Ray Milland wears an unidentified watch

Panic in Year Zero! came out in 1962, the same year as the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it is the most unsentimental nuclear apocalypse film of its era. Ray Milland directed and stars as Harry Baldwin, a suburban father on a family fishing trip when Los Angeles disappears in a nuclear flash behind them. What follows is not a story about rebuilding civilization or finding hope. It is a story about how quickly a reasonable man becomes dangerous when the rules stop applying. Baldwin stockpiles food, steals gasoline, and points guns at strangers within hours of the first blast, and the film never quite decides whether he is right to do so.

In the promotional image, Milland stands behind his family — Jean Hagen, Frankie Avalon, and Mary Mitchel — while Avalon holds a rifle. No watch is visible in this shot, though the character wears a cushion-shaped piece in other scenes. A cushion watch was a common dress style in the early 1960s, with its rounded square case splitting the difference between formal and practical. For a man who wakes up expecting a fishing trip and goes to bed expecting the end of the world, it is the last ordinary thing he put on.