{"id":224805,"date":"2025-10-25T14:09:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T14:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/224805\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T14:09:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T14:09:17","slug":"a-house-of-dynamite-scared-me-to-death-but-how-realistic-is-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/224805\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A House of Dynamite\u2019 scared me to death \u2013 but how realistic is it?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s fair to say that Kathryn Bigelow\u2019s ticking-clock nuclear war thriller, A House of Dynamite<\/a>, is not for the faint of heart. Since it premiered at the Venice Film Festival<\/a>, it\u2019s been uniting critics not just in praise \u2013 the movie currently sits on 80 percent on Rotten Tomatoes \u2013 but in a shared sense of creeping dread.
It\u2019s one of those movies that once watched, stays watched. A nuclear nightmare that will trigger Boomers and Gen-X-ers who grew up under the shadow of the Cold War and younger audiences fearful for the fate of the planet alike.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But how plausible is the scenario that Bigelow and her co-writer Noah Oppenheim, a former NBC News executive, are depicting? And how accurately does it depict the likely response of the US\u2019s national security infrastructure and President to an anonymous nuclear attack on a major American city. We asked US State Department veteran, nuclear policy expert and deputy VP at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) Mark Melamed<\/a>\u00a0and NTI\u2019s Deputy VP of Communications\u00a0Elise Rowan<\/a> to shine some light on this very scary scenario. And, well, there\u2019s good news and bad news\u2026<\/p>\n

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\nPhotograph: Netflix <\/p>\n

What is A House of Dynamite about?<\/p>\n

Starring Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, Anthony Ramos and Greta Lee, the movie starts out on just another day in the White House situation room. A mystery blip on the screen is dismissed as a likely missile test in the Pacific, until the blip goes suborbital and starts heading for a city in America\u2019s Midwest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What follows is an 18-minute period, told from three different perspective, that\u2019s full of breathless FaceTime calls, rushed Zooms and panicked chopper rides as the country\u2019s biggest cheeses try to figure out what\u2019s happening and what to do about it. To retaliate, and against whom? Impossible choices and supposedly watertight systems creaking under unprecedented pressure are this enthralling but terrifying movie\u2019s bleak themes.<\/p>\n

So how realistic is the chilling situation A House of Dynamite depicts? And what do Bigelow and Oppenheim get right \u2013 and wrong \u2013 about it?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Warning: contains spoilers for A House of Dynamite throughout\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\nPhotograph: Eros Hoagland\/NetflixAnthony Ramos as Major Daniel Gonzalez in \u2018A House of Dynamite\u2019 <\/p>\n

How realistic is the \u2018rogue nuke\u2019 scenario depicted in the movie?<\/p>\n

A House of Dynamite follows the trajectory of a nuclear missile fired from the Pacific in the direction of Chicago. Satellites fail to identify the launch site and there\u2019s nothing to help identify which nation\u00a0is behind the attack. The US defence apparatus, including STRATCOM (United States Strategic Command) under General Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts), Secretary of Defense Reid Baker (Jared Harris) and Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) in the White House Situation Room team, kicks into gear. These well-drilled professionals\u00a0try to nail down what\u2019s happening and help the unnamed US President (Idris Elba)\u00a0figure out\u00a0what to do about it \u2013 including possible retaliation using American\u2019s own nukes. But against whom?
So how realistic is this scenario? ‘Alarmingly so\u2019 is Melamed\u2019s judgment. ‘It may not be the most likely scenario, but frankly, we don’t know what that is.\u2019 Adds Rowan: ‘There are a lot of ways a nuclear war could start, and this is certainly one of them.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\nPhotograph: Eros Hoagland\/NetflixTracy Letts as Strategic Command general Anthony Brady and Gbenga Akinnagbe as Major General Steven Kyle <\/p>\n

