Thinking the unthinkable

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Friday, October 31st.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a chilling new film imagines what happens when the world’s most unthinkable weapon suddenly becomes thinkable.

MAST: Netflix’s new movie A House of Dynamite examines the hard choices the government would wrestle with in the face of a nuclear attack.

Here’s WORLD arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino.

COLLIN GARBARINO: An intercontinental ballistic missile is heading toward the United States. Presumably it’s bringing with it a nuclear warhead. That’s the situation in director Kathryn Bigelow’s new Netflix political thriller A House of Dynamite.

The film begins in the White House Situation Room. One of my favorite actresses, Rebecca Ferguson plays Olivia Walker. From the situation room, it’s her job to monitor world events.

CAPTAIN OLIVIA WALKER: Right, anything from Pyongyang?

DUTY OFFICER: Not since the last test.

WALKER: Sabre rattling or silence. I’m not sure which worries me more.

She starts her shift distracted because her young son’s fever has spiked. Within minutes of coming on duty, she finds out about the missile launch. Suddenly her concern shifts to whether her son’s country will exist by the end of the day.

WALKER: Add SECDEF and POTUS to the call. Now, Davis. Were you listening to that?

ADMIRAL MARK MILLER: Yeah, I was.

WALKER: Yeah?

MILLER: Yeah, get to it.

Walker rounds up the secretary of defense, Strategic Command, the NSA, and eventually the president who’s out making goodwill appearances.

GENERAL ANTHONY BRADY: We have dual phenomenology on the track. Nineteen minutes to impact.

The action in this 112-minute film takes place over a harrowing 20 minutes… the time that elapses between the missile’s detection and its arrival at its destination.

A House of Dynamite is rated R for strong language. But the language feels realistic—lots of muttered cursing under the breath by military and government officials under extreme stress.

Kathryn Bigelow knows what she’s doing when it comes to directing military and political thrillers. She won two Academy Awards for 2009’s The Hurt Locker, and she got another Oscar nomination for 2012’s Zero Dark Thirty.

The action in A House of Dynamite unfolds in three acts that repeat those tense minutes from different perspectives. Each time we relive these moments, we get a deeper understanding of the various characters and the impossible choices they face.

MAJOR DANIEL GONZALEZ: What is it, Sergeant?

SERGEANT MARY NOLAN: Uh, clear radar acquired our object, sir.

MAJOR DANIEL GONZALEZ: And?

SERGEANT MARY NOLAN: Uh, rate of ascent slowing. Inclination is flattening.

MAJOR DANIEL GONZALEZ: Velocity?

NOLAN: It’s steady, sir. Six kilometers per second.

Two urgent questions must be answered as we count down the minutes to impact. First, is the U.S. military capable of stopping the missile. Second, how should the government respond?

This second question is especially vexing because surveillance systems didn’t register who launched the missile. It came from somewhere in the Pacific. Is it the North Koreans? The Russians? The Chinese? How can the president order a counterstrike if he’s not positive who’s responsible?

MAJOR GENERAL STEVEN KYLE: A single unattributed strike sows chaos. Puts us on our heels. And gives them an opportunity to see if they can get away with worse.

BRADY: It gives everyone that opportunity.

Would a lack of response signal weakness to our enemies and invite more attacks? Maybe the best course of action would be to launch our entire arsenal to neutralize the nukes of all potential aggressors. But that course would escalate the crisis and invite the targets to immediately launch their entire arsenals.

POTUS: I let whoever did this get away with it. How is that any different from surrendering?

DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR JAKE BAERINGTON: Sir, if you wanna look at it that way, then I’m telling you your choices are surrender or suicide.

Over the last 40 years, we’ve lulled ourselves into thinking of nuclear war as unthinkable. A House of Dynamite is an unsettling movie because it shows just how thinkable the unthinkable really is. We might have plans and contingencies, but if someone really did launch a nuke, world leaders would have less than half an hour to respond.

BAERINGTON: So what now? What are we doing?

MILLER: Now I call Fort Belvoir and put the Army Corps of Engineers on standby in case the White House gets hit and they have to dig us out.

BAERINGTON: Serious?

MILLER: That’s what the plan says.

BAERINGTON: There’s a plan for this?

The film’s characters show a range of reactions. Some advocate immediately launching a global war. Some caution that the stakes are too high and that the U.S. shouldn’t respond at all. Some focus on making sure their loved ones are far from any urban center. The president is one of the last people to find out about the crisis, but he’s the only one who can determine the response. As the audience, we feel the agony of his responsibility.

A House of Dynamite isn’t a feel-good movie. It’s a reminder that no one wins in a nuclear war. We’ve used that fact to comfort ourselves. We tell ourselves that since this kind of war can have no winner, no one would want to start one. But Bigelow’s film offers an overlooked caveat: Someone who’s already losing the game might decide that they prefer a world without any winners. It’s a sobering and scary thought.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

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