"Countdown To Looking Glass" (1984) Cold-War USSR Nuclear Attack Film

I was in the RAF and based in West Germany during 1980, looking at the world today I am far less confident that a nuclear war can be avoided as there are far more unstable leaders with nuclear weapons under their fingers.

I was on active duty in the USAF, working communications on the National Emercency Airborne Command Post, from 1981-1986. These movies were almost surreal in the accuracy of some aspects of the information. The cold war movies were a real reminder of how vulnerable we could be to a bad choice. All I will say is our checks and balances were above question.

The really frightening thing about this movie is how events escalated so quickly from a local issue to a nuclear nightmare.

For anyone interested in this, look up "By Dawns Early Light" Its on here too. Great movie...

I saw this movie when I was a teenager.. and remember how frighteningly realistic it was. Especially the last 20 minutes or so. I have thought of it often, as well as The Day After, Threads, etc. And I've thought how fortunate we were to have made it through this time without nuclear war. Now fast forward to 2022, and the madness is unfolding again 😳

Forty years later and we are in the same looped nightmare

What was so great about this movie was how much it resembled actual news cast, and world news of the time.

It feels like this movie is now a couple steps closer to being real.

Well, watching this at 2am was a BAD move! Now heading out to buy canned food

How did we go from having old men with white hair giving us our news to young men who instead give us their stupid opinions?

I was stationed at SAC HEADQUARTERS Offutt AFB near Omaha, Nebraska back in 1973 I had a chance to take a look inside a Looking Glass aircraft. A mechanic let me take a 5 minute peek and I remember thinking how High Tech it looked. lol I was impressed looking at the Generals seat where he would start WW3 If he had too.. Very strange. I’m worried more today than back then about WW3

How the cogs turn, here we are in 2024, the players are different but the game is the same as back then. Problem is todays players have very big balls, and miniscule brains. And we let it happen........

I remember watching this as a 11 yr old. Back in those days the threat of nuclear war was so high that it nearly consumed the zeitgeist. This and "The Day After" really freaked a lot of people out...

Whoa.....I watched all 1 hour and 27 min......thank you for putting this up on youtube. More people should watch it.

I saw this movie, when it was aired on network television, back in the mid 80s. A very realistic dramatization. Not long after, a natural gas pipeline valve junction exploded a few miles from our home, in the direction of an Air Guard base. In fact, not far from it. We lived near enough to the blast, it looked, sounded, and felt like a low kiloton tactical atomic blast. We only figured out it was not an atom bomb, when the roar kept on going, minutes later. Everyone who saw, and heard the blast thought the worst, and commented about this movie, along with Threads. Very creepy experience. Glad it was just a gas line valve.

I was 19 when this came out. I caught one of the news spots, thought it was real, freaked out and called my dad, who talked me down and told me it was just a movie. Cold War scarred me for fricking life, man...

That final sequence with Scott Glenn, damn...still packs a punch 40 years later.

Patrick Watson. Part time anchor. Part time newsman. Part time documentarian. And all of it on one leg. RIP

I haven't seen this since the 80s. It's a scary parallel to today's world

That front-line news anchor went on to command the USS Dallas during a daring Soviet Submarine defection and was one hell of a Captain.