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Classic line, "Gentlemen you can't fight in here this is the war room".

My father was US Air Force Air Police attached to the Defense Atomic Support Agency from the late 1950's to 68 and was part of the command during the Cuban Missile Crisis and he said they fully expected to experience a Atomic Blast. He said we came closer than anyone really ever knows. It's a absolute miracle we are still here.

You cut one of Sarah Connor's best lines from the scene. - "Anyone not wearing two million sunblock is gonna have a really bad day."

Threads for the story, T2 for the representation.

Threads scarred me as a 13 year old. The initial blast is bad enough, but the long term effects were horrific.

"The Day After's" nuclear attack scene is beyond effective when it comes to nightmare fuel.

Threads. I saw it in England in school. We were made to watch it. I was never the same.

People who read The Sum of All Fears do no not acknowledge the existence of the movie.

Terminator 2 gave me nightmares. I'm 74, so I grew up during the cold war, with sheltering under our school desks (one of the dumbest ideas EVER) as a reality. My dad was career military so I knew a lot more than the average kid, and more than most adults. It is a fear and dread that has followed me all my life. So many of these movies I avoided, but I did not realize that T2 had the scene in it. It was traumatizing for someone who actually lived through the Cold War and the Bay of Pigs.

The Day After was one of the most disturbing movies I saw as a young child. I was 8 when it aired on TV and still remember watching it

"Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (full title) was Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece from 1964. I was 12 years old and it's hard to explain the impact it had at the time. It wasn't simply grim, it was dark humor at its finest. Peter Sellers, George C. Scott.

'Threads' is under-appreciated.

Remember watching Threads when it first aired. Absolutely terrifying because of how real and mundane it was.

Honestly I would've had terminator 2 at number 1... scientists have stated it's one of the best adaptations of a nuclear bomb

What about ‘Special Bulletin’ which came out around the same time as ‘The Day After’ and was, I thought, superior. Directed by Edward Zwick and criminally underseen and underrated.

Threads is still the most disturbing & scary movie I’ve ever seen.

Threads has to be the scariest and most depressing nuclear war movie ever. The special effects for the blasts aren't the absolute best, but it doesn't matter. The earlier BBC show "The Wat Game" (1966) is quite frightening as well, with a boy blinded by a blast.

Threads, The Day After, When the Wind Blows - all top-notch viewing in my opinion.

At 13 I watched the BBC 'Threads' film. This was 1984 & the nuclear threat was horribly real. Even now, it's a difficult, dark watch. Next day at school you could tell other people had seen it, without asking! There was a really weird atmosphere, as if everyone had suddenly realised the horror that could happen.

Barefoot Gen is one of my all time favorite Anime films! Because it's one of the few animated film to depict Japan during war times and because the story is based on the first hand accounts of an actual Hiroshima survivor IE Keiji Nakazawa.

There is another very realistic Movie from the UK about nuclear war and its aftermath, and that's "war game" from 1966, made by Peter Watkins as a pseudo-documentary (which was his style for several later movies, like "punishment park"). War game is low budget and black and white, but it is very intense and realistic about the breakdown of society after all out nuclear war and the futility of civil defense plans. It was also banned from british Television for several years, and was released alternatively in select theaters.

I thank God that I never saw Threads as a child. The Day After was bad enough for nightmare fuel. Threads details not only the horrors at the moment of impact, but also the complete breakdown of society in the aftermath.

The scene in Terminator 2 is my favorite. Mainly because its not real but Sarah's nightmare and really shows her motivation for trying to stop Judgement Day. There's no fate but what we make for ourselves.

You didn't include The War Game, the original Threads that was considered too terrifying at the time for viewers and was only shown in cinemas.

I am beginning to agree with Jim Butcher- someone famous or powerful somewhere along the way accidentally mixed up "devastated" (total destruction) with "decimated" (destruction of only 10%), and no one wanted to correct them and instead people mimicked it, perpetuating that mix-up for decades on end.

The Wargame (1966) The sirens go off. Everyone knows that an attack is imminent. There's a sudden silent flash. Everyone, including children, are blinded and left with their hands to their eyes, crying in pain. So terrifying it was banned for years. Still can't forget seeing it today.

Not many would even have heard of Threads. Do yourself a favour and watch it.

Threads should of been number 1

The Day After gave me nightmares for years. I was 11 at the time.

If nuclear bomb scenes in TV shows were to make the list, Jericho and Fallout would certainly be on it. But I am glad to see that The Day After and Threads made this list. Both of which are terrifying even by today's standards. Also, T2 is one of my favorite movies ever and the nuclear dream sequence is haunting.

The day after was perhaps the scariest movie I saw in the eighties. I think they should remake it for today. It seems we need a reminder of the horrors of this kind of war or any war for that matter.

Threads is the only one for the top choice. scary as hell because it's only half way through the movie.

You left off the most nightmarish one. The beginning of the movie Dreamscape

Whatever your thoughts about the fridge nuke sequence from _Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull_ are, it and _Terminator 2: Judgement Day_ have incredible nuke scenes.

