October 22, 2025
Confronting the new nuclear era.
Movies have long played a significant role in shaping our understanding of the perils of nuclear war. As a teenager, I was stupefied by On the Beach (1959), the cinematic portrayal of Nevil Shute’s 1957 novel about the extermination of human life in Australia as a lethal radioactive cloud drifts from the Northern Hemisphere (where it was generated by a cataclysmic nuclear war) to the South Pacific. Next came Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964), still the most powerful dramatization of nuclear war’s utter madness. The Day After, a made-for-TV film from 1983, provided gruesome images of a nuclear war’s deadly consequences for members of a small Kansas community.
These, and other memorable films—most recently, Oppenheimer—helped us fathom the unthinkable: the annihilation of most, if not all, human beings in a global inferno. They also sparked widespread public debate about the morality and rationality of nuclear war planning and helped boost anti-nuclear organizations like the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy and the Nuclear Freeze Campaign (now combined in Peace Action).
Now comes A House of Dynamite, arriving on Netflix on October 25. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow—the first woman to receive an Academy Award as Best Director (for The Hurt Locker of 2008)—the Netflix film begins with the radar detection of a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) headed toward the continental US. It goes on to depict the horrified reactions of US officials as they are informed of the missile’s deadly trajectory and come to realize that they, and all of their loved ones, could be radioactive ash before the day is over.
The timing of the Bigelow film’s release appears significant. Those earlier movies were produced during the Cold War era, when fears of a nuclear catastrophe were already embedded in the public psyche. A House of Dynamite is appearing at a time of growing nuclear tensions between the major powers—as exemplified by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s repeated threats to employ nuclear munitions in response to deeper Western involvement in the Russian-Ukraine war—but also one of diminished public consciousness over the risk of nuclear annihilation. The question thus arises: Will A House of Dynamite have the same consciousness-raising effects as those earlier films?
Armageddon in Real Time
What distinguishes A House of Dynamite from previous films on nuclear war is that it depicts the onset of catastrophe in “real time,” as experienced by those most directly involved.
Current Issue
As the movie begins, we watch as US military personnel at Fort Greely, Alaska—an isolated Army installation located 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks—detect an ICBM en route to the United States from an unidentified launch site off the coast of North Korea. In the next heart-thumping minutes, a Greely team launches two Ground-Based Interceptors (GBIs) at the incoming ICBM—an inherently difficult move that ends in failure, leaving the US defenseless against the rapidly approaching missile. (As noted by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the GBIs housed at Fort Greely are thought to possess a 56 percent likelihood of destroying an inbound nuclear missile, and only under controlled conditions.)
In the film’s succeeding segments, military and civilian officials at assorted command posts—the White House Situation Room, the FEMA headquarters, the Global Operations Center of the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska—attempt to identify the party responsible for the ICBM attack and decide on an appropriate response. Much of the movie’s final moments focus on the moral/strategic dilemma of whether to delay initiating a nuclear countermove until more is known about the attacker’s identity or to immediately launch America’s own ICBMs against nuclear bases in China, Russia, and North Korea—hoping, thereby, to prevent further attacks on the US, but inevitably triggering nuclear retaliation by undamaged enemy second-strike forces.
Although little information is provided on the political backdrop to these developments, we learn that tensions between the US and China, Russia, and North Korea have been rising and that US forces are on constant alert for potential enemy provocations. We also get a realistic glimpse of the new instruments of war, including those ground-based interceptors, advanced radars, and the B-2 stealth bomber. Together, these images suggest that we have entered a new, more perilous epoch. Indeed, for me, the most powerful words delivered by the movie appear in a short preamble that goes something like this: “After the Cold War, the global powers worked to decrease reliance on nuclear weapons. That era is now over.”
The New Nuclear Era
Everything that follows in A House of Dynamite is intended to validate this pronouncement. We sense this from background chatter on rising great-power tensions and from an uninhibited readiness to employ nuclear weapons expressed by the head of STRATCOM (performed by Tracy Letts). In this respect, the movie provides a powerful wake-up call regarding the growing risk of nuclear combat.
But if the old nuclear era is over, what, in fact, does the new one entail? On this, the movie is rather unrevealing. Yes, we are informed, China, Russia, and North Korea have replaced the USSR as potential nuclear adversaries, but beyond that, we learn very little about the contours of the new nuclear era. Accordingly, it falls to others to provide the missing analysis and information.
What, then, can be said about this new nuclear era? Without going into elaborate detail, three key characteristics stand out.
1. The major nuclear powers are expanding and/or enhancing their nuclear capabilities.
Although Russia and the United States are bound by the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) of 2010 to limit their deployed strategic nuclear weapons (i.e., those intended for attacks on the adversary’s homeland) to 1,550 each, both have devoted vast sums to the enhancement of their forces, entailing the replacement of older systems with new, more capable ones. The United States, for example, is replacing its Minuteman III ICBMs with the Sentinel system, its B-2 and B-52 strategic bombers with the B-21 Raider aircraft, and its Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) with the new Columbia-class SSBN—an undertaking that is expected to cost approximately $1 trillion over the next 10 years.
