This article firrst appeared on World Beyond War. 

Kathryn Bigelow once worked with the CIA to make a movie widely criticized for dishonestly promoting torture and glorifying killing (Zero Dark Thirty). (She has also explicitly advocated for war making.) Now she has made a movie highlighting the danger of nuclear apocalypse (A House of Dynamite). I know which film I would prefer for you to see. It’s on Netflix.

Netflix has a show called The Diplomat that supports false flag attacks, destructive fossil fuel extraction, government secrecy, the F-35, NATO, and nuclear weapons. It’s very much in the tradition of The West Wing. Good well-meaning folks work super hard to make the world a better place, which just naturally includes killing people and risking omnicide.

A House of Dynamite is only somewhat in the same tradition. The people it shows us working in the White House, Pentagon, and various military bases are still tv-caliber in decency and competence (not the blithering bigoted buffoons one suspects cameras on the real walls would actually show us). But some of these people seem less committed to the death machine. Or at least the impending end of life for millions if not billions of people presents knee-jerk militarism as less unquestionable.

As you’ve probably already heard, A House of Dynamite depicts the failure of missile-defense to stop a single missile — as it likely would in reality, never mind its inevitable failure to stop a large number of missiles.

More importantly, I think, this film depicts the outrageous absurdity, not only of launching a nuclear first-strike, but also of launching a nuclear second-strike. Are you about to lose one city? If so, should you destroy a distant city somewhere and hope not to jumpstart a mass of attacks that put an end to everything? Or should you launch numerous nuclear weapons, devastating distant nations and guaranteeing a horrific global impact of radiation and nuclear winter even if there is no response — which of course there would be? Are you OK with being the biggest mass murderer ever? And if you don’t have an answer to that dilemma, and if the initial attack coming your way was likely motivated by your militarism, why would it have not made more sense to dismantle all your nuclear weapons, either unilaterally or together with other government(s)?

The insanity of possessing nuclear weapons and having a guy with detailed plans to use them follow the president of the United States everywhere he goes is fairly clear in this movie, not just from all the people saying the word “insanity,” but also from a less glaring detail. As soon as a missile is detected headed toward the United States and expected to hit in less than 20 minutes (which is generous, considering the missiles now being developed) the U.S. government starts collecting certain select individuals in Washington, D.C., and driving them to an underground bunker in Pennsylvania. In the real world, that’s a 1.5 to 2 hour drive. Even a helicopter flight would take some time. In the movie, those people seem to have arrived instantly. But the chronology of the movie script makes more sense than real life. In real life, Washington D.C., is the most likely first target. In real life, leaked rumors would create the worst traffic jam DC has ever seen. In real life, someone might live just long enough to ask what the hell distant bunkers could possibly be for, unless the first strike is not incoming but outgoing from the United States.