I'd recommend 'When The Wind Blows' a 1986 British adult animated disaster film, directed by Jimmy Murakami based on Raymond Briggs' graphic novel of the same name. The bomb dropping scene is very moving, as is the rest of the entire film tbh.

“In Japan you were a metaphor for nuclear war, but in Hollywood they left your balls in the cutting room floor!” King Kong Thanos: You’re a pencil pushing Terran and ho never learned to love his bomb.

I saw Threads when I was about 7 years, it prevented me from sleeping for weeks. It's probably the most scared I have ever been watching anything in my life. Bear in mind, on the news each day was the constant fear pushed on us as the Soviet Union and US and its Western allies butted heads.

Hardly ever see Miracle Mile on these lists.

I was about to freak out because I didn't think you included "The Day After" but then, there it was! Absolute Masterpiece! But on visuals alone, T2!

24:12 - The Day After: When this aired in 1983, the movie played as per normal up until the attack scene, and then was uninterrupted (no commercial breaks) for the remainder.

I remember watching "The Day After" as a teenager and man did it hit hard then. Watching Threads and knowing there are missiles that contain 80mt per is all the more nightmarish.

Terminator 2 was striking and terrifying but the Day After gave me trauma I still carry. The bombing was the easiest part to watch.

You missed the best one of all... the multiple nukes in “Silent Running” with Bruce Dern

The little boy in "The Empire of the Sun" has done ok. His name: Christian Bale.

Just watched Threads. Unrelenting agony. What is not portrayed, your imagination fills in.

The Indiana movie and fridge. Don't explain how he got the fridge to unlock and let him out. In Hollywood, that scene was considered so bad the expression, "Jumping the shark" became "nuking the fridge."

The T2 is absolute number one nuclear masterpiece, and Day After Tommorrow shocked as second.

There is one movie you didn't include on this list, and that was the tv movie Special Bulletin, which aired on March 20, 1983. I remember watching it and for awhile, wondered if it were real, the way the whole movie played out. Check it out. It definitely should have been on this list!

When the wind blows>grave of the fireflies

Miracle Mile (1988) a nice guilty pleasure of a film.

Tv film Special Bulletin (1983) was pretty intense.

The nuke scene from Terminator 2 gave me nightmares!

Threads has always stuck with me, mostly because I'm from Sheffield where it was set and having been born in the 80's it's the Sheffield of my childhood being hit by a nuclear strike.

Threads. 😩

There were 2 you missed. World War Z had a really good one, especially because you weren't expecting it at all. The second one was another made for TV movie called Special Bulletin about a terrorist bomb threat in Charleston SC. It was done War of the Worlds style through news reports until the end.

Godzilla Minus One has arguably one of the most accurate atomic bomb scenes. While not technically an actual bomb (it’s Godzilla’s atomic breath) the resulting explosion is basically what an atomic bomb does, complete with the back blast and devastation.

Threads at no.1, When The Wind Blows at no.2. No other country in the world can make films like the Brits when it comes to showing the impact of external events on helpless people. Threads gave me nightmares for a while and When The Wind Blows made me cry with helplessness the whole way through. I'm male and not afraid to admit that. The Day After, although very good, could have done without the hopeful ending. IMO it would have been a far better film without it. Someone else commented that when Threads was shown on the BBC, the following day at school you could tell who'd seen it and who hadn't. He/she is not wrong, only for me in 1984 I was in full time work and the effect was the same on my work colleagues.

Threads, the build up, the impact and following 2nd and 3rd generation impacts was brutal. It underscored there were only losers and there would continue to be only losers.

Empire of the Sky was one of my favorite movies as a kid, watched it dozens of times!

In Independence Day, the aliens' explosions were far more interesting than the bomb drop.

The TV show Jericho should have gotten an honorable mention at least.

Threads: I will never forget the image of the woman standing in the street with two shopping bags and peeing herself in fear.

" A white light. Like God taking a photograph.. ". Fantastic description !

Threads is incredible.

Threads and Failsafe. Nightmares.

I know it doesn't match the visuals of the other shows here, but I would suggest the nuclear attack on the Martians in the original War of the Worlds. I know as a child, it had an effect on me and may have been one of the first visualizations in a movie of a nuclear explosion.

That Scott Glenn in Countdown to Looking Glass

Had a feeling that was gunna be #1. That scene is so iconic.

I understand this is for movies but Jericho tv show did it well I think

Threads, The Day After, Testament… All movies from my Gen-X adolescence. Growing up with the idea that civilization could end any day.

Threads was just horrific

Godzilla survive by the Nuke

No more top 10? Top 30 now

What about 'Special Bulletin'? The nuke going off in Charleston harbor was very realistic for the time.

Realism - Threads Saddest - When the wind blows Comedy? - Dr. Strangelove

as a little kid the day after scared the absolute shit out of me. but I felt better when I realized that because I lived just a few miles away from a major target, if it happened I'd never know it.

