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

Once it became public knowledge that Director Norman Edman let Dylan take the fall for the “accident,” it was hard for the director to find work in Hollywood. Eventually he moved back to the small town in Colorado and became the community director of the local theater.

The bus driver, whose name I can’t remember, died in 2004. He spent his remaining years working as a bus driver for a local retirement home. He seemed happy but had a lot of flashbacks due to his PTSD.

Tyson eventually became a director himself and has signed on to direct the movie version of my story. Hopefully, he doesn’t turn into the kind of director Norman Edman was and, from what I hear from the actors at the local theater, still is. Get the footage no matter the cost.

And me? Whatever happened to Laura Ratliff? Well, you just read my version of events, and hundreds of thousands of millions of people did too. My comic books with Max are a huge success. Teenage Mutant is even getting action figures. People of all ages want to be Destiny when they grow up, kicking butt and taking names.

Sometimes it’s hard to realize what we went through those seven days back in the Griffin Flat High School bomb shelter. Not everyone believes us. Though the evidence is there. Maybe one day everyone will finally believe the Griffin Flat Ten.

Well, my name is Laura Ratliff. And this is my story. Let no one tell it differently than me. [79] All of this may or may not be true. Big Brother is still watching.

Thank you so much to editor extraordinaire Dan Ehrenhaft. Honestly, not a day goes by that I don’t stop and think how lucky I am to work with you.

And thanks to Bronwen Hruska, Janine Agro, Rachel Kowal, and everyone at Soho for championing The Incredible True Story of the Making of the Eve of Destruction .

To my family. Thank you for always being there and letting me follow my writing dream. Thank you Mom, Dad, and my brother, Alex. I love y’all.

And thank you for joining me in the Fallout Shelter and reading, The Incredible True Story of the Making of the Eve of Destruction .

Go Hogs!!!

No Saints in Kansas

Copyright © 2018 by Amy Brashear

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Soho Teen

an imprint of

Soho Press, Inc.

853 Broadway

New York, NY 10003

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brashear, Amy, author.

The incredible true story of the making of the Eve of destruction / Amy Brashear.

ISBN 978-1-61695-903-6

eISBN 978-1-61695-904-3

1. Motion pictures—Production and direction—Fiction. 2. Nuclear accidents—Fiction. I. Title.

PZ7.1.B75154 In 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 2018027722

Interior design by Janine Agro, Soho Press, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

FEMA stands for Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is an anagram for a joke.

Nena, “99 Luftballons,” Epic, 1983. Originally a German song that was rereleased in English as “99 Red Balloons.” It’s a protest song. I personally prefer the German version even though I have no idea what she is singing.

The Police, Synchronicity , A&M, 1983. It’s the perfect song, actually. It’s a song about stalking, or how Big Brother is always watching you.

The Fury of Firestorm: The End of His Rope! Issue #28, October 1984.

Journey, “Don’t Stop Believin’” Escape , Columbia, 1981.

A television show that aired on CBS from 1962 to 1971 (I was a toddler when it was on TV). But the premise was this: Jed Clampett hits it oil rich and moves his family (Granny, Elly May, Jethro Bodine) to California, hijinks ensue. Though the show never technically clarified where the Clampetts were from, we as Arkansans claim the Clampetts as our own.

William Jefferson Clinton, born in Hope, Arkansas. At the age of 32, he is the youngest governor to ever take office. He was governor from 1979 to 1981, then lost and won again in 1983. His wife is named Hillary, and they have a three-year-old daughter named Chelsea.

They were held on Friday, September 14, 1984, at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. On that night, it was dubbed Video City Music Hall. Dan Aykroyd and Bette Midler hosted. It’s well known for the uncomfortable sitting with your parents as you watched Madonna roll around on the stage to “Like a Virgin.” I know Terrence and I haven’t fully recovered.

I’ve watched reruns in syndication. It’s about a blended family: Mike Brady and his three sons—Greg, Peter, and Bobby—Carol Martin Brady and her three daughters—Marcia, Jan, and Cindy—and their live-in housekeeper, Alice. It’s cheesy.

It’s a 1962 novel by Ken Kesey and a major motion picture starring Jack Nicholson. It takes place in a mental institution.

It premiered in 1979 and stars Robert Wagner as Jonathan Hart, CEO of Hart Industries, and Stefanie Powers as Jennifer Hart, a freelance journalist. They jet-set around the world solving crimes. I wanted to be part of that family. I would have gladly walked Freeway.

On November 20, 1983, 100 million people dropped everything to watch The Day After on ABC, a TV movie about the nuclear annihilation of Kansas City and the aftermath in Lawrence, Kansas. Prior to the TV movie airing, there was a special viewers guide sent in the mail. We were supposed to watch The Day After and then have a discussion, but if we needed to talk to someone, there was 1-800-NUCLEAR, a special counseling hotline. If we needed to talk to someone because it got too much too fast, they were there. Seriously, as a nation we had homework. And we were warned, DON’T WATCH IT ALONE! Local affiliates even went so far as to advise parents not to let kids watch it at all. Mom and Dennis didn’t listen. They let me watch it. I curled up on the couch and watched the end of the world happen with no commercial breaks!

Terrence said he watched half of it at his mom’s house before he got bored and did homework instead. He missed the mushroom cloud, the firestorms, the wind, the skeletonized people, the buildings exploding, people vaporized, the slow deaths of hundreds of thousands, the radiation poisonings, the panic, the savaging, the pillaging, the government not knowing how much to dig in the irradiated farmland, the possibility of deformed infants, no medicine, no cures, no hope, only despair. We don’t even know who shot first. But as John Lithgow said in the movie, it doesn’t matter.

After the movie they said it would be much worse than what we saw—there would be vomiting with acute diarrhea, and much, much more.

Max’s parents confined him to his bedroom and checked on him to make sure he wasn’t watching it. He had little to add to the conversation the next day at school. The movie was scary. It left me feeling nothing. I was hollow inside. I was afraid. I still am.