Film Perspective: ‘A House of Dynamite’ (2025)

November 2025
By Daryl G. Kimball

(Note: This essay contains spoilers.)

Throughout the course of the nuclear age, feature films have helped to shape public perceptions and understanding of the dangers posed by nuclear weapons—from the post-apocalyptic “On the Beach” (1959), the satirical masterpiece “Dr. Strangelove” (1964), the alert-gone-wrong thriller “Fail Safe” (1964), the mind-numbing realism of “The Day After” (1983), “War Games” (1983), which illustrated why no one wins a nuclear war, to “The Hunt for Red October” (1990) and the biopic “Oppenheimer” (2023).

Now, there is a new entry into the nuclear war film canon by Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow that brings home the dangers of nuclear deterrence and omnipresent risk of nuclear catastrophe for new audiences. “A House of Dynamite” opened for limited theatrical release in early October and started streaming on Netflix, which has 300 million subscribers worldwide, beginning October 24.

The film is an instant classic. Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim, aided by an A-list cast, deliver a riveting, immersive, emotionally powerful, and realistic¹ inside look at the dangerous paradoxes and flaws of the system of nuclear deterrence as it might play out in one of the several potential crises that could erupt on any given day.

The film explores the heart-pounding 18 minutes before a single, unattributed nuclear-armed missile hits the United States, as seen from the perspective of three sets of characters: first the intelligence officials and launch officers, then the military implementers and civilian advisers, and finally, the key decision-makers, the president, and the people around him. It shows how, in a real-world nuclear crisis that might unfold today, the answers are never clear, decisions are all always too rushed, and the options are all very, very bad.

Unlike the nuclear war films of Cold War and immediate post-Soviet eras, “A House of Dynamite” arrives at a time when global nuclear dangers are even more complex and numerous, while public and policymaker attention on the problem is much more fragmented and less well-informed than in years past.

Today, a military conflict between India and Pakistan; in Europe, between NATO forces and Russia; in East Asia, between the United States and China over Taiwan; or in a war between North and South Korea could far too easily lead to the use of nuclear weapons, especially in the absence of effective crisis communications and diplomatic channels between key adversaries.

At the same time, key agreements that serve as guardrails against nuclear catastrophe and dangerous nuclear competition are gone or are in jeopardy. Progress on nuclear disarmament has been stalled for more than a decade. 
The last remaining treaty limiting the massive U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals will expire in early 2026. Without new forms of restraint, a dangerous three-way nuclear arms buildup is on the horizon, as the United States, Russia, and China spend tens of billions of dollars annually to modernize and upgrade their nuclear arsenals.

Worse yet, some nuclear-armed states are also incorporating artificial intelligence tools into their nuclear command and control and early warning systems. Although states such as the United States and China agree that AI should never supplant human judgment in the authorization or execution of nuclear weapons use, it is clear that AI integration may create false confidence or distort the information that guides nuclear-related decisions.²

With these realities as backdrop, “A House of Dynamite” could help refocus attention on the grave risks posed by nuclear weapons and help motivate a larger segment of the public to demand concrete action to reduce the nuclear danger.

Already, some public opinion survey data suggests the film might have such an impact.

Shortly before “A House of Dynamite” premiered, the nongovernmental Nuclear Threat Initiative commissioned research on the film’s two-minute trailer, with 1,000 Americans watching the trailer and 1,000 watching another piece of unrelated content. Those who watched the trailer were less likely to say that nuclear weapons keep us safe (44.9%), more likely to desire a world without nuclear weapons (75.6%), more likely to believe the United States should work to reduce nuclear weapons globally (74.3%), and more likely to say reducing nuclear weapon risks was important to them personally (68.8%).³ Those who see the entire film will surely feel even more strongly.

Whether you happen to be a politician, a diplomat, a general, or a concerned mother, father, sister, or brother who watches “A House of Dynamite,” it should spur us all to consider: What can we can we do now, and what must change to avoid the many different scenarios that could lead us down the road to a nuclear war? What can I do to help get us on the path to the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons?

Based on my 35 years of work in the field, here are some reflections on what the film reveals and what we can do to defuse the house of dynamite we all live in.

Too Little Time, Not Enough Information

The film opens with key civilian and military officials arriving in the morning hours of a summer day at their respective workstations to find that a single, unattributed long-range missile has been launched from somewhere in the Pacific. Within minutes sensors indicate it is not on a test trajectory but is headed for the continental United States, setting off a scramble to determine who is responsible and how to respond in the minutes before impact.

This is an unlikely but still very plausible scenario. A single missile launch could be the result of an adversary missile test launch miscalculation or an elaborate but risky wider attack plan. It might also be possible that a cyberattack could interfere with early warning systems to disguise or obscure the origin of a single missile launch.

