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House of Dynamite Is a Chilling Reminder of the Nuclear Threat
The film will spark myriad questions for viewers, which is sorely needed as humanity accepts the unacceptable, the scourge of these weapons that recklessly put at dire risk everything we claim to hold dear.
Oct 17, 2025
As a peace and disarmament activist for over four decades, I was conflicted about whether to see A House of Dynamite, director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim’s new fictional film about an all too realistic nuclear crisis. In my free time, I usually seek refuge from concerns over war and peace.
I haven’t read Annie Jacobson’s recent book Nuclear War: A Scenario, which by all accounts is outstanding. I haven’t watched Oppenheimer (I know a lot about the Father of the Bomb, having read books about him and the Manhattan Project, and it’s my job to know more than most people about the history and current status of nuclear weapons, so I don’t need to see it). I was about to stay home, but my son wanted to see A House of Dynamite, so we went together to the theater on Monday, and I am very glad I did. It is currently showing in a limited movie house release, and will be available on Netflix October 24.
I will refrain from any spoilers here, but in my view the film deserves the widest possible audience. (Well maybe one semi-spoiler, it’s closer to The Day After than to Dr. Strangelove.) My sense is A House of Dynamite will spark myriad questions for viewers, which is sorely needed as humanity accepts the unacceptable, the scourge of these weapons that recklessly put at dire risk everything we claim to hold dear, up to and including the very existence of life on Earth.
Knowing a fair amount about nuclear weapons and “missile defense” technology, policy, and strategy, A House of Dynamite paints an accurate picture of the extreme challenges we face. (In one specific example, the secretary of defense shouts in response to the attempt to shoot down the incoming missile, “So it’s a f******* coin toss? That’s what $50 billion buys us?” In real life the secretary of war and all in power know this, or they should.)
Imagine our current president, the self-anointed “Very Stable Genius,” having 20 minutes to decide whether to possibly end most if not all life on Earth.
Suffice it to say the events that unfold are damning to our collective overconfidence in technology, bureaucracy, and policy orthodoxy, without necessarily calling those out directly. The seemingly magical word “deterrence” is hardly mentioned, but as the alleged cornerstone or raison d’etre for the existence of thousands of nuclear warheads worldwide, its talismanic quality is punctured by the film. Nuclear deterrence may, or may not, actually work in real life, yet we needlessly bet our collective existence on it every day.
So to me, the film’s main strength is it dramatically pierces various “certainties” about US nuclear weapons policy. Also, many of the characters’ human vulnerabilities ring touchingly true. But the film offers no easy answers. Indeed, some crucial details are unclear, leaving this viewer (and some of the characters) to wonder what actually happened more than once, evoking the fog of war.
The dialogue, editing, soundtrack, and performances are all generally top notch. Particularly affecting is Idris Elba as the clearly overwhelmed (as anyone would be) president. Having less than 20 minutes to absorb the foggy details of the crisis and decide how to respond—to nuke or not nuke, to commit omnicide or not—is, as he notes, “insanity,” and “none of this makes any sense, making all these bombs and all these plans.”
Yet the scenario is very realistic, as that one-third of an hour time frame is indeed what a president would likely face in a real nuclear crisis. Moreover, the policies of all nine nuclear weapons states—the US, Russia, China, the UK, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea, which are spending, collectively, trillions of dollars to enhance their capacity to wreak unimaginable devastation—invest a single executive with sole authority to initiate a nuclear attack. All nine states lack any requirement for legislative or even cabinet-level approval to fire nuclear weapons.
So, imagine our current president, the self-anointed “Very Stable Genius,” having 20 minutes to decide whether to possibly end most if not all life on Earth. As Harvard professor Elaine Scarry incisively described in her book Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing Between Democracy and Doom (which I did read), this situation in which one individual has such power makes a mockery of any notion of democracy.
Why do we put up with this? It’s not just the theoretical danger, but the all too real real costs to human life and health. Millions of people worldwide, in addition to the estimated 200,000 or more who perished at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, have had their lives ruined by the disastrous health effects from the mining, manufacturing, testing, and storage of nuclear weapons. The price tag to our environment is incalculable. Then there is the opportunity cost to more productive uses of scarce public resources for human needs, the economy, and our environment. We are squandering trillions of dollars, instead of addressing the Common Good, while fattening the bottom lines of weapons contractors.
