House of Dynamite, a film about nuclear war

 

A new film about the danger of nuclear war received warm accolades at the Venice Film Festival. As I have yet to shed my defense bug completely, I went to watch it and was quite disappointed because it is a highly unrealistic description of what a nuclear attack crisis would look like.

It describes an attack by one (1) missile with one impact trajectory (and therefore one warhead) on a city target, Chicago. This scenario would be unlikely in the extreme, but let us assume it happens, perhaps because of a military commander gone crazy.

Such a strike would not mean the options for the president would be "surrender or suicide" as claimed in the movie, as it would destroy neither US retaliatory forces nor its command centers. The American senior officer emphatic assertion claiming that the US would lose the "window" to strike back after the impact of the incoming missile on Chicago does not reflect reality.

Any such "attack" would leave ample time and means to retaliate ex post if so desired. In any case, not knowing who fired the single attacking missile would make it impossible to plan a rational retaliation: against whom? Hard to imagine the US president would order retaliation against Russia, China and North Korea (the nuclear powers that might conceivably lob their bombs at the US) all in one go.

That the attacking country could not be determined because the launch was not detected by American satellites does inject an element of uncertainty, but such a contingency is 1. highly improbable and 2. a fact not known to the attacker, who would have to assume the US knew who shot the missile. It might be harder to figure out who the attacker is if the shot came from a submarine, but that does not change the fact that all response options would be available for retaliation later, as the facts became clearer.

The film also shows how the US responds to early warning of the incoming warhead with just 2 anti-missile shots, which is also hard to explain.

Yes it is hard to "hit a bullet with a bullet" like the film claims, which is why ballistic missile defense has always been a pipedream, but if you are going to try and shoot down a single incoming warhead you go at it with all you have.

The film correctly shows us how the US would communicate with the Russian leaders in such an emergency, the "Red Line" has been in operation since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. But then the script goes bezerk... it is laughable that the Americans would ask the Russians what they thought the Chinese were up to. In fact, there is such a direct line between Washington and Beijing, in fact there are at least two (White House and Pentagon).

In the rush to respond before the incoming mysterious warhead strikes Chicago the US chooses to launch its B-2 strategic bombers, which take-off loaded with weapons, and which would take hours to reach their targets and launch their weapons (cruise missiles or, as shown in the movie, gravity bombs) while inexplicably it does not seem to be readying for launch its intercontinental or submarine-launched ballistic missiles which would hit their targets in just minutes. If a rapid response were needed, missiles and not airplanes would be the best tool.

Finally the film claims a nuclear explosion on Chicago would cause 10 million deaths. Of course death and destruction would be widespread but this number is a wild exaggeration, by at least an order of magnitude, if not two, of what the actual outcome would be. Warheads have become smaller over time.

In conclusion, while this is a very different storyline, the message is not that different from that of "Dr Strangelove" directed by Stanley Kubrick over 60 years ago, but the latter is, alas, a much better movie.