The fear of imminent nuclear destruction was much more omnipresent than the fears of environmental catastrophe are today. Seriously, it's not even close.

When The Day After came out, it was a huge deal. It literally had such a strong impact it directly affected the US' nuclear deterrent policy. When the Wind Blows and Threads, both British productions, also accurately reflected the ennui of the time.

Heck, you had a pop single hit #1, and the entire subject was accidental Armageddon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After#Reception

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_Wind_Blows_(1986_film...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads_(1984_film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Luftballons

Growing up in the 70's and 80's I was pretty convinced we'd never see the year 2000 as a society. The 90's were a welcome shock, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, end of Apartheid and a provisional peace in Northern Island amongst other positive signs.

Global warming was there, but seemed much less likely to cause the apocalypse compared to nuclear war.

Its not just global warming, fairly huge amount of global population barely registers it, since its not so much right here & right now making you die slowly.

Doom and gloom bombardment is everywhere, at least to some extent. Its covid, economy, ecology, politics, global politics, wars and so on. Then you go to some other place and magic happens - people are still cheerful, live like covid isnt a thing bombarding us from every direction constantly.

I am in paragliding course in south Spain now, and I can tell you. I've teleported into another dimension for 2 weeks. Regardless of all the cold hard facts, I like it very much, a breath of the age gone. Recharging batteries that badly needed it.

At the end its childishly stupid to not see forest for the trees, and living in semi-bearable misery over things one cannot change. I for a change have faith in mankind resilience and technologies future will bring, ie for cleaning up the mess we all do right now, by using devices to type/read this for example. Because we think its our right to have them, buy often almost same ones and brag on anonymous forums like this one about how much power one wields and how smooth animations are.

Apparently it was. Keep in mind that that generation had a much fresher and more direct memory of a significant conflict (WW2) and so there are common experiences where people would be jumpy at any odd light flying around, sirens, sounds, always ready to jump under the table or shelter to try to hide from the nuclear blast.

I am certainly glad we don't live under that kind of fear, even if we have something else to replace it.

> Keep in mind that that generation had a much fresher and more direct memory of a significant conflict (WW2)

Not just the generation you refer to (pre-boomers who would have some memory of WW2), but also boomers and us Xers also were also quite aware that nuclear war was a real possibility.

When I was a kid in the 80s I was sure I was going to experience global nuclear war before I became an adult. I thought about it a lot.

Where i live we had weekly air siren tests back in the 80ies, i don't think that was ever the case for America but on the projected front-lines the Cold War was very real, and the release of tension that when the wall finally came crusting down and the eastern European countries re-emerged as friends were an powerful event doing my childhood.

Yeah, but we reacted differently. We still went to school, and got jobs, and got married, and had kids, even though the world could end tomorrow.

We still had literal duck-and-cover drills in school long into the mid '80s. New York area. File into the hallway, face the wall, kneel on the ground with your head in the corner between the floor and wall, put your hands behind your neck, kiss your ass goodbye.

The nuclear scare was definitely that constant, if not even more so. It was also a much more black and white issue, there was a clear us vs them to it. I personally think that 9/11 and the response to it would have all been taken completely differently if it weren't for the Cold War only ending a decade before. Bush wasn't laughed out of Congress for talking about an Axis of Evil because it sounded exactly like American foreign policy had for decades at that point, notably Reagan's Evil Empire back in the 80's.

Yes it was at least as constant. Growing up in the 70s/80s there was a constant feeling that nuclear annihilation was quite possible and maybe even imminent. Around 1980 our family moved to a house that was only about 5 miles from a nuclear submarine base. We joked that if a nuclear war started we were pretty much at ground zero and at least we wouldn't suffer.