I hope A House of Dynamite is a wake-up call. It should be clear that fallible humans cannot be trusted with the power to extinguish life on Earth, and we have already had too many Broken Arrows, nuclear accidents, or near misses that could have turned into calamity. Our species certainly has a lot of problems getting along, but if we want a future, we have no choice but to eliminate nuclear weapons worldwide before they eliminate us.
Of course this problem, at a time when so many struggle to keep up with paying their bills, let alone world events, seems daunting for anyone to address alone, so don’t try. Get educated (most aspects of nuclear weapons policy are public, not hidden), and get organized, with others who share your concerns. Support and join organizations working for peace, disarmament, social justice, and more humane priorities. Demand better of politicians who are supposed to represent us. Ask important questions.
Here is a good place to start—why should anyone, not just Donald J. Trump, be delegated the power to start a nuclear war?
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Led by Sanders, Senate Democrats Demand Trump EPA Restore Solar Funding as Energy Prices Soar
"The EPA’s illegal termination of Solar for All has left states, communities, and businesses across the country in limbo, with critical projects stalled and vulnerable households facing higher energy costs."
Oct 16, 2025
Warning that the US Environmental Protection Agency's termination of the Solar for All program this year came at an especially inopportune time, with electricity bills soaring for families across the country, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday led 32 members of the Democratic caucus in demanding that the Trump administration restore the program.
The Solar for All initiative, which was spearheaded by Sanders (I-Vt.), was meant to create tens of thousands of good-paying jobs while allowing low-income households to benefit from renewable energy.
If EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin had not illegally pulled $7 billion that had already been appropriated by Congress, said the lawmakers, Solar for All would have lowered residential electricity bills by at least 20% for nearly 1 million homes and saved working families nearly $9 billion in electric costs.
"Solar for All strongly aligns with the bipartisan goals of facilitating American energy independence and strengthening grid reliability," wrote the senators, who also included Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), and Ed Markey (D-Mass.). "Your agency’s decision to terminate Solar for All is not only unlawful—given this funding was congressionally appropriated and fully obligated—but also ill-timed."
With electricity bills 6.2% higher than they were at this time last year, said the lawmakers, Solar for All could have saved American families $350 million annually.
It would also have been a step toward reducing fossil fuel emissions at a time when scientists have warned immediate, far-reaching action is needed to avoid the worst impacts of planetary heating and to protect the Earth from damage that has already reached a tipping point, in the case of coral reefs.
"EPA’s reckless decision to terminate Solar for All directly undermines efforts by Congress to reduce energy costs and improve grid resilience," said the senators. "It jeopardizes economic investments and inflicts severe job losses across the country while undermining the trust and financial certainty that communities, businesses, and local governments have placed in the federal government. Further, it disrupts workforce training initiatives, such as those in West Virginia, Alaska, and across the Midwest where solar career pathways and apprenticeship programs are already underway."
"The EPA’s illegal termination of Solar for All has left states, communities, and businesses across the country in limbo, with critical projects stalled and vulnerable households facing higher energy costs," they added.
"EPA’s reckless decision to terminate Solar for All directly undermines efforts by Congress to reduce energy costs and improve grid resilience."
The letter came as at least 23 states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for canceling funding for Solar for All.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes told Courthouse News Service that the $156 million awarded to her state through the program would have led to energy savings for households and thousands of new jobs, while the 61 megawatts of clean energy generated from panels would have prevented at least 90,000 tons of CO2 emissions in Arizona annually.
“Families all over the country were counting on energy bill relief that disappeared overnight when the administration unlawfully terminated Solar for All,” Nick Torrey, an attorney with Southern Environmental Law Center who is representing advocacy groups that also filed a lawsuit last week, told Courthouse News.
In their letter, the senators demanded that "the EPA immediately reinstate the Solar for All program, rectify the damage caused by this termination, and ensure grantees can proceed with the swift implementation of residential solar projects to slash utility bills and create many thousands of good jobs."
