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.
John Woodley:
Is it possible to compare the weapons deployed today, the kind of the Russians may have aimed at Charleston with what the terrorists have on that ship?
Arlen Surrey:
John, tonight, people who are 5 miles from the harbor would survive the blast at least. If a Soviet 1 megaton bomb was dropped on the harbor, those people, 5 miles away, would be vaporized in the first three-fifths of a second.
Dr. David McKeeson:
Woodley, that's a nice Anglo-Saxon sounding name. I hope it's your own.
Anachronisms: Early in the movie, "archival footage" is shown of one of the terrorists, supposedly filmed in the early 1970s. A boy in the crowd is wearing a t-shirt with the slogan "DEW IT!", but Mountain Dew did not begin using that slogan until the late 1970s.
Factual errors: After the detonation of the bomb, in the scenes of the aftermath in Charleston, the air-raid siren can be heard giving the "attack warning" tone. In an actual nuclear detonation scenario the "attack warning" would have been sounded before the detonation, not after.