Doomsday Plan

A Turner Networks Production, directed by Ted Haimes, who is also the interviewer, THE DOOMSDAY PLAN is a documentary concerned with the preparedness level of Federal nuclear power related agencies in theoretical response to potential instances of terrorist activism including nuclear strikes or the releasing of biological weapons, exemplified by Japan's sarin disaster. The Greenbrier bunker, completed in 1959 beneath the tony West Virginia resort, and viewed in detail, was created for the safety of members of the United States Senate, and a discussion is made of that moral dilemma pertinent to the incineration of spouses and children while officeholders are shielded, a trumpeted example of our government's flawed historic attitude towards its citizenry during possible calamities as those mentioned. A theorem submitted throughout by government spokesmen states that there is no defense in place against nuclear attack, which is not quite the case, and no discourse is made of the Star Wars program, albeit the film's format returns often to the known success of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), a distinction of the long Cold War stalemate. The functions of NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) and FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) are examined, and we are treated to interlarded brief fictional scena of individuals' final moments during an atomic assault featuring well-known film actors (Molly Ringwald, Elliott Gould, et alia) with sputtery images of generally accepted world political villains included for good measure, all of this being completed prior to the Twin Towers tragedy, a final impression being one of nurtured paranoia stemming from an uncaring and probably helpless officialdom.