Eerie was living in Topeka in the early 80s when “the day after” was released. For those not familiar with the movie or Kansas, Topeka is just west of Lawrence where the movie was set. Seeing the birds fly from familiar looking land freaked me out.
I was in elementary school at the time. This movie scared the living shit out of every single person I know. Nuclear war didn’t feel hypothetical or fake back then, it felt like a real thing that adults were worried might actually happen.
Agreed I was growing up in Charleston, SC at the time. Big Polaris base there at the time. We told we were pretty much ash when (not if) WWIII kicked off.
I was terrified of this movie when I was a little kid. Circa 10 years old. Just seeing the trailer (on NBC?) scared me. Never watched it, even to this day. There was one other movie of this ilk. I remember in the trailer for one or the other, there being a scene with a woman protester, shouting with a British accent, "You cannot win a nuclear war!"
That other movie is Threads (1984), the scene you describe is in the trailer and the full movie is available at archive.org (https://archive.org/details/threads_202007)
