This book should be required reading for all Americans, and maybe for everyone worldwide.It takes place a few years after Russia, panicked at being outdistanced in technology, has dropped a few nuclear bombs on the US. Naturally, we retaliated, so the government, and indeed the entire infrastructure of both countries are gone.In this book, the two authors write as if they were writing a nonfiction story in a world where this has actually happened. They decide to travel together around the countr...

The old saying about art comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable comes to mind while reviewing War Day. This book is an important artistic statement, as fresh and eerily current as it was when it was written in the 1980's. I can't help but think some powerful individuals in Washington read this book and it possibly helped end the cold war.

WARDAY is the literary equivalent of a Peter Watkins film. Indeed what it most closely resembles is his brilliant 1965 "documentary" THE WAR GAME. What the writers of WARDAY share with Watkins is a wholly original concept for dealing with a work of art that depicts the possible effects of a nuclear war: treat it like a documentary about the dread event--as if the nuclear war HAD occurred. The scenarios (spun out and supported by a ton of research)of what occurs after a "limited" nuclear war( jus...

Two journalists take a working road-trip, Studs Terkel style, across post-nuclear-war America.From "Interview - Terry Burford, Midwife and Witch":"I'm working toward delivering a baby a day. Right now I do about three or four a week. At the moment I've got fifty-eight patients in the midwifery and about two hundred in my general practice. I've got thirty psychiatric patients divided into four groups...." pg. 385"... and then it's time to meet one of my psychotherapy groups. Since Warday the numb...

A first person tour of America post-nuclear exchange with the USSR. This is dated material, obviously, but those days are still clear in my memory and it was refreshingly different from most of the post-apocalyptic literature out there today. Because the nuclear war was limited, it's not quite an end of the world scenario - more like the world just got really fucked up but has every intention to survive and rebuild with a realistic capability to do so. No zombies.The first person journalistic ap...

I was gathering up some items to donate to a local charity and this book was inside an old backpack. I know I never bought it since I don't read Whitley Strieber or apocalyptic fiction, so I have no idea where it came from. I thought I would read it since I was between books. I'm rather glad I did.It is the story of a 38 minute nuclear war between the US and Russia which is probably about how long it really would be if both countries were struck by rockets and electronic pulse at the same time.

Starting in the late eighties I began to exchange visits with my old friend and former roommate, Mike Miley, now a resident of Sonoma, California. Michael, always entranced by what he calls "high weirdness", had introduced me to Streiber's supposedly autobiographical Communion ('87), an account of what might be interpreted as encounters with extraterrestrials. I didn't read it, still haven't, but did see the movie based upon it and endeavored to read some of Strieber's other books in order to se...

My memory (which I will be the first to admit may well be faulty) of reading this one is that I lounged on the hammock in the back yard on a fine summer day and went through it from cover to cover. It appeared prior to Strieber asserting that his stories were true and setting himself up as the Richard Shaver of his generation. It's a meta-fiction piece of the two authors traveling across the country after a nuclear war; a very fast-paced but not-sensationalized autobiography of a future past or

The worldbuilding was cool.

As a child of the 1980s, I remember well just how dark the shadow of nuclear war cast upon us. With billions of dollars being spent on “survivable” nuclear weapons systems and Ronald Reagan joking over an open mic about launching a first strike against the Soviet Union, it seemed as though nuclear war was not a question of “if” but “when”. This feeling was reinforced by the response of numerous writers and filmmakers, who flooded the decade with novels such as Doomsday Plus Twelve and The Postma...

Very believable story about a nuclear war between Russia and the US that lasted a day in 1988 and that annihilated New York, Washington, and some military bases in Wyoming, the Dakotas and a few others.The 2 protagonists decide to travel across the US five years after the war to document the aftermath of the war. Part novel part documentary style, the inetrviews and the observations are spot on and keep the story relevant even though it was written in the 1980s.Interesting read.

Finally finished this book. This is the second time I've read the book. It was so much better 20+ years ago.

This was an experience! I thought this was just like any other post apocalyptic book, but it's not. This is told like a documentary and I found it was such a unique way to tell the story but I didn't enjoy it that much. I think it was because I was expecting something totally different and was a little disappointed. The story is told by 2 writers who travel the US a few years after Warday, to document what life is like now. The idea behind the story is amazing but I just found parts to be tellin...

This book is recommended for die-hard fanatics of the genre. The war is exciting and the ecological and economical effects are very interesting. Unfortunately, the political conclusions the authors, as the main characters, jump to are not believable. Most disappointing are the distinctly xenophobic, stereotyped, and negative view the authors present toward anyone who isn't from the United States. One example is the stereotyped position of Japan in the new world with their "credit-card-sized came...

I wouldn’t call it “wish fulfilment,” exactly, but I think the appeal of post-apocalyptic fiction is that it’s always a fascinating thought exercise: how would you survive? What would you do? Where would you go? Yet whenever people imagine an apocalyptic scenario – be it virus, climate change, zombies, whatever – they never fail to assume that they’d be amongst the survivors. I had a greater than normal interest in the post-apocalyptic genre when I was growing up, but nuclear fiction never engag...

On Warday in 1985, the Soviets bomb the hell out of the US, completely obliterating DC, New York, and other major cities (LA becomes the new US capitol). Concurrent with the nuclear attack, the Soviets let loose a technology that destroys most advanced electronics, effectively disabling the US communications infrastructure and isolating the various regions of the country. The book attempts to predict what might happen in the wake of such an event-- chaos, hunger, plague, fallout...Four years fol...

This book is fictional reporting about an event that didn't happen, but very well could of. It's amazing, my first five star read of the year.So. In 1988 the US and USSR had a limited nuclear war. In this case, "limited" means the world didn't blow up completely. Several cities in the US have been turned into craters and radioactive fallout is drifting over the landscape but there are indeed survivors. The authors are making a trip around America five years after what has become known as Warday

I have read several books now by Whitley Strieber, some of them with various co-authors. Warday is by far the best of them. The authors tell the story of the aftermath of a very small nuclear war using themselves as the main characters in an exploration of the country five years after the war. They are ostensibly making this report for a newspaper. They include fictional interviews with various people across the country giving their accounts of either their experiences of the war itself or their...

I first read this book back in 1984 when the Cold War was still a legitimate threat--just before Gorbachev started the policy of Glasnost and Reagan was still joking about bombing the Russians. It left an indelible impression of how even a limited nuclear attack could have devastating, world-changing consequences that could stretch on for decades. Reading it now there is a certain sense of distance with the old U.S./USSR rivalry long dead, Putin's efforts to turn back the clock notwithstanding,

I wavered right from the beginning with what to rate this, because it hit so many of my personal interests, but it’s also kinda old and it shows, but also it’s also old and maybe a little overlooked. Let’s say 3.5, rounded to 4 because I’m in a generous mood.*First, I apologize for my snarky status of November 28, 2019. I maintain that there is a veneer of pretentiousness to this whole thing, but it did become clear that Strieber and Kunetka were pretty worked up about the possibility of nuclear...