House of Dynamite

When I was a kid, I used to have nightmares about nuclear war.  I'm sure I'm not the only person who did.  I was probably eight or nine when they started.  Missiles flying overhead, big mushroom clouds exploding.  I had a couple in which I felt my body dissolve as it was vaporized.  But nuclear war is so 1980s, isn't it?  We have much bigger things to be afraid of.  Like global pandemics.  Measles making a resurgence.  The world economy teetering on the edge of a crash.  So there really isn't time to deal with nuclear war.  We're just gonna have to hope that never happens.  

Except.  Have you guys seen “House of Dynamite” on Netflix yet? If not, go watch it and come right back, and we'll discuss. I'm finding it frustrating in the extreme that my friends and family members have not seen it yet.  Or won't see it, and I have no one to discuss it with. I've been going over the moral implications for days, and I've seen it three times.

Seriously, if you are going to see “House of Dynamite,” DO NOT READ ANY MORE OF THIS BLOG POST. I am going to spoil the hell out of it. I am even going to discuss the controversial ending which is kind of the whole point. So if you want to see the movie unspoiled, read no further.

(Sidebar here: Jared Harris does an amazing turn as Secretary of Defense Baker.  He was so good I looked up what else he's been in.  He was a nuclear scientist in the amazing miniseries "Chernobyl." He also Dr. Moriarity in the Sherlock Holmes movies with Robert Downey, Jr.  And he's been in two or three things I wouldn't see for all the tea in Afghanistan.) 

Still with me? Okay then. I'm gonna summarize the plot just briefly here. A missile is launched at the United States from an unknown actor somewhere in the Pacific. Maybe Russia, maybe China, but as things develop, most of the characters agree that it was probably North Korea. (But uncertainty remains.) Maybe it was an accident, but most of the characters think it was probably not. (But uncertainty remains.) Anyway, we attempt to shoot it down with one of our “Star Wars” missile defense warheads, but we miss. (“Star Wars” only has a sixty percent success rate on its best day. As Jake, the deputy secretary, explains to the President, “It's like trying to hit a bullet with a bullet.”)

So the missile is still inbound and is going to hit somewhere in the Midwest, probably Chicago, in about fifteen minutes. There is no time to evacuate. Unless the missile is a dud or fails to detonate, Chicago and its ten million people and God alone knows how many downwind are gone. Now the question becomes, what do we do about it? Or rather what does the President, played admirably by Idris Elba, do about it?

There is literally a menu of options. There is a real life full time guy whose job is to follow the President around, all day, every day, with a black book of plans for nuclear war. (They call it “the football.”) The book has every imagined and conceived scenario by which we would launch nuclear missiles at other countries, and whom, and what targets. In the event of such an emergency, the president picks a page as to the response he or she thinks is best warranted, and reads the code to the Strategic Defense Command. The responses range from none at all to all-out nuclear holocaust.

Jake, the deputy secretary, is convinced that the best response is none at all. Even if the missile launch wasn't a mistake, hitting back would light the whole conflagration, antagonize our enemies, lead to further missile launches, and end life on Earth. The general of the Strategic Defense Command points out that if we fail to neutralize our enemies now, while they are still in port and not airborne, we will forever lose the opportunity to do so. The guy with the nuclear football thinks the President should pick from one of two of the most thorough retaliatory responses, eliminate all of our enemies at once, and hope that some of the Americans survive. So really, whether he chooses not to launch at all or launches everything we have, the outcome may be the same. 

And then we have the President. An ordinary guy at his core, as most of them are. A guy with no more moral foundation or understanding of ethical implications than probably any of us have, even if he has to wrestle with bigger questions from time to time. Ultimately he has to decide. What is he going to do? And here is why the ending is controversial. The movie does not tell you. We see the twenty minutes unfold from three different perspectives, the Strategic Defense Command asks the President for his decision, and then the screen fades to black.

Having not found any living people to discuss this with, I have been reduced to seeking opinions online. And honestly, I am not sure what those people were looking for. Everybody seemed to be universally disappointed. Did they want to see Chicago blow up in all its glory? Did they want to see our missiles racing across the planet to eliminate half of life on Earth, or maybe all of it? I don't know. However, I thought the ending was entirely appropriate. Because I think the point that the filmmakers were trying to make was, what would you do?

And this is the question I’ve been asking myself for days. If I were the President, what would I do? I would like to think there is a simple answer and that I would simply refuse to start a nuclear war. But. Hasn't someone else already started one? If I fail to retaliate at all, am I not communicating to our enemies that there simply aren't any consequences? Sure, you can launch your missile at the United States. Just claim it's a mistake and they won't hit you back. Or, as one of the other characters pointed out, this could be a feint. Send one missile, and if we don't retaliate, send fifty more.

(We don't have enough Star Wars missiles to handle fifty more. We only actually have around fifty to begin with, and at our rate of success, 40% of the missiles would get through. That's at least twenty more cities. And that's only if they send fifty more missiles. What if they send a hundred more? The Russians could probably send a hundred more.  China could probably send a hundred more.  North Korea could probably only send fifty, but we don't know that for sure, now do we?)

Okay.  Maybe a limited response just to North Korea would be appropriate.  But that would kill 26 million innocent people who just happen to live in North Korea, to say nothing of most of the population of South Korea and that whole part of the world.  And in the movie, at least, there was a lot of uncertainty as to whether North Korea was the actor.  What if it was Russia, blaming North Korea? What if we killed 26 million North Koreans for nothing? 

The President says that it's like we built a house of dynamite. We knew it was dangerous, but we kept living in it year after year. Somehow we convinced ourselves it would never explode. And the world has only become more complex and hostile since then, and the missiles haven't gone anywhere. The possibility that the bad guys, whoever they be, have their hands on nuclear weapons go up literally every day. So somebody, somewhere, someday, is going to have to make the decision that Idris Elba struggles with.

So again, what would you do? Would you fall back upon the ultimate moral principle and refuse to launch? Great. I like you. But. Somewhere out there is a guy or a gal who believes that our enemies are so evil that they must be eliminated even if that eliminates all life on Earth. (Because of course, then the rapture would happen, and all the good people would go to heaven.) Who is that person? Is he or she in office now? How would you know?

If this scenario were to happen today or tomorrow, we're screwed.  We have a President who wouldn't hesitate for a second to destroy life on Earth because he doesn't seem to believe that anything bad can happen to him personally.  And why should he? Nothing ever has.  He's convicted of rape, he avoids jail.  He is sued and loses, he ties the judgments up in courts for years.  Every weekend he flies to Florida on the taxpayer's dime to play golf while families don't get their SNAP benefits.  (He embezzled the money.  That's why he's fighting this so hard.  We're going to find out the money is gone and he won't be able to explain what happened to it.)  But we elected this guy.  (Yes, I know.  You personally did not vote for him.  But you live in a country with a lot of people who did.)  We elected him again, after all the shit he pulled the first time.  So what does that say about us?  Are we sure we aren't the sort of people who would nuke the whole world?

Anyway.  Still thinking about it.  I hope it never happens.