The Day After

While the movie contains significant exposition to explain the onset of the war, the plot lies in the human struggles of the characters. The film follows several average citizens and the people they encounter through a nuclear attack on Kansas City, Missouri. Dr. Russell Oakes (Jason Robards) lives in the well-to-do Brookside neighborhood of Kansas City with his wife (Georgann Johnson), and works in a hospital in downtown Kansas City. On the day of the attack, he is scheduled to teach a hematology class at the University of Kansas hospital in nearby Lawrence, Kansas, and is en route from Kansas City to Lawrence on the jammed I-70 freeway when he hears an alarming Emergency Broadcast System alert on his car radio. He pulls off the crowded motorway, attempts to contact his wife from a nearby phone booth, but gives up due to the incredibly long line at the booth. Oakes then heads back down I-70 toward Kansas City, and is the only eastbound motorist on the freeway at the time. The attack is soon initiated and Kansas City is gripped with panic as air raid sirens wail. Oakes' car is disabled by the Electromagnetic Pulse. Oakes was about thirty miles away from downtown Kansas City when the bombs hit. His wife, daughter, possibly many of his collegues, and countless other people are killed in the attack. After the explosions, Oakes walks ten miles the other way back to Lawrence (which suffers mainly from shock waves), and finds his way to the university hospital where he treats the wounded with Dr. Sam Hachiya (Calvin Jung), Nurse Bauer (JoBeth Williams), and other aid workers.

Also represented is farmer Jim Dahlberg (John Cullum) and his family, who live in rural Harrisonville, Missouri, far outside Kansas City, but very close to a field of missile silos. They are among the first to witness the initial missile launches signaling the start of a full-scale nuclear war. While those near the impact zone die or become sick quickly, the Dahlbergs develop symptoms of radiation sickness slowly, as they had prepared their basement as a makeshift fallout shelter. They also face the looting and chaos that come after the explosion. One develops terminal radiation sickness from going outside after panicking and the man who goes after her also contracts it as well. After this ordeal, the family decides to go out and look for survivors. They discover a church, and eventually they figure out that their daughter is contracting radiation sickness. The son of the family as also initially flash-blinded when looking towards one of the explosions. Steven, the man who went out to rescue the daughter when she has an episode, decides to bring them both to a hospital. The son is not doing too well; his blindness does not recover and he does not heal well. The daughter is starting to exhibit the symptoms of radiation sickness, and is starting to lose her hair. Steven has already lost the entire top of his head of hair. It is indicated that they have terminal radiation sickness and will die. When the daughter's parents try to return home, they encounter food-seeking people. Jim orders them to leave, and he is killed.

After collapsing due to a psychological breakdown, Dr. Oakes wakes up, and discovers that his close friend, Nurse Bauer, has died of meningitis. Being almost completely broken, Oakes decides to ask Dr. Hachiya to come with him back to Kansas City where he says he will "see my home one last time before I die". Hachiya shudders, and refuses. He knows that he must help the patients, and cannot risk dying. So, reluctantly, Oakes goes on his own. He travels far, and manages to hitch a ride on a National Guard truck. He even witnesses a man being executed for a crime (looting, murder, it is not specific). It becomes clear that Oakes is starting to catch radiation sickness as he walks home. When he finally makes it, he finds a family huddled in the rubble where his house was. He gets angry and says "get the hell out of my house!" The man in charge of the family does not speak, but offers him an onion. The film fades with Oakes breaking down and a student at the college saying via a radio "Hello? Is anyone out there? Anyone at all?"