It’s fair to say that Kathryn Bigelow’s ticking-clock nuclear war thriller, A House of Dynamite, is not for the faint of heart. Since it premiered at the Venice Film Festival, it’s been uniting critics not just in praise – the movie currently sits on 80 percent on Rotten Tomatoes – but in a shared sense of creeping dread.
It’s one of those movies that once watched, stays watched. A nuclear nightmare that will trigger Boomers and Gen-X-ers who grew up under the shadow of the Cold War and younger audiences fearful for the fate of the planet alike.
But how plausible is the scenario that Bigelow and her co-writer Noah Oppenheim, a former NBC News executive, are depicting? And how accurately does it depict the likely response of the US’s national security infrastructure and President to an anonymous nuclear attack on a major American city. We asked US State Department veteran, nuclear policy expert and deputy VP at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) Mark Melamed and NTI’s Deputy VP of Communications Elise Rowan to shine some light on this very scary scenario. And, well, there’s good news and bad news…
What is A House of Dynamite about?
Starring Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, Anthony Ramos and Greta Lee, the movie starts out on just another day in the White House situation room. A mystery blip on the screen is dismissed as a likely missile test in the Pacific, until the blip goes suborbital and starts heading for a city in America’s Midwest.
What follows is an 18-minute period, told from three different perspective, that’s full of breathless FaceTime calls, rushed Zooms and panicked chopper rides as the country’s biggest cheeses try to figure out what’s happening and what to do about it. To retaliate, and against whom? Impossible choices and supposedly watertight systems creaking under unprecedented pressure are this enthralling but terrifying movie’s bleak themes.
So how realistic is the chilling situation A House of Dynamite depicts? And what do Bigelow and Oppenheim get right – and wrong – about it?
Warning: contains spoilers for A House of Dynamite throughout
How realistic is the ‘rogue nuke’ scenario depicted in the movie?
A House of Dynamite follows the trajectory of a nuclear missile fired from the Pacific in the direction of Chicago. Satellites fail to identify the launch site and there’s nothing to help identify which nation is behind the attack. The US defence apparatus, including STRATCOM (United States Strategic Command) under General Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts), Secretary of Defense Reid Baker (Jared Harris) and Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) in the White House Situation Room team, kicks into gear. These well-drilled professionals try to nail down what’s happening and help the unnamed US President (Idris Elba) figure out what to do about it – including possible retaliation using American’s own nukes. But against whom?
So how realistic is this scenario? 'Alarmingly so’ is Melamed’s judgment. 'It may not be the most likely scenario, but frankly, we don't know what that is.’ Adds Rowan: 'There are a lot of ways a nuclear war could start, and this is certainly one of them.’
Would it really take place over 18 minutes?
According to the two nuclear policy professionals, the movie also nails the probable timeframe in which such a situation would play out: about 18 minutes from the detection of a strange anomaly in the Pacific on the Situation Room map to impact. ‘An ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) could launch from the other side of the world and strike a target in the United States in roughly a half hour,’ says Melamed. ‘In that time, you’d have to detect and determine the trajectory, to confirm that it is a launch – because we've had false warnings before. There’s nothing exaggerated about these timelines.’
Is America’s missile defence system really ‘a $50 billion dollar coin toss’?
America’s only defence against the rogue missile is the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, of which there are 44 in the US’s armoury. We see two interceptor missiles failing to knock out the nuke, leading the Secretary of Defence to describe the system as a ‘$50 billion coin toss’. 'That’s a pretty accurate way to describe it,' concurs Melamed. 'The system has a 55-60 percent success rate – under test conditions.’ Worryingly, this is the exact scenario the system is designed for. ‘The idea of homeland missile defense is to defend against countries like North Korea or Iran with limited nuclear capabilities,’ notes Melamed. ‘It wasn’t designed to be effective against Russia or China.’
There are a lot of ways a nuclear war could start, and this is certainly one of them.
How realistic is the President’s reaction to the attack?
Elba’s POTUS hears the news while playing basketball at a press call. He’s whisked away by the Secret Service and is briefed on the situation and his bleak range of options. Jonah Hauer-King’s military aide presents him with three nuclear retaliation packages bluntly dubbed: ‘Rare, medium and well done.’ ‘[This situation] is rehearsed and exercised,’ says Melamed, ‘but it’s realistic [to show that] the President comes to this relatively fresh. You learn that he was briefed once when he took office and not thought about it again. That’s plausible.’
'Idris Elba seems like a thoughtful, steady, rational leader,’ he adds, ‘and we don't know if that's going to be a guarantee for those in charge of the nine nuclear-armed countries in the world’.
Would government staff start phoning their families?
As things begin to feel cataclysmic, the anxiety levels ramp up, not least for these professionals’ loved ones. Rebecca Ferguson’s Captain Walker gives the okay to staffers to bring their cell phones into the Situation Room, a major security breach under normal circumstances. Rather than movie logic, Melamed feels that this moment tallies. ‘The rules are the rules and then there's what people do when they think the world is ending in 20 minutes,’ he says. ‘This is pretty mild on the scale of what people might do.'
How much protection would nuclear bunkers provide?
The end of the film shows key government officials heading into the Raven Rock nuclear bunker in Pennsylvania and the White House’s underground bunker. 'They’re built to be nuclear proof, although obviously that's never been tested either,’ says Melamed. ‘They're deep underground, under granite, and designed to withstand a thermonuclear strike. Obviously they've never been tested in the real world and hopefully never will, but that's the idea.’
When can I watch House of Dynamite?
The movie is streaming on Netflix worldwide now.
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