The Day After is a 1983 American television film directed by Nicholas Meyer. The 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 Jason Robards, JoBeth Williams, Steve Guttenberg, John Cullum, 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.