Would it really take place over 18 minutes?<\/p>\n

According to the two nuclear policy professionals, the movie also nails the probable timeframe in which such a situation would play out: about 18 minutes from the detection of a strange anomaly in the Pacific on the Situation Room map to impact. \u2018An ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) could launch from the other side of the world and strike a target in the United States in roughly a half hour,\u2019 says Melamed. \u2018In that time, you\u2019d have to detect and determine the trajectory, to confirm that it is a launch \u2013 because we’ve had false warnings before. There\u2019s nothing exaggerated about these timelines.\u2019<\/p>\n

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\nPhotograph: Eros Hoagland\/NetflixFort Greely, Alaska <\/p>\n

Is America\u2019s missile defence system really \u2018a $50 billion dollar coin toss\u2019?\u00a0<\/p>\n

America\u2019s only defence against the rogue missile is the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, of which there are 44 in the US\u2019s armoury. We see two interceptor missiles\u00a0failing to knock out the nuke, leading the Secretary of Defence to describe the system as a \u2018$50 billion coin toss\u2019. ‘That\u2019s a pretty accurate way to describe it,’ concurs Melamed. ‘The system has a 55-60 percent success rate \u2013 under test conditions.\u2019 Worryingly, this is the exact scenario the system is designed for. \u2018The idea of homeland missile defense is to defend against countries like North Korea or Iran with limited nuclear capabilities,\u2019 notes Melamed. \u2018It wasn\u2019t designed to be effective against Russia or China.\u2019<\/p>\n

There are a lot of ways a nuclear war could start, and this is certainly one of them.
\nHow realistic is the President\u2019s reaction to the attack?<\/p>\n

Elba\u2019s POTUS hears the news while playing basketball at a press call. He\u2019s whisked away by the Secret Service and is briefed on the situation and his bleak range of options. Jonah Hauer-King\u2019s military aide presents him with three nuclear retaliation packages bluntly dubbed: \u2018Rare, medium and well done.\u2019 \u2018[This situation] is rehearsed and exercised,\u2019 says Melamed, \u2018but it\u2019s realistic [to show that] the President comes to this relatively fresh. You learn that he was briefed once when he took office and not thought about it again. That\u2019s plausible.\u2019<\/p>\n

‘Idris Elba seems like a thoughtful, steady, rational leader,\u2019 he adds, \u2018and we don’t know if that’s going to be a guarantee for those in charge of the nine nuclear-armed countries in the world\u2019.<\/p>\n

Would government staff start phoning their families? <\/p>\n

As things begin to feel cataclysmic, the anxiety levels ramp up, not least for these professionals\u2019 loved ones. Rebecca Ferguson\u2019s Captain Walker gives the okay to staffers to bring their cell phones into the Situation Room, a major security breach under normal circumstances. Rather than movie logic, Melamed feels that this moment tallies. \u2018The rules are the rules and then there’s what people do when they think the world is ending in 20 minutes,\u2019 he says. \u2018This is pretty mild on the scale of what people might do.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\nPhotograph: Eros Hoagland\/NetflixGoing underground <\/p>\n

How much protection would nuclear bunkers provide?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The end of the film shows key government officials heading into the Raven Rock nuclear bunker in Pennsylvania\u00a0and the White House\u2019s underground bunker. ‘They\u2019re built to be nuclear proof, although obviously that’s never been tested either,\u2019 says Melamed. \u2018They’re deep underground, under granite, and designed to withstand a thermonuclear strike. Obviously they’ve never been tested in the real world and hopefully never will, but that’s the idea.\u2019<\/p>\n

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\nPhotograph: Eros Hoagland\/NetflixAnthony Ramos as Major Daniel Gonzalez <\/p>\n

When can I watch House of Dynamite?<\/p>\n

The movie is\u00a0streaming on Netflix worldwide now.<\/p>\n

The best films of 2025 (so far)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 100 best thriller movies of all time for a suspense-packed film night<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s fair to say that Kathryn Bigelow\u2019s ticking-clock nuclear war thriller, A House of Dynamite, is not for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7463,96,2332,2839,7464,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-224805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-categories-film","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-movies","tag-news-film","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}