Amy Brashear - The Incredible True Story of the Making of the Eve of Destruction

“Don’t Nuke Me? Yes, if you’re here for that, then you’re in the right place.”

“I guess I am,” I said.

He tilted his head and sized me up before he blew past me when he saw someone more important walk in.

I found an empty seat by the window and listened to people’s conversations. Two boys discussed the limitations on an actual deterrent to having a nuclear war. And two girls discussed the qualifications for the group leader while also discussing the degree of hotness of the boy next to the signup sheet.

No one questioned why a high school student was here. (Though I didn’t relay that information.) I was one more body for the cause. And there were a lot of bodies here for the cause. By the time the meeting got started, it was standing room only. Some people were even two to a seat.

“Great turnout,” said a girl at the podium. She had buttons up and down her vest. Anti this, anti that:

Together We Can Stop the Bomb

Freeze Voter ’84

Better Active Today than Radioactive Tomorrow!

Women Are Disarming the World

You can’t cuddle children with Nuclear Arms.

She was fired up, angry.

“This is a war against war,” she said. “We must be prepared for when the day comes—Don’t Nuke Me, Mr. President.”

A few boys sat in the back blowing up red balloons that spread out among the feet. A few girls were tying ribbons to the ends. A few balloons popped, and it made us all jump, but the boys went back to blowing up the balloons as replacements.

The girl moved out of the way while the crowd chanted, “We don’t want a nuclear war in 1984—”

A boy stood at the podium, the president of the Don’t Nuke Me organization, and talked about donations. I eyed a T-shirt he was selling. It was a single-file line of apes that had evolved into humans, but then—Flash. Boom. Blast. Mushroom Cloud.—and back to apes.

“We have a responsibility,” he said, “to make sure that this movie will not be one that will soon be forgotten in the minds of the viewers. We don’t need to wait until Eve of Destruction . Hollywood is filming a nuclear movie here. We don’t need this to become another Hollywood scare tactic that sends people to push the button first, like in a game of chase. A group of teenagers will be threatened by a bomb attack. They will be forever changed. We don’t need to make whatever happens on a script page reality.”

Chant: “We don’t want a nuclear war in 1984.”

“We’ll be extras because it will be fun to say we’re in a movie. But let’s not forget—if we don’t have a nuclear freeze, there won’t be any movies for a very long time, at least not in our lifetime. We’ll be in the dark ages—medieval.”

Chant: “We don’t want a nuclear war in 1984!”

A man with a bushy gray beard stepped up, leaned on the podium, and then laid into us like it was a Sunday morning fire-and-brimstone sermon. “Don’t want to live through nuclear war? Wouldn’t want to be around after it’s all over? Think that it will be easier to just let yourself be vaporized? Sorry, but you won’t have that option. Only the politicians can save you. Sadly, there’s a good chance that you will be killed in an instant even if you’re in a fallout shelter, but if somehow you survive it certainly won’t be painless.”

I swallowed hard and twisted my scrunchie on my wrist as others nodded and, in a way that resembled a Sunday morning service, screamed, “Amen.” This was a come-to-Jesus meeting to the tenth degree.

“If you stare at the flash, you will be blinded if you’re lucky. If not, your eyes will literally melt out of your skull. And that’s just before—or the eve of the destruction, if we’re thinking thematically. Looting will occur after. Rape and pillage will be the norm…”

He described in great detail what would happen to the body. I was queasy.

“Some believe that being prepared for a nuclear war would make the event more likely. Apparently if we were adequately prepared, we would no longer fear such a war as much. We need a nuclear freeze. You there,” the man said, pointing at a girl in the front row. “Tell me, why are you here?”

“All I want to do is grow up, not blow up,” she said.

Chant: “We don’t want a nuclear war in 1984.”

He asked a few more people, and they responded in the same manner, though with slightly different words. I thought about what I would say if he pointed at me. I wanted to live. Grown-ups were the ones who created the bombs, but maybe we kids should be the ones to speak up and say enough was enough.

“No more nukes,” a boy said. “If I’ve got fifteen minutes, I don’t want to think about what I could have done.”

The crowd cheered, clapped, and nodded.

“We don’t want Ronald Raygun to put Pershing II and Tomahawk missiles in Europe. We need a nuclear freeze. We need to make a statement to show the politicians in this country that we don’t want a nuclear war in 1984,” said another guy.

Everyone got a red balloon. We walked quietly out of the building and onto the lawn. We stood on the grass that had turned brown for the winter. Loudspeakers played “99 Red Balloons” by Nena, first in English and then in German. But it no longer felt like an upbeat dance tune; it had an eeriness to it.

The leader of the Don’t Nuke Me group on campus raised his arm in the air and counted down with his fingers. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. And as a group we released every single red balloon into the sky. Red filled that blue sky. A symbolic act—because every single red balloon could be a missile.

“We don’t want a nuclear war in 1984…”

Though I felt sick to my stomach, it still growled. I pulled into McDonald’s. I ordered a chocolate milkshake and a large fry. If the bombs had gone off, that would have been my last meal.

“Laura, is that you?” a man asked from a corner booth.

“Pops!” I said, picking up my tray from the counter.

“Scoot over for my grandchild,” he said, gesturing to the man at the end of the booth.

I sat and began unwrapping the straw and sticking it in my milkshake.

“What do you have there?” Pops asked.

“Milkshake and fries, the lunch of champions.”

“Why aren’t you in school?”

“I got suspended.”

“What did my grandchild do to get suspended?”

I wasn’t really his grandchild. Not biologically. Pops was Dennis’s dad. Terrence’s grandfather. But even though I wasn’t blood, Pops called me his grandchild. His new granddaughter by marriage. His only granddaughter.

“Long story. Let’s just say it was totally worth it.”

He laughed and so did his buddies. They all tipped their hats with an introduction. Pops would come here every weekday and sit in this booth and drink his coffee with sugar and talk to his friends. They would stay until the lunch crowd arrived, which was now. I think they stayed later because I was here. But they were in deep discussion about the movie Eve of Destruction . One of Pop’s buddies was lending his barn to the film and another was lending his law office, though the location director wasn’t sure if they would need them or not.

“I’m going to be in it,” I said, smiling.

“Well, ain’t that a thing.”

I took the top off my milkshake and started dunking my French fries. “I get to invite a guest, and I asked Terrence if he wanted to go with me. He said yes.”

“I’m glad you two are finding solid ground. You’re making your pops proud.”

When Terrence’s dad and my mom got married, it was Pops who helped me feel welcome. I didn’t have a grandfather who was alive, so he filled that role. It felt weird having a grandparent who was nice and didn’t have a flaw—like giving hundreds to thousands of dollars to a testiphony.