I remember a scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project said to me "you know, when I hear people talking about winnable nuclear wars, I just wish … - Mick Jackson

People tell me how relevant they find the movie to what’s happening now. It’s comforting, at a time when so many films are being remade, to find that people still appreciate – and are scared by – the original film.

What we’d depicted and its implications stayed in the minds of every actor and crew member for a long time. I’m sure there were some nightmares. There are some things so far outside our experience or comprehension that they are unthinkable. Nuclear war is one.

In this movie, from the outset, I wanted to put it in the scale of people that you might know, people like yourself, your immediate family, relations and so on, and no bigger than that, and not really to show anything except how it would happen to them. So, there's no God's eye view in this movie. You don't actually get to look down and get the overall picture and see maps of Europe and maps of the world and so on. You just get what's happening to these people, and it's all really done from ground level. There's no cinematic crane shots or anything like that. It's just very, very documentary.