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This TV movie from the 1980s helped change the course of the Cold War. Here’s how ‘The Day After’ got made

ABC’s 1983 film overcame censors, political interference and spooked advertisers to become one of the most-watched TV events of all time.

Editor’s Note: The CNN Original Series “ Secrets & Spies: A Nuclear Game ” examines the tenuous global geopolitics during the Cold War through the lens of two notorious double agents: Oleg Gordievsky and Aldrich Ames. But the team who created it knew it could be important, so, after rejecting requests for edits, dodging complaints from conservative groups and acquiescing to the occasional network demand, “The Day After” finally made it to TV and changed the history of the medium –– and potentially the world. In one pivotal scene, more than 1,000 Lawrence locals were made to lie on cots in the University of Kansas’ basketball arena, wearing tattered clothes and bearing bloody facial injuries as though they’d barely survived the nuclear attack.

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