A Day Called X is a dramatized CBS documentary film set in Portland, Oregon, in which the entire city is evacuated in anticipation of a nuclear air raid, after Soviet bombers had been detected by radar stations to the north; it details the activation of the city's civil defense protocols and leads up to the moment before the attack. The operations were run from the Kelly Butte Bunker, which was the EOC during the time. It was filmed in September 1957 and aired December 8 of that year. Apart from presenter/narrator Glenn Ford, none of the people shown are actors. They are locals of Portland shown in their real jobs, including Mayor Terry Schrunk.
Its local rebroadcast in 2004 and appearance in the on-line Prelinger Archives attracted interest among local history buffs due to its extensive outside shots of the city, and the use of non-actor participants. Whenever one of these individuals is heard uttering warnings or statements regarding attack, the words "An attack is not actually taking place" are superimposed over the picture.
On September 27, 1955, Portland actually conducted an exercise evacuation of downtown called "Operation Greenlight," and the film is often misattributed to that year. Ford's narration, however, does make direct reference to the 1955 exercise.
Montagu, Garbo, Fuchs, Penkovsky... they were the greatest spies of the twentieth century. Through analysis of declassified documents, archives, reconstructions, and interviews, “Spies of War” offers you a glimpse into the minds and methods of undercover operatives. Discover the tactics for transmitting top secret information. See how one man assumed 24 identities to simulate the existence of a spy ring. Witness how scientists provided the USSR with ultra-confidential plans for the atomic bomb.
War and Peace in the Nuclear Age, first broadcast in 1989, is a thirteen-part PBS series on the origins and evolution of nuclear competition between the United States and the former Soviet Union. The series examined the rivalry for power and how it shaped the diplomacy, negotiation, ethical debates, and doctrine of deterrence that ran through the forty-year history of the nuclear age. This collection contains the full interviews and selected stock footage from the series.
Taking viewers back to the Atomic Age of the mid-20th century by going on a mission to identify the endless possibilities of atoms as an energy source.
Submarines today are highly complex machines crammed with technology and weapons. As impressive as their construction is, as terrifying is their destructive power. Hardly any other weapon triggers as many emotions as the submarine. It strikes from ambush and can use nuclear missiles to drag the whole world into the abyss.
Submarines originated from a completely non-military idea, namely to be able to view the world under water. But the interest in the military use of submarines soon prevailed.
Atom Squad was an American science-fiction series that was broadcast live by the NBC network, July 6, 1953 to January 22, 1954, Monday-Friday, 5:00 to 5:15 PM EST.
'Nuclear Sharks' explores the silent, stealthy symbol of the Cold War. A war waged outside public view. A war about strategy and world domination. A war of technological advancement, with lethal consequences. By the early 1950's, the United States and the Soviet Union are entrenched in a harrowing conflict many fear will bring an end to humanity. This gripping series reveals the stories of submarines sunk to the bottom, their nuclear power plants in meltdown. Such incidents remained closely guarded military secrets both on the American and the Soviet sides.
The Missiles of October is a 1974 docudrama made-for-television play about the Cuban missile crisis. The title evokes the book The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman about the missteps among the great powers and the failed chances to give an opponent a graceful way out, which led to the First World War. The teleplay introduced William Devane as John F. Kennedy and cast Martin Sheen as United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. The script is based on Robert Kennedy's book Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The whole story of Urho Kekkonen, the most important statesman during Finland's independence.
Crusader is a half-hour black-and-white American adventure/drama series that aired on CBS for two seasons from October 7, 1955 to December 28, 1956.
The warplane has evolved over nearly a century to become what it is today, in 2004. This series is the story of how, through life-and-death necessity, invention, ingenuity and sheer hard work that warplane technology evolved. The Warplane series is not a history of every military plane but rather a look at the major stepping stones that advanced military aviation.
Pandora's Box is a six-part 1992 BBC documentary television series which examines the consequences of political and technocratic rationalism. The episodes deal, in order, with communism in The Soviet Union, systems analysis and game theory during the Cold War, economy in the United Kingdom during the 1970s, the insecticide DDT, Kwame Nkrumah's leadership in Ghana during the 1950s and 1960s and the history of nuclear power.