Arkansas, 1984: The town of Griffin Flat is known for nearly nothing apart from its nuclear missile silos. MAD-Mutually Assured Destruction-is a dread every regional lives with and tries to ignore. Regrettably that’s impossible now that film moguls have picked Griffin Smooth as the location for a fresh nuclear holocaust movie, aptly titled The Eve of Damage. When sixteen-year-old Laura Ratliff wins a walk-on part (with a plus-one!) thanks to a radio call-in competition, she is even more relieved than about The Amazing True Story of the Making from the Eve of Damage excited. Mingling with Hollywood celebrities on the set of a phony nuclear battle is a perfect distraction from becoming the only child in her real nuclear family-which in addition has been annihilated. Her parents are divorced, and her mom has remarried. Her father, an official in the Strategic Atmosphere Command, is normally absent…except when he cell phones at odd hours to hint at an impending catastrophe. But isn’t that his job? Laura’s only friend can be her new stepbrother, Terrence. She picks him as her plus-one for the film shoot, enraging her fair-weather friends. But their anger is nothing compared to what happens on set after the scripted nuclear explosion. Because nobody seems to understand if a genuine nuclear bomb offers detonated or not.