An Australian pediatrician gives a speech on the consequences of a nuclear war.An Australian pediatrician gives a speech on the consequences of a nuclear war.An Australian pediatrician gives a speech on the consequences of a nuclear war.
- Won 1 Oscar
- 1 win total
Photos
Helen Caldicott
- Self
- (as Dr. Helen Caldicott)
Vannevar Bush
- Self - In front of map of Japan
- (archive footage)
Winston Churchill
- Self
- (archive footage)
Leslie Groves
- Self - In front of map of Japan
- (archive footage)
Ronald Reagan
- Self
- (archive footage)
Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Self
- (archive footage)
Richard Tolman
- Self - In front of map of Japan
- (archive footage)
Harry S. Truman
- Self
- (archive footage)
Clement Attlee
- Self - at Potsdam
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Ernest Bevin
- Self - at Potsdam
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
James Byrnes
- Self - at Potsdam
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Ed Herlihy
- Universal Newsreel Narrator
- (archive footage)
- (voice)
- (uncredited)
Ernest O. Lawrence
- Self - with Cyclotron Controls
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
William D. Leahy
- Self - at Potsdam
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Vyacheslav Molotov
- Self - at Potsdam
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Joseph Stalin
- Self - at Potsdam
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThis film was labeled "foreign political propaganda" by the United States' Justice Department in an attempt to limit its distribution. All distributors who sold a copy were required to give the purchaser's name to the Justice Department. This may have had the opposite effect from the suppression desired by the Reagan administration, as the negative label caused a rallying of support around the film from anti-censorship activists. During her Oscar acceptance speech director Terre Nash thanked the US Justice Department for their effective "advertisement" of her film.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Unfinished Business (1984)
Featured review
we survived by sheer luck
Dr. Helen Caldicott is one of the most renowned individuals in the world. She founded Physicians for Social Responsibility to protest nuclear weapons. We've loosely heard about the risks of nuclear war as well as the potential effects of nuclear fallout. But you can't understand the sheer horror of it until you hear Caldicott describe it. The main thing that she makes clear in the Academy Award-winning "If You Love This Planet" is that there would be no winner in a nuclear war, just a dead planet and people slowly dying of radiation poisoning. She noted that there was the chance that we weren't going to make it to 1990 due to the high number of nuclear weapons in existence.
While we made it past that year, and both the US and post-Soviet Russia have decreased their stockpiles, other countries have developed nuclear weapons. I recently saw a photograph of an anti-nuclear protest at which people held up signs saying NUCLEAR-ARMED -- BE ALARMED, showing the faces of Donald Trump (United States), Theresa May (United Kingdom), Emmanuel Macron (France), Vladimir Putin (Russia), Benjamin Netanyahu (Israel), Nawaz Sharif (Pakistan), Narendra Modi (India), Xi Jinping (China) and Kim Jong-un (North Korea).* These countries have the means to bring about the end of civilization as we know it. Indeed, a recent alert in Hawaii mistakenly said that there was about to be a nuclear attack.
Everyone should see this documentary. One thing that I would like to see would be a debate between Helen Caldicott and climatologist James Hansen, whose studies the Bush administration censored. They have taken opposing positions on whether nuclear energy contributes to global warming - she says yes, he says no - so I'd like to hear a debate between them.
*For the record, the only country that developed a nuclear weapons program but then abolished it entirely is South Africa, in which the apartheid government developed nuclear weapons but the post-apartheid government dismantled them.
While we made it past that year, and both the US and post-Soviet Russia have decreased their stockpiles, other countries have developed nuclear weapons. I recently saw a photograph of an anti-nuclear protest at which people held up signs saying NUCLEAR-ARMED -- BE ALARMED, showing the faces of Donald Trump (United States), Theresa May (United Kingdom), Emmanuel Macron (France), Vladimir Putin (Russia), Benjamin Netanyahu (Israel), Nawaz Sharif (Pakistan), Narendra Modi (India), Xi Jinping (China) and Kim Jong-un (North Korea).* These countries have the means to bring about the end of civilization as we know it. Indeed, a recent alert in Hawaii mistakenly said that there was about to be a nuclear attack.
Everyone should see this documentary. One thing that I would like to see would be a debate between Helen Caldicott and climatologist James Hansen, whose studies the Bush administration censored. They have taken opposing positions on whether nuclear energy contributes to global warming - she says yes, he says no - so I'd like to hear a debate between them.
*For the record, the only country that developed a nuclear weapons program but then abolished it entirely is South Africa, in which the apartheid government developed nuclear weapons but the post-apartheid government dismantled them.
helpful•10
- lee_eisenberg
- Feb 2, 2018
Details
- Runtime26 minutes
- Color
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