Supposedly, acquisition of these new systems will not alter Washington’s existing commitment to the New START limit of 1,550 strategic weapons. However, New START is due to expire on February 5, 2026, less than four months from now and, unless the two sides agree to abide by its provisions after February 5, the United States and Russia will be legally free to increase their deployed weapons beyond that date. (Both Presidents Trump and Putin have expressed an interest in adhering to the New START limits for the time being, but there is no guarantee that they will do so come February 5.)
Complicating the equation, especially for Washington, is the ongoing nuclear weapons buildup by China. According to the Federation of American Scientists, China now possesses approximately 600 nuclear warheads—up from just 200 a few years ago—and has built 300 new missile silos for the expected deployment of new, more advanced ICBMs. China’s nuclear arsenal is still significantly smaller than that of Russia and the US, but its continuing expansion is being cited by many in Washington as justification for the acquisition of additional US capabilities beyond those allowed by New START once that treaty expires.
2. The major nuclear powers have adopted more proactive policies regarding the actual use of nuclear weapons.
During that earlier, less dangerous era alluded to in the movie’s preamble, President Obama pledged to “reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy,” and this goal was embedded in the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) he issued in April 2010. However, by the time Donald Trump assumed the presidency the first time, that outlook was replaced by a more assertive stance regarding the use of nuclear weapons. Citing increased threats posed by China, Russia, and North Korea, the NPR released by Trump in February 2018 called for the rapid modernization of US strategic forces and for the acquisition of “low-yield options” to deter tactical nuclear strikes by Russia or, if necessary, to defeat a Russian attack. President Biden sought to temper some of Trump’s initiatives, but his own NPR, from October 2022, largely preserved Trump’s more permissive stance regarding nuclear weapons use. (Trump is expected to issue a new NPR shortly.)
Vladimir Putin, as noted earlier, has been especially outspoken about the potential use of nuclear weapons to avert defeat in a conventional conflict. In September 2022, for example, he declared that in the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of Russia, “we will certainly make use of all weapon systems available to us. This is not a bluff.” Russia has also conducted combat exercises during which it tested the employment of tactical nuclear weapons in a conventional conflict, most recently during the Zapad-25 exercise jointly conducted with Belorussian forces.
3. Potential nuclear flashpoints have multiplied.
During the Cold War, the risk of nuclear weapons use was largely thought to arise from a US-Soviet clash over the East-West frontier in Europe or, until the 1962 missile crisis, Cuba. As background conversation in A House of Dynamite suggests, the number of potential nuclear flashpoints has risen since then. In addition to Ukraine and other potential battlegrounds in Europe, we also hear talk of a potential US-China clash arising over Taiwan and one with North Korea over the US-South Korean military alliance.
The Bigelow movie does not indicate which of these disputes was responsible for the ICBM fired at the US but suggests that any one of them could have been. In fact, tensions over these multiplying flashpoints have risen in recent years as the major powers have increased their military presence in many of the contested areas and engaged in provocative military actions—many with nuclear dimensions, such as the Zapad-25 exercise described above and frequent US and Chinese maneuvers around Taiwan.
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Readers seeking more background on these dangers should consult Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario (Dutton, 2024) and Ankit Panda’s The New Nuclear Age (Polity, 2025).
The Tasks Ahead
AHouse of Dynamite does not end with a call for public action on nuclear weapons, or anything remotely like that. This means that opponents of nuclear weapons and their use in combat must go beyond any upspring in public anxiety generated by the movie to educate the public about the distinctive perils of the new nuclear era and to identify ways in which to diminish them.
These should start with ardent efforts to preserve the New START limitations beyond February 5, 2026. Numerous organizations, including the Arms Control Association, Council for a Livable World, and the Friends Committee on National Legislation, have called for its members and supporters to write the president and their Members of Congress to urge them to take whatever steps are necessary to achieve this objective.
Other steps advocated by these and other such organizations include efforts to block development of “low-yield” nuclear weapons intended for battlefield use, such as the Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM-N), now being developed by the Navy. Many groups are also calling for restraints on the integration of artificial intelligence into nuclear command-and-control systems, given the risk that such steps could result in miscalculation during a great-power confrontation—say over Taiwan or Ukraine—resulting in unintended nuclear escalation. Readers are also urged to encourage their representatives in Congress to support House Resolution 317 and its Senate counterpart, Resolution 323, calling on the US to take concrete steps to reduce the risk of Armageddon, including by taking nuclear delivery systems off “hair-trigger” alert and pledging to never use such weapons first in a crisis.
Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite will give you a powerful jolt to the nervous system and enhance your appreciation of the current nuclear peril—but anything beyond that is up to us. Watch the movie, then join with others in the organizations identified above and grassroots groups like Peace Action and Back from the Brink to help reduce the risk of Armageddon.
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