In the mid-1980s, the U.S. is poised on the brink of nuclear war. This shadow looms over the residents of a small town in Kansas as they continue their daily lives. Dr. Russell Oakes maintains his busy schedule at the hospital, Denise Dahlberg prepares for her upcoming wedding, and Stephen Klein is deep in his graduate studies. When the unthinkable happens and the bombs come down, the town's residents are thrust into the horrors of nuclear winter.

Ken Harrison is an artist that lives to make sculptures. One day he is involved in a car accident, and is paralyzed from his neck down. All he can do is talk and move his head, and he wants to die. Whilst he is in hospital he makes friends with some of the staff, and they support him when he goes to trial to be allowed to die.

A sheltered young high society woman joins the US Army on a whim and finds herself in a more difficult situation than she ever expected.

A live-theater production in which Elizabeth Taylor stars as Emily Loomis, a professor of ancient history at a small California college, who reluctantly agrees to rent a room in her house to one of the new students, named Stewart Anderson. Both happen to be loners (she with a secret past) and although they initially get on each other's nerves, they eventually realize the rapport to help one another emerge from their emotional shells.