Eighteen Minutes from Destruction

A House of Dynamite (2025), now streaming on Netflix and directed by Kathryn Bigelow, is a must-see. It presents a compelling drama about an existential moral question that has fallen off the current agenda.

Bigelow’s film reminds us that we are always—every day, every second—eighteen minutes away from devastating destruction. Twelve thousand nuclear missiles are poised and ready to go at a moment’s notice. Somehow, we have forgotten this fact.

Setup

At the film’s beginning, radar technicians in Alaska detect an unidentified missile in mid-flight over the northwest Pacific. Somehow the early detection radar had failed to detect the launch. Quickly those tracking the missile discover this is not a missile test and, when it enters low orbit, they determine its trajectory points to Chicago. The missile will hit its target in eighteen minutes and kill ten million people.

Every drama begins with an unexpected crisis. The Sea-Based X-Band (SBX-1) radar system picks up a missile launch from its heat bloom. This is a redundant system, which the Pentagon insists cannot fail. But in the fog of war, “cannot” is a dangerous assumption. However unlikely this launch failure detection is, it provides the film’s impetus.

As a film critic, this is a very good and worthy film. While dealing with a sensational topic, A House of Dynamite is not sensationalist. It plays almost like a documentary. Kathryn Bigelow knows how to structure an exciting action film. She has directed twelve films. Among her credits are Near Dark (1987), The Hurt Locker (2008), Zero Dark Thirty (2012), and Detroit (2017). She has won two academy awards and she was the first woman to win the Best Director Academy Award for The Hurt Locker. But this is not a film review. I’m interested in the moral questions the film raises. So is she.

Replay

The same twenty minutes replays from three different perspectives—from detection to the moment before the president’s final decision, from the lowest level to the highest. First, we see the White House Situation Room and its associated lower-level staff including the radar facilities in Alaska. The latter group attempts to intercept the missile and fails. Then the same twenty minutes are repeated from the perspective of United States Strategic Command, and finally once again the same twenty minutes are repeated from the perspective of the president of the United States who must make the decision to retaliate or not. The three perspectives move up the chain of command. The same characters appear in each replay, but from a different point of view.

This replay of the same eighteen minutes sounds boring, but Bigelow makes it both riveting and educational. Despite the same scenario with the same characters being played thrice over, the film shifts the focus and keeps ramping up the tension making the choices more dramatic. 

Independent atomic experts have praised the film for its accuracy, even though there are a variety of quibbles. But this is a film. Although based on a deeply researched and convincing reconstruction of the scenes and places depicted, the film presents a hypothetical situation. One can argue about how likely this hypothetical situation is, but I don’t think that is the issue the film is trying to raise.

What Should the President Do?

A House of Dynamite focuses the plot on the president’s decision, since in the American system, the president has sole authority to authorize a nuclear strike. As the scenario progresses, it emerges that, while the trajectory is known, the source of the attack remains undetermined. Who launched the attack? Against whom should you retaliate? At the film’s conclusion, the president is presented with a thick black binder with his options for retaliation. Is one of his options not to retaliate? What would be the political repercussions if ten million people were obliterated in Chicago and the president did not retaliate immediately?

The logic of nuclear deterrence involves a response so overwhelming that the enemy is assured of destruction: the military doctrine known as assured mutual destruction (MAD, an interesting acronym). But the logic is illusionary. The mutual attacks would end both countries, possibly the world as we know it. So why do it? That, of course, is the hope. So far it has worked.

Sole Authority

The USA developed its atomic policy during the Cold War, when policy makers feared Russia would launch a surprise attack. The speed of intercontinental ballistic missiles, especially when launched from submarines, allowed little or no time for consultation with Congress, as required by the Constitution. Therefore, by policy and law, the US president has sole authority over the launching of atomic weapons. The exact process is top secret. In the movie, a junior grade military officer presents the president with a large black binder outlining the options. There are no advisors with the president. There is no check on the president’s decision-making power.

The film ends before the president makes a decision. We see him agonizing over his options. He is alone with the officer with the black book. Dramatically this focuses all the attention on a single moment and a single person.

But do we really want a single person to make this decision? Do we trust Donald Trump to make this decision alone? Many nuclear armed nations are unstable. How stable is the United States of America? Are you sure there will be a peaceful transition in 2028? Under Vladimir Putin Russia likewise does not appear stable and Putin has threatened the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine. India and Pakistan often flare up in open conflict. North Korean is always a potential rogue actor. Israel is believed to have developed nuclear weapons but has never acknowledged them. The Middle East is a hot spot. At this point, China under Xi Jinping appears to be the most stable government.

The United Kingdom and France are the only nuclear powers that are not headed by autocrats or would-be autocrats. Is this really a stable situation? Autocratic governments are inherently unstable because of the problems of maintaining control and transition.

Normalization

In preparation for this blog post I viewed a program presented by the Center for Strategic & International Studies, A House of Dynamite: Fact, Fiction, and U.S. Homeland Defense. It featured a panel of three experts. They started with positive evaluations of the film with “a few quibbles.” As the discussion proceeded, “quibbles” morphed into “impossibilities.” The experts eventually convinced themselves that the hypothetical envisioned by the film could not happen, missing the film’s point—in the fog of war, the impossible happens, which the experts readily admitted. With their expertise they talked themselves into normalizing the unthinkable. We all have.

In A House of Dynamite Bigelow is trying to wake us up, to start a conversation about the morality of atomic weapons and our atomic strategy. We have forgotten that we are always eighteen minutes away from destruction and the world has grown increasingly unstable. Normalizing the unthinkable is morally bankrupt. We need to wake up.