Everyone must watch this: "A House of Dynamite" on Netflix

Los Alamos Study Group director Greg Mello:

“The film’s highly-realistic portrayal of a nuclear decision scenario merits, in itself, wide attention. There are many such scenarios possible. Bigelow picks one - an incoming ballistic warhead, unattributed due to a satellite glitch - and masterfully proceeds to weave human drama and uncertainty into the preexisting procedures and protocols.

 

“Some commentators believe such a glitch - accidental or intentional - is nearly impossible due to satellite redundancies, etc. As Bigelow portrays, communication systems don’t always work when contingencies occur. Will all these satellites withstand a high-amplitude solar storm? Maybe, and there’s the rub. Humans have a tendency toward optimism regarding the stability and resilience of complex systems on which we are utterly dependent.

 

“In the film, there is not much time available for the first set of decisions. In fact, the 18 minutes Bigelow provides could be much less in real life. There could be zerowarning, if a nuclear weapon were assembled in the U.S. from components smuggled here, or if undersea drones were used to deliver nuclear weapons to U.S. coastal facilities such as submarine bases or cities, or if nuclear weapons were brought into U.S. harbors in shipping containers.

 

“Sea-launched hypersonic missiles might appear on radars with very little warning—perhaps 5 minutes. Cruise missiles launched from shipping containers on ships could be very close to their targets. Bigelow’s 18 minutes is generous.

 

“The ground-based mid-course interceptors (GBIs) portrayed in the film basically don’t work. Any weapon which only works about half the time in highly-scripted test situations is not a weapon which actually works in the real world. Against real warheads with decoys, warheads which might come in large numbers and in some cases will maneuver, anti-missile defense will forever prove impossible for fundamental physical reasons. (Closing speeds are too fast; the lenses in the optics have to be too large for interceptors to lift fast enough, etc.)

 

“For long-range, deeply-submerged torpedoes of intercontinental range (already deployed by Russia and possibly soon in some form by China, judging from the 2025 Victory Parade) there will likewise be no practical defense. The ocean is just too big and too deep. There also is, and will remain, no effective defense against short-range missiles ofany modern variety. Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ is many things, but an effective defense it will never be.

 

“What is realistic in the film is that our political system pretends that these GBI systems do work. “We” believe they work because “we” have invested so much money in them, and only a few scientists have the temerity to say they don’t work. The experts allowed to speak with the greatest authority are the ones being paid to lie. And because we are as a nation scientifically illiterate, the lies stand.

 

“But why is there only an 18-minute response window in this film? Viewers need to zero in on this question. Bigelow’s generals don’t provide much of an answer, especially given the missile’s ambiguous origin. If the U.S. were to respond with a nuclear strike against Russia or China, there is little doubt that these countries’ nuclear forces would destroy the U.S. utterly. A nuclear strike against either of these countries is, under any circumstances whatsoever, an act of national suicide for the U.S. Soon North Korea will likely be in that same existentially-dangerous category, if it is not already there.

 

“So the temptation to strike back is really the temptation of national suicide. As irrational as it seems, that suicidal tendency is indeed hard-wired into U.S. nuclear targeting policies. In this regard, it does not matter if a committee or a single individual chooses to respond, or whether this or that nuclear strike package is chosen. The die will be cast, in either case. What happens then will be up to the “other side.” Would they spare us? Don’t count on it.

 

“Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson, told many of us personally that his private advice to the two presidents he served was tonever, under any circumstances, order the use of nuclear weapons. For McNamara, there was no 18-minute response window because in his view, there should never be a response, period. Is then the entire apparatus of nuclear deterrence a kind of dangerous fiction that attains its horrific reality by only widespread participation and belief, a kind of doomsday cult?

 

“It is easy for many people to say, ‘Nuclear weapons should never be used.’ But the fact is that the U.S. government has definite plans to use weapons under various circumstances if the President so orders, and to “win” the resulting nuclear war. The Pentagon views nuclear weapons as weapons of war, and so does most of Congress.

 

“The continuity of government (COG) protocols portrayed in the movie are, right now, woven into the fabric of government, a shadow thrown on our tattered democracy from a contingent future.

 

“There is no discussion of nuclear destruction in this movie, other than an initial casualty estimate. In fact the infrastructure which supports life in the U.S. is quite fragile. Were the three main U.S. electrical grids taken out by electromagnetic pulses from high-altitude nuclear explosions, which is possible, life in the former United States would become very tenuous.

 

“For many reasons, it is our belief that only a very few nuclear weapons - less than the fingers on both hands - could end the United States.

 

“Viewers, including students, might want to imagine that the scenes in this movie were occurring in Russia, which lacks a truly global early-warning satellite system. How should these actors react, if they were Russian?

 

“It will be clear to viewers that the response decisions are going to be based in part on the overall diplomatic context. How many lines of communication are open? What is the trust level, and by what verification measures is it maintained? In simple terms, are we at war or are we at peace?

 

“Right now, the U.S. is unfortunately conducting a proxy war with Russia that has seen deep strikes against Russia’s strategic nuclear assets. How does this affect the decision calculus, in Russia and the U.S.?

 

“We hope viewers will consider some of these issues, and students will grapple with them. In our discussions, we will be mostly in “listening mode” before segueing into the film’s relevance to our local situation in New Mexico, and our own roles in it.”