Part 2: Realism is suspended for semi-legitimate dramatic effect.
Hello again. This is Part 2 of my review of Netflix’s A House of Dynamite (HoD) which I started last week. We already discussed the plot and pacing of the film, its unsatisfying ending, and the message and morals at the core of the film. In short, this film does a great job of highlighting the insanity at the heart of mutually assured destruction, which is that when nuclear deterrence fails, it fails absolutely. It is a very fragile system.
I touched on realism within the film a few times, but held over until this post. I was originally going to write just one post, but the realism section grew and grew until it formed its own near-complete article through fission, a very apt nuclear reaction to be talking about.
I’ll start with the minutiae which the film gets right, before going into the flaw in the basic premise.
The last Kathryn Bigelow film I reviewed here was The Hurt Locker (links to Part 1 and Part 2). I was on solid ground back then, talking about something I had bona fides in. I’m winging it a lot more with this one. I know a bit about the technical aspects of missiles (and missile defence systems) and nuclear weapons, but when it comes to geopolitical strategy, I’m an amateur. One of the scariest things about nuclear weapons, however, is that technical details drive the scariest and most radical policy options. Besides, I can read what other, smarter people have said. Anyway, please chime in in the comments if you think I’ve missed anything important, either on the technical or the geopolitical strategy side.
Warning: there are many spoilers ahead.
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Details matter, and the details are largely spot-on
Bigelow did her research for this film, and it shows. I obviously don’t know what US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) or the White House Situation Room (WHSR) or Fort Greely (just… Fort Greely) look like, but Bigelow has spoken to former high-ups who do and who’ve shared their recollections of what they look like. The result is reportedly near perfect, down to the grain of wood used in the STRATCOM command deck and the “TOP SECRET” stickers on the computer screens in the WHSR.
This doesn’t just matter to those few people who could tell the difference, because that attention to detail makes it seem more realistic to the layperson watching it, even if they can’t put their finger on the reason why. Think of all the best Cold War era nuclear thrillers: verisimilitude gives them that extra quality which turns a gripping story into something which makes audiences think critically about the way the world works.
From Stanley Kubrick’s eerily accurate imagining of a B-52 cockpit in Dr. Strangelove to Tom Clancy correctly guessing that gravimetry would be a navigation method for submarines in The Hunt for Red October, getting the details right makes for a better film, and HoD is no different.
A lovely detail, and brilliant technique in HoD is how jargon-y words are projected on-screen for the viewer. This lets the characters yap away in their own familiar language, as they would in real life, while we aren’t left behind.
The fact that US presidents rarely practice their nuclear attack scenarios is also, regrettably, a very realistic detail which we discussed last week.
Another little detail which stuck with me was the casualty estimate for the presumed nuclear strike on Chicago:
Ten million, primary. Another 10% downwind
—Cathy Rogers, FEMA1
Hang on a second. A few minutes ago you showed us the urban population of Chicago in the WHSR:
Now, nobody knows how big this warhead’s yield is. Nobody even knows whether it’s nuclear or not (but we would naturally assume it is, otherwise why fire it?). And yet we’re jumping right to the top of the casualty estimate? Let’s use Alex Wellerstein’s brilliant Nukemap to get some more realistic estimates. Remember, it all depends on what’s on top of that missile:
| Warhead | Fatalities | Injuries |
|---|---|---|
| Largest Pakistani weapon tested with 45 kt yield | 197,260 | 340,550 |
| Largest Indian weapon tested with 60 kt yield | 220,370 | 376,340 |
| North Korean possible hydrogen bomb tested in 2017, maximum yield estimate of 280 kt | 390,580 | 689,870 |
| Russian RT-2PM2 Topol-M ICBM with single 1 Mt warhead | 626,170 | 1,100,960 |
| Chinese Dongfeng 5 ICBM with single 5 Mt warhead | 1,226,180 | 1,743,720 |
| “Tsar Bomba,” largest nuclear weapon ever tested at 50 Mt (but cannot be put on a missile) | 2,767,440 | 2,089,050 |
There’s no good outcome here, of course; there never is with nuclear weapons. I think Nukemap is a bit conservative with casualty figures, especially at yields above 20 Mt (this is a limitation of the model and is acknowledged in the small print). Nevertheless, the film’s ten million is clearly an exaggeration for a single strike.
It could represent FEMA modelling an all-out nuclear war where multiple weapons hit the city. This would explain why Rogers doesn’t hesitate or ask for clarification on the size of the weapon: her model assumes that Chicago gets absolutely obliterated with multiple warheads. Which, to be clear, it will, about half an hour after the first strike which deals out the 200,000 to 1.2 million deaths we see in the table above.
I think it’s more likely that this is a rare slip-up in the writing. At one point they showed us the population estimate for greater Chicago, and anchored on that for all subsequent discussion of casualties.
Let’s move from the small details to the bigger ones, which is where HoD shows its limitations.
The premise is a stretch of the imagination
The basic premise of HoD is extremely unlikely. Nobody in their right mind would fire a single ballistic missile at the USA. They are the biggest, scariest, most capable military in the world. If you’re going to hit them, you’d better make sure it’s a good one which knocks them out. A single missile which kills several million won’t do that. It will only make them very, very angry.
Even if the US doesn’t press the “end world” button (see next section), you can be rest assured that they will find out where the nuke came from, and they will send whoever is responsible back to the Stone Age.
Some of the in-world characters, particularly the psychopathic STRATCOM General Brady, muse aloud that this could be a “test” of America’s resolve by Russia or China, given how reluctant the USA has been to punish these countries before now. If it is a test, then it has backfired on them spectacularly (see point above on “end world”).
