Stage Fright in the Sit Room

A House of Dynamite exposes many weaknesses in US nuclear defenses—including psychological pressures that could cause defense professionals to crack up.

Rebecca Ferguson plays top White House Situation Room duty officer Olivia Walker, who stays mostly cool as a nuclear-tipped ICBM heads toward Chicago

It may be the most terrifying moment in Kathryn Bigelow’s riveting new movie, A House of Dynamite: A nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) has just been launched from somewhere in the North Pacific and Air Force trackers quickly determine it is headed to Chicago. The Pentagon’s much vaunted Ground-based Missile Defense (GMD) system is activated to intercept the missile. When the Secretary of Defense demands to know the likelihood of success, the deputy national security advisor waffles, then finally blurts out his sobering reply: The system’s “success rate” is no more than 61 percent.

“So it’s a fucking coin toss?!” the SecDef shouts.

And the fate of Chicago hangs on the outcome.