The Day After is a 1983 American television film directed by Nicholas Meyer. The war film postulates a fictional conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact over Germany that rapidly escalates into a full-scale nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. The action itself focuses on the residents of Lawrence, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, and several family farms near American missile silos. The cast includes JoBeth Williams, Steve Guttenberg, John Cullum, Jason Robards, and John Lithgow. The film was written by Edward Hume and produced by Robert Papazian, with clips from the 1979 Air Force documentary First Strike used.

More than 100 million people, in nearly 39 million households, watched the film when it first aired on November 20, 1983, on the ABC television network. With a 46 rating and a 62% share of the viewing audience during the initial broadcast, the film was the seventh-highest-rated non-sports show until then, and in a 2009 Nielsen TV Ratings list was one of the highest-rated television films in US history.

The film was broadcast on Soviet state television in 1987, during the negotiations on Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The producers demanded that the Russian translation conform to the original script and that the broadcast not be interrupted by commentary.

Dr. Russell Oakes works at a hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, and spends time with family as his daughter Marilyn prepares to move away. In nearby Harrisonville, farmer Jim Dahlberg and family hold a wedding rehearsal for his eldest daughter Denise. Airman Billy McCoy, serving with the 351st Strategic Missile Wing, is stationed at a Minuteman launch site in nearby Sweetsage, one of 150 such silos in western Missouri. Next to the site, the Hendrys tend to their farm chores and mind their children. Background television and radio reports reveal information about a Soviet buildup on the East German border. East Germany blockades West Berlin, and the United States issues an ultimatum and places its forces on alert, recalling McCoy from his family at Whiteman Air Force Base.

The following day, NATO attempts to break through the blockade at Helmstedt-Marienborn. Warsaw Pact MiGs hit Würzburg, West Germany. Moscow is evacuated. At the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, near Kansas City, the word goes out that the Soviets have invaded West Germany. Soviet forces drive toward the Rhine in an armored thrust. Pre-med student Stephen Klein decides to hitchhike home to Joplin, Missouri, while Denise's fiancé Bruce witnesses a crowd of shoppers frantically pulling items off the shelves as both sides attack naval targets in the Persian Gulf. Jim prepares his cellar as a bomb shelter for his family. People start to flee Kansas City, and the Emergency Broadcast System is activated. NATO attempts to halt the advance by airbursting three nuclear warheads over Soviet troops, while a Soviet nuclear device destroys the NATO headquarters in Brussels. US Air Force personnel aboard the SAC Airborne Command Post receive notification of an incoming wave of 300 ICBMs. The launch order comes in from the president for a full nuclear strike on the Soviet Union. People in and around Kansas City watch in horror as hundreds of ICBMs are launched. While the film makes clear that NATO was the first to use nuclear weapons, it is left deliberately unclear who launched the first major attack.

McCoy flees his now-empty silo, telling his fellow airmen the war is effectively over. A high-altitude nuclear explosion's EMP disables vehicles and destroys the power grid. Nuclear missiles rain across the region on both military and civilian targets. Kansas City's last minutes are frantic. Bruce, Marilyn Oakes, the Hendrys, and McCoy's family are among the thousands of people incinerated, while the young Danny Dahlberg is flash-blinded by a nuclear detonation many miles away. Dr. Oakes, stranded on the highway, walks to University Hospital at Lawrence, takes charge, and begins treating patients. Klein finds the Dahlberg home and begs for refuge in the family's basement, which is granted.

Oakes receives fallout reports by shortwave from KU professor Joe Huxley in the science building: travel outdoors is fatal. Patients continue to come and supplies dwindle. Delirious after days in the basement shelter, Denise runs outside; Klein retrieves her, but both are exposed to the thick radioactive dust. McCoy heads towards Sedalia until he learns of its destruction from passing refugees. He befriends a mute man and travels to the hospital, where he dies of radiation poisoning. Oakes bonds with Nurse Nancy Bauer, who later dies of meningitis, and a pregnant woman pleads with him to tell her she's wrong to be hopeless.

In a radio speech, the U.S. President announces a ceasefire, promises relief, and stresses no surrender and a reliance on American principles, set to shots of filthy, listless, or dead Americans among the ruins. Attempts at aid from the National Guard and infrastructural redevelopment prove fruitless, and summary executions for looting and other offenses become commonplace. Jim Dahlberg (and, it is implied, his remaining family) is eventually killed by squatters, while Denise, Klein, and Oakes are wasting away from radiation sickness. Returning to an irradiated Kansas City to see his old home one last time, Oakes witnesses National Guardsmen blindfolding and executing looters. He finds squatters in the ruins of his home and attempts to drive them off, but is instead offered food. Oakes collapses and weeps, and one of the squatters comforts him. The film ends with an overlying audio clip of Huxley's voice on the radio as the screen fades to black, asking if anybody can still hear him, only to be met with silence until the credits, as a Morse code signal transmits a single message to the viewer: M-A-D.