In 1979, a stuck valve led to a loss of water in a nuclear facility and ended in a partial meltdown at Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Pennsylvania. Coincidentally, the movie The China Syndrome had opened 12 days earlier. It concerned a journalist who witnessed a stuck gauge leading to loss of water in a commercial nuclear power plant. I saw the movie after the Three Mile Island incident hit the news, and I recall a scene when someone described a nuclear meltdown as being able to flatten an area the size of Pennsylvania -and the whole audience giggled nervously.
Younger people today would be forgiven for thinking that The China Syndrome was made about the Three Mile Island incident. But in 1979, the real disaster drove more people to see the movie, and it explained the danger better than the news did. Public support for nuclear power plunged, and the increase in nuclear power plants stopped in its tracks, with only a few projects being completed in the next thirty years. The China Syndrome wasn't the only film that swayed public opinion or otherwise changed history- read about seven such movies at Mental Floss.
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