A Day Called 'X' - Part 1/3

THIS FILM IS PUBLIC DOMAIN

A Day Called 'X' was a dramatized CBS documentary showing a civil defense exercise 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 was filmed in September 1957 and aired December 8 of that year. It was presented by Glenn Ford.

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 (local officials and broadcasters).

On September 27, 1955, Portland actually conducted an exercise evacuation of downtown called "Operation Greenlight," and the film is often misattributed to that year.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Day
• Called
• glenn
• ford
• civil
• defense
• cold
• war
• atomic
• bomb
• 1950s
• Portland
• Oregon
• nuclear

[zekepig]

Not as exciting as "The Day After", but scary enough for a 1957 audience to take heed.

[wiley207]

At 08:08, that fire alarm horn is the same kind that was at my dad's elementary school!

[happypapercut]

I wonder what they did with the people in the jails?

[MattShizzle]

@DandDskeeto

Yeah I have it. The one that scared the crap out of me and gave me nightmares back in the day was "The Day After." You kids have no idea how scary the 80s were. We had a president who a lot of people who weren't born yet then think was good now who all but tried to start WWIII. Reagan was a lunatic.

[seani0]

These men are expendable. Power plant workers; fuck em.

[ktmggg]

@DandDskeeto I always thought the movie Testament was terrifying. Everyone is just sitting around waiting for the fallout to kill them like in the movie On The Beach, even though they're trying to find safety. It's the waiting for death (whether slow and painful or quick and relatively painless) that instills fear.

[IParkeStudios]

Woohoo! Go Portland! I support anything that has my home city in it :D

[ObssesedNuker]

8:09-8:20 Jee, I'm sure all those power workers who saw this were having second thoughts about their jobs afterward.

[nukewarfare2]

Ah, see... in this case, they had enemy bombers headed for them, so they had three hours to prepare. In a few years after this, it would have been ICBMs and SLBMs headed to Portland. And if missiles were over the Aleutians, instead of three hours, they would have had maybe three minutes to impact.

[aznate27]

Could these people be any more nonhalant that their probably going to die?? LOL.

[YimChun]

@cautionthisissparta...no doubt...that's why i'm not scared of Nuclear War...if I do die, it'll be relatively quick....what I'm scared of is SURVIVING the nuclear war...lol....have you seen a Super Mutant? Not somethin' I look forward to...lol

[DandDskeeto]

:-P