When a small British owned island in the Caribbean is invaded and the world's most dangerous terrorist kidnaps a member of the Royal family, the countdown to World War 3 begins. If anyone can prevent the oncoming apocalypse it's the American President, but her closest ally the British Prime Minister appears to have gone stark raving mad.
With the Doomsday Clock the closest it's ever been to midnight, Jane Corbin investigates the proliferation of nuclear weapons across the globe. She visits Los Alamos, home to the United States’ nuclear weapons development facility and the historic home of Oppenheimer’s Manhattan Project. In Scotland, she reveals the strategy behind Britain’s nuclear deterrent, and speaks to campaigners in Suffolk fighting against US weapons they fear will be based on UK soil. Jane also discovers how many of the global agreements and safeguards that have constrained the spread of nuclear weapons since the 1970s are breaking down. This is a story told by the scientists, investigators and diplomats who set the clock and have fought to ensure that the ultimate deterrent has not been used in over 70 years.
After a catastrophic global war, a young filmmaker awakens in the carnage and seeks refuge in the only other survivor: an eccentric, ideologically opposed figure of the United States military. Together, they brave the toxic landscape in search of safety... and answers.
October 1945. A young Japanese boy in the devastated city of Nagasaki, two months after the atomic bomb, carries on his back the lifeless body of his younger brother. An American military photographer, Joe O'Donnell, took a picture of the boy standing stoically near a cremation pit. No one knows the subject's name, but the photo has become an iconic image of the human tragedy of nuclear war. This documentary follows the continuing efforts to deepen understanding of the photograph, while exploring the fate of thousands of atomic-bomb orphans and their struggles to survive the aftermath of World War II.
A documentary exploring the possible ecological and atmospheric consequences of nuclear war, particularly as they would be expressed in a "nuclear winter."
Project Iceworm was the code name for a top-secret United States Army program during the Cold War to build a network of mobile nuclear missile launch sites under the Greenland ice sheet. The ultimate objective of placing medium-range missiles under the ice — close enough to strike targets within the Soviet Union — was kept secret from the Danish government. To study the feasibility of working under the ice, a highly publicized "cover" project, known as Camp Century.
A look at the UK Government's preparations for the public in the event of a possible outbreak of Nuclear War.
When starving mobs begin rioting in the streets of Moscow, Soviet leaders believe they have no recourse but to seize the Alaskan pipeline to force the United States to end the grain embargo that has brought turmoil to the U.S.S.R.
A Day Called X is a dramatized CBS documentary film set in Portland, Oregon, in which the entire city is evacuated in anticipation of a nuclear air raid, after Soviet bombers had been detected by radar stations to the north; it details the activation of the city's civil defense protocols and leads up to the moment before the attack. The operations were run from the Kelly Butte Bunker, which was the EOC during the time. It was filmed in September 1957 and aired December 8 of that year. Apart from presenter/narrator Glenn Ford, none of the people shown are actors. They are locals of Portland shown in their real jobs, including Mayor Terry Schrunk. Its local rebroadcast in 2004 and appearance in the on-line Prelinger Archives attracted interest among local history buffs due to its extensive outside shots of the city, and the use of non-actor participants. Whenever one of these individuals is heard uttering warnings or statements regarding attack, the words "An attack is not actually taking place" are superimposed over the picture. On September 27, 1955, Portland actually conducted an exercise evacuation of downtown called "Operation Greenlight," and the film is often misattributed to that year. Ford's narration, however, does make direct reference to the 1955 exercise.
