Turned off the apocalyptic Dodger game and watched A House of Dynamite. Extremely tense and scary. Reminded me of the book. Nuclear War: A Scenario. Thought of this administration handling such a crisis and wanted to throw up.(I’ll worry about Popehat’s misuse of the term “apocalyptic” another time. Like, during Advent.)
I did watch that movie. The premise is that a single nuclear missile is launched from a North Korean sub (?). Maybe. It’s tracked over the Pacific, but ABM measures fail. The trajectory is Chicago.
The story is told three times: 1) from the perspective of the missile base in Alaska, the one with ABM’s. 2) White House defense tracking; and 3) the NSC, the President and the SOD. A great deal has to do with recognizing the threat and deciding how to respond to it. Waiting is one option, but that might mean more ICBM’s when a counter assault would cripple, if not end that threat. Act? And what? Retaliation? Or Global Thermonuclear War? The President has three choices, from “rare” to “medium “ to “well done.” And, of course, once your missiles go up, their missiles might go up.
A house of dynamite. 🧨
All of the characters are voices in communications who become faces/people as the stories overlap and the whole story starts again with each setting. The President is Idris Elba, which makes him more Obama than Trump. The terror, as in “Fail Safe,” arises from the situation, not the persons.
So, yeah, imagining Trump in that scenario would be nightmare fuel on the fire.
It’s a very good movie, disturbing in the vein of “Fail Safe,” but compared to “House of Dynamite,” “Fail Safe” has a happy, even upbeat, ending. I’ll say no more except that when the credits roll, it’s no surprise this is a Kathryn Bigelow effort.
And that I’m now more unsettled than I’ve been since my ‘60’s childhood when the nuclear sword of Damocles really did hang over us, and even schoolchildren knew that “duck’n’ cover” was not civil defense at all.
Because there is no defense.
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