Trivia

When this film was first broadcast, the network superimposed the word "dramatization" on the bottom of the screen every few minutes and ran disclaimers after every commercial break, to remind people it was only a movie. That didn't stop some people in Charleston, S.C. from panicking anyway.

Plutonium, with a yield of 19 kilotons per kilogram, and the bomb on board having 5.2 kilograms of plutonium, the constructed bomb has a theoretical yield of 98.8 kilotons. The Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki contained 6.2 kilograms of plutonium and yielded only 20 kilotons, but with better technology and design refinements, the terrorists probably got substantially more than 20 kilotons (but nowhere near the "ideal" 98.8 kilotons).

The film was part of a 1980s cycle of films about atomic bombs and nuclear warfare which had started in 1979 with The China Syndrome (1979). The films included Silkwood (1983), Testament (1983), Threads (1984), WarGames (1983), The Day After (1983), The Atomic Cafe (1982), The Manhattan Project (1986), Whoops Apocalypse (1982), Special Bulletin (1983), Ground Zero (1987), Barefoot Gen (Barefoot Gen (1983)), Rules of Engagement (1989), When the Wind Blows (1986), Letters from a Dead Man (Dead Man's Letters (1986)), Memoirs of a Survivor (1981) and The Chain Reaction (1980).

Lane Smith portrays journalist and reporter Morton Sanders in this film. He would later star as editor-in-chief Perry White in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993), one of his better known roles.

One of Michael Madsen's earliest film roles. He appears in the 57-minute mark as Jimmy Lenox, one of the people interviewed. Furthermore, Madsen would star as Preston Lennox in Species (1995).