"In the meantime," they wrote, "we require a full accounting of how the EPA will repair the damage caused by this program’s disruptive termination."
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Trump EPA Seeks to Reverse Rules Protecting Drinking Water From Carcinogenic 'Forever Chemicals'
One environmental attorney said that the EPA proposal "prioritizes chemical industry profits and utility companies' bottom line over the health of children and families across the country."
Sep 12, 2025
Public health and environment defenders on Friday condemned the Trump administration's announcement that it will no longer uphold Environmental Protection Agency rules that protect people from unsafe levels of so-called "forever chemicals" in the nation's drinking water.
In addition to no longer defending rules meant to protect people from dangerous quantities of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—called forever chemicals because they do not biodegrade and accumulate in the human body—the EPA is asking a federal court to toss out current limits that protect drinking water from four types of PFAS: PFNA, PFHxS, GenX, and PFBS.
The EPA first announced its intent to roll back limits on the four chemicals in May, while vowing to retain maximum limits for two other types of PFAS. The agency said the move is meant to “provide regulatory flexibility and holistically address these contaminants in drinking water.”
However, critics accuse the EPA and Administrator Lee Zeldin—a former Republican congressman from New York with an abysmal 14% lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters—of trying to circumvent the Safe Drinking Water Act's robust anti-backsliding provision, which bars the EPA from rolling back any established drinking water standard.
"In essence, EPA is asking the court to do what EPA itself is not allowed to do," Earthjustice said in a statement.
"Administrator Zeldin promised to protect the American people from PFAS-contaminated drinking water, but he’s doing the opposite,” Earthjustice attorney Katherine O'Brien alleged. “Zeldin’s plan to delay and roll back the first national limits on these forever chemicals prioritizes chemical industry profits and utility companies’ bottom line over the health of children and families across the country."
Jared Thompson, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said that "the EPA’s request to jettison rules intended to keep drinking water safe from toxic PFAS forever chemicals is an attempted end run around the protections that Congress placed in the Safe Drinking Water Act."
"It is also alarming, given what we know about the health harms caused by exposure to these chemicals," Thompson added. "No one wants to drink PFAS. We will continue to defend these commonsense, lawfully enacted standards in court."
PFAS have myriad uses, from nonstick cookware to waterproof clothing to firefighting foam. Increasing use of forever chemicals has resulted in the detection of PFAS in the blood of nearly every person in the United States and around the world.
Approximately half of the U.S. population is drinking PFAS-contaminated water, “including as many as 105 million whose water violates the new standards,” according to the NRDC, which added that “the EPA has known for decades that PFAS endangers human health, including kidney and testicular cancer, liver damage, and harm to the nervous and reproductive systems.”
Betsy Southerland, a former director of the Office of Science and Technology in the EPA's Office of Water, said in a statement Friday:
The impact of these chemicals is clear. We know that this is significant for pregnant women who are drinking water contaminated with PFAS, because it can cause low birth weight in children. We know children have developmental effects from being exposed to it. We know there’s an increased incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer with these chemicals.
Two of the four chemicals targeted in this motion are the ones that we expect to be the most prevalent, and only increasing contamination in the future. With this rollback, those standards would be gone.
Responding to Thursday's developments, Environmental Advocates NY director of clean water Rob Hayes said that "the EPA’s announcement is a big win for corporate polluters and an enormous loss for New York families."
"Administrator Zeldin wants to strip clean water protections away from millions of New Yorkers, leaving them at risk of exposure to toxic PFAS chemicals every time they turn on the tap," he added. "New Yorkers will pay the price of this disastrous plan through medical bills—and deaths—tied to kidney cancer, thyroid disease, and other harmful illnesses linked to PFAS."
While Trump administration officials including Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have claimed they want to "make America healthy again" by ending PFAS use, the EPA is apparently moving in the opposite direction. Between April and June of this year, the agency sought approval of four new pesticides considered PFAS under a definition backed by experts.
“What we’re seeing right now is the new generation of pesticides, and it’s genuinely frightening,” Nathan Donley, the environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told Civil Eats earlier this week. “At a time when most industries are transitioning away from PFAS, the pesticide industry is doubling down. They’re firmly in the business of selling PFAS.”
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