House of Dynamite Is a Chilling Reminder of the Nuclear Threat

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?