The End of the Cold War: Nuclear Winter | Retro Report

This 12-minute video shows students how the U.S.-Soviet nuclear escalation of the 1980s gave rise to a nationwide nuclear freeze movement that challenged assumptions that had for decades guided the American approach to the Cold War. Focusing on the scientific debate over whether any nuclear exchange would be sufficient to trigger a global climate catastrophe, the video helps students draw a line between past fears of a nuclear winter and current fears of a climate crisis. The video gives context for nuclear tensions in the Cold War’s last decade, and can set up an engaging classroom discussion about the connections between the ways Americans confronted the threat of nuclear proliferation in the 1980s, and how they are responding to the threat posed by climate change today.