towns away when the bombs hit.

I already get most of my news from The Daily Show, and now I can get my reading there as well. Be sure check out the audiobook, read by Stewart and the cast of the show.
This weekend was the premier of the new
I laughed so hard at 