Most of the movie A & H bomb explosions were pretty silly or cheesy. Won't be anyone shrugging or kissing while A bombs detonate nearby. Won't be any giant scorpions chasing people on motorcycles (running on gasoline that didn't turn stale). The Day After and Threads approach it best. Most of the livestock will be dead. Surviving animals (as we see around Chernobyl) will eat foliage grown in fallout and not be safe to consume. There will be no birds left a week afterwards. Burrowing animals like rats may survive, but they will have the same fallout contaminated foodstuff problems as the humans do. The meat of captured rats probably won't be safe to bother with for about 6 months and their bones, never. The advice given in the day after to scoop up the dirty topsoil and replace it with clean top soil is ludicrous on it's face. Acres of clean top soil from where? You would have to wait till the rain washed the fallout from the skies first. That might take a month. Then there are issues like gamma rays, heat pulses (that can last 10 -15 seconds with the bigger warheads), soil movement, over pressures, etc.

As a child of the seventies/eighties, I felt a huge relief in 1989 when this permanent pressure finally was lifted from us. And for a decade or so, it really seemed that mankind had learned their lesson...

Threads should be #1.

Weird coincidence, I just watched _When the Wind Blows_ with my kid yesterday. Then I watched scenes from _Threads, The Day After,_ and _Miracle Mile_ . Then you guys upload this. Weird.

You forgot "Twin Peaks. The Return" 2017, the famous 8th episode with the fantastic fly-through the mashroom cloud scene. One of the best nuclear blast scenes in the cinema history.

Can't remember what year it was, I was working an afternoon shift. I got home sometime around 1 am, grabbed a beer and turned the TV on to relax a bit before bed. I had never seen Count Down to Looking Glass before, flipping through the channels and hit what I though was a news broadcast about the tensions growing. I thought it was real, it scared the living daylights out of me. I couldn't figure out what was going on, flipped the channels and not a single other channel had anything on about war breaking out. I must have went on for a good 10 minutes before a commercial break and they then returned to the "movie" As a kid in the 60's and 70's, doing all the nuke drills in school and such it was such a trigger. I didn't sleep that night, I couldn't sleep that night. I have done some crazy things in my 67 years but that was the most scared I think I ever was.

Not often that I call out something only making #2 on one of these lists rather than #1, but Terminator 2 so blatantly deserved the top spot here.

I remember as a 10 or 11 year old watching Threads. True nightmare fuel for such a young mind. Guess it left me being nihilistic

The day after will remain in my mind, cause in 1983 i was 16 when we saw with the school in cinema. It was really horrifying because the "maybe it could happen tomorrow" was so real that we've been shocked, i remember no one was laughing after the film and we've been very quiet walking back to school. In the movie, the war starts in Germany, were i'm living, so it was for us a very possible and threating thing which could really happen.

Pacific Rim should be on this list

I watched Oppenheimer in theaters, and I can tell you, it's the best one on this list. 💯🎉

Threads belongs at #1 whenever “nuclear bomb,” and “film” appear in the same sentence.

As a boy during the Cold War, both The Day After and Testament had a real impact on me. I envisioned them to be exactly how bleak such a future would be. I imagine those who saw Threads in their youth felt the same way.

Where´s Akira?

What about godzilla

We settled into our theater seats to watch "Testament". The first scene, with William Devane and his son riding up a hill, rang a bell, and then.....uh, oh......they stopped at the stone gates of the old Carter Estate , 3 blocks from the house I grew up in, in Sierra Madre, CA. I suffered through the film, scene by scene, having been in many of the houses used for the location shots. I had been the janitor in the Church of the Ascension, where they filmed the town meeting. I had bought gas at the Shell station that Mako owned.. It was incredibly difficult for me to watch that movie, seeing my hometown in the aftermath of nuclear war. Writing this, more than 40 years after I saw the movie, still gives me the chills.

"Countdown to Looking Glass" - I remember watching that when I was a kid, but didn't remember what the name was.

You could also include the self-destruct sequence from Alien. (Yes, that was a nuclear detonation.)

Terminator 2: Judgment Day number one🔥

I saw "Countdown to Looking Glass" when it first aired. It still stays with me after all these decades because of the utterly rational way the story proceeded, AND that it ended without things being resolved. Was World War III about to begin? They didn't say!

Great list. Loved By dawns early light, Failsafe, Day after tomorrow, Threads, T2 and T3. All classics.

#1 should have been T2 Judgement Day, that being said I was 6 when The Day After came out and I still remember that scene to this day

As a huge lifelong G-fan, I am REALLY upset with whoever made this list. Really?! They put THAT film on the list and not the original. The very first Godzilla movie from 1954 literally opens with a re-enactment of the nuclear test Operation Castle Bravo from March 1st 1954! The bomb that hit the Japanese fishing vessel The Lucky Dragon No. 5! In fact the opening scene that re-enacts the disaster is shot as if you’re on the ship as the nuke detonates!! I thought for sure that scene was going to be on the list! Typical of WatchMojo. What a massive disappointment!!