This is a problem which HoD shares with Nuclear War: A Scenario. HoD imagines one and NW:AS imagines two nuclear weapons targeting the US. This selective attack is great for the characters and the audience, because it presents a real strategic dilemma for the protagonists. It’s not great politics for the baddie, though, because they end up even more badly burned (literally) than their enemy. Who in their right mind would do this?
At least NW:AS imagines a nuke targeting Washington D.C., leading to chaos as key officials are evacuated and/or burned alive. HoD could show us many missiles being launched, multiple warheads per missile, and a real race against the clock as the President must decide whether or not to launch in retaliation.
You might assume that Bigelow knows what she’s talking about, but The Hurt Locker was an act of pure fantasy which many people think is realistic. It managed to get many little details right (e.g. the feeling of the long walk in the bomb suit) while serving us a very unrealistic main character and situation.
I suspect they give us the unrealistic setup so that the decision making is less clear-cut and more understandable. And, while it’s easy to get swept along as an audience member, we should take a step backward and see whether the decisions the main characters make are plausible.
The big decisions are not well thought-through
In short, no. The main characters make terrible decisions throughout this film. The most egregious of these is the President’s (presumed) decision to go with the major attack or “well done” option from his menu. He considers attacking Russian, Chinese, and North Korean nuclear strike capabilities.
STRATCOM tells him that this will prevent their ability to respond, but this is, of course, ridiculous. Even if the other side didn’t launch on warning (which they would), and the American attack was fully successful, each enemy would still retain enough second strike capability (including with its ballistic missile submarines) to devastate the US.
If this film is realistic, then then it gives us a sneak peek at the algorithm which the US Strategic Command use to determine their nuclear response options:
I hope you can see how ridiculous this is. Being on a hair-trigger alert is one thing, but destroying the world before you even know what’s going on is another level of insanity. And there’s no time pressure on President Elba to act, despite what the film says. The attack on Chicago will destroy little or none of the US’s retaliatory capabilities, so the President will have time to investigate who attacked, and then plan a surgical and devastating response.
There are other bad and unrealistic decisions in HoD. Ground-based interceptors are shown as having a roughly 50% success rate (disputed, but probably realistic2). Given this, why in God’s name did they only launch two? One expert says that current rules call for launching four at a target. Since there was only one target, they could have afforded to launch a few more and still have some in reserve for the next missile, if it ever came.
One final terrible decision is when the WHSR decide not to connect POTUS with the Russian Foreign Minister because… reasons? Logistics are hard? In what world is it more important for him to stay on a conference call with his minions (who all know much more than he does anyway) than to talk with the people who have the power to incinerate his country in the next half an hour?
This is an awful and fateful decision, but it does actually serve to highlight some real-world logistical issues which HoD gets right.
Friction in communications is realistic
It was refreshing to see communications friction in HoD. It’s very realistic. Anyone who has had to suffer though bad video comms, missed calls, and background noise will certainly empathise. If you thought that the imminent end of the world would solve these problems, then HoD is a much-needed dose of reality.
One criticism I had of Nuclear War: A Scenario was that it seemed to assume that everyone was at their desks at all times, just waiting for nuclear Armageddon to kick off. In HoD, we see:
- The acting National Security Advisor running across the White House lawn on his video phone, then debating nuclear responses with STRATCOM while going through the x-ray scanner,
- The CIA’s North Korea expert explaining that country’s capabilities to the President while the Battle of Gettysburg is re-enacted all around her,
- The President stuck at a stadium playing basketball when the balloon goes up.
The additional element of friction (which Jacobsen also acknowledges in NW:AS, to be fair) is the continuity of government (COG) protocols. In HoD, SECDEF Baker is the one who kicks off COG and then has to confront the reality of armed men escorting him from his office at the very moment he’s needed the most.
There’s a scary reality there, and one which voters should ask themselves (and their representatives): when the balloon goes up, do you want your leaders to run to the bunkers to keep the fight going, or do you want them to stay at their desks and use every iota available time to avert the coming apocalypse?
Conclusion: The metaphor is apt
In last week’s post I included Carl Sagan’s famous quote about a house drenched in gasoline and two people stockpiling matches. This was the quote which presumably inspired the title and governing metaphor of the film.
As I snarkily pointed out then, you could make the point that matches won’t ignite dynamite (not that you should ever mix the two). This is apt for the metaphor which Bigelow and Oppenheim use.
The proverbial “house of dynamite” stands all around us. This is not a good place to live. We should drive public policies toward removing the dynamite. And we should avoid playing with matches, but let’s also be realistic. It will take a lot more than a few matches to set off the whole house. There’s plenty we can do while the house still stands around us. We can lock away the blasting caps. We can replace some sticks of dynamite with a less sensitive and more shelf-stable explosive. We can stock the house with fire extinguishers and practice everyone in using them to stop small fires which risk detonating the explosive. As well as all this, we should have a meaningful conversation about not living in a dynamite house anymore.
Whether it’s realistic or not, A House of Dynamite is a brilliant and long-overdue reminder to us all to be more careful in this awfully dangerous house. You should watch it.
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Featured Image: Screenshot of 9M730 Burevestnik launch, Mil.ru, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Federal Emergency Management Agency. Cathy is played by Moses Ingram, and she is with the Office of National Continuity Programs. I got the quote from a transcript of the film here. ↩︎
- And another unrealistic moment is when the Secretary of Defence says “A coin toss? That’s what we get for $50 billion?” because the true figure spent on missile defence since the 1980 is, apparently more like $500 billion. ↩︎
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