Most nuclear and military analysts believe it is more likely that a nuclear attack against the U.S. homeland, U.S. military forces, and/or a U.S. ally might develop out of a regional war between the United States and a nuclear-armed adversary such as Russia, China, or North Korea. In such a situation, U.S. early warning sensors might detect dozens or perhaps even hundreds of incoming nuclear-armed missiles, not just one, making response decisions even more complicated and difficult than what is depicted in the film.

Nonetheless, “A House of Dynamite” does drive home that on any given day, those responsible for responding, advising, or making life-or-death decisions about a suspected or verified nuclear attack—be it from a single missile or hundreds—might be indisposed, distracted, or distraught, and clear communication with adversary leaders may not be possible.

For instance, in the doomsday video conference call at the center of the film’s narrative, there are some notable absences, including senior officials from the State Department, the vice president, and the national security advisor.

This should also remind audiences that all the response (and nonresponse) options that should be considered may not, in practice, be presented to key decision-makers. Information about adversary actions and motives may be limited, misinterpreted, or disputed. Audiences will see that it is the president who has the sole authority to order the use of nuclear weapons, with or without good information, and likely under tremendous time constraints and emotional pressure.

The film’s president, played with gravitas by Idris Elba, is suddenly pulled from a light-hearted public event and presented with a choice between “suicide” or “surrender.” He is understaffed and unsure about who has attacked the United States and why, and how and whether he should respond.

The human scale and raw emotion of Bigelow’s film makes it clear why the fog of nuclear war is thick and could be overwhelming even to those who are supposedly in charge. And one of the strengths of the story Bigelow presents is that she leaves her audience to ponder what decision the president should have made.

Missile Defense Is No Panacea

“A House of Dynamite” also delivers the unpleasant truth that strategic missile defense systems are unreliable in real-world scenarios. In the early minutes of the crisis portrayed in the film, the Defense Department’s Northern Command puts into motion an attempt to destroy the incoming missile with two of the United States’s 44 Ground-Based Interceptors, (GBI) which are based in Alaska. Not surprisingly, the attempt to hit the incoming re-entry vehicle carrying the suspected nuclear warhead fails.

The Pentagon has reportedly claimed that “A House of Dynamite” unfairly depicts the failure rate of the GBI system.⁴ The film’s portrayal is, however, realistic and based on the system’s test record to date. Of the 20 highly scripted tests conducted since 1999, the interceptors successfully destroyed their targets 11 times, which is a 55 percent success rate. (The film puts it at 61 percent.) The kill vehicle is so unreliable that the Pentagon is now trying to develop a new one.⁵ Viewers should keep in mind that the single-missile scenario on a known trajectory is far easier to defeat than an attack involving multiple, perhaps hundreds, of incoming ballistic missiles with decoys to confuse intercept attempts.

This is why U.S. policymakers have focused missile defense capabilities to address limited attacks from lesser North Korean missile threats rather than more substantial threats posed by the major nuclear powers.

The GBI program has already cost $63 billion, but President Donald Trump wants to spend least $175 billion more for a crash scheme to defend the continental United States against all missile threats, including those from China and Russia, within three years. Trump’s radical plan envisions patching together existing and possibly new ground- and sea-based interceptors and radars with the introduction of hundreds, if not thousands, of space-based sensors and interceptors.

Not only are strategic missile interceptors unreliable against a serious missile attack, but they prompt adversaries to build more numerous and sophisticated offensive missile systems—at a relatively lower cost and more quickly—to overwhelm and evade missile interceptors.

Move Away from ‘Launch Under Attack’ and ‘Damage Limitation’ Strategies

Once it evades the missile interceptors, the rogue missile headed for the U.S. heartland sets into motion the U.S. nuclear doomsday machinery—the well-rehearsed plans to present the president with a range of options to launch a nuclear retaliatory strike within the short time before a larger enemy attack arrives. “A House of Dynamite” shows a U.S. Strategic Command apparatus geared up to encourage the president decide on one of several predetermined sets of nuclear attack plans, any one of which could result in the deaths of hundreds of millions of people within hours.

The fictional head of Strategic Command, Gen. Anthony Brady, played by Tracy Letts, speculates that the single missile attack is part of a wider, multistate, coordinated attack on the U.S. homeland. Brady pushes the president to strike all of the United States’ potential nuclear adversaries before they can launch a broader attack, in the name of limiting damage to the homeland and saving American lives, even if it destroys other nations and kills hundreds of millions of people in the process.

This echoes the current U.S. nuclear strategy, which requires that nearly all land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are on prompt-launch alert, and a significant number of strategic ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) at sea at any given time. Although it is likely that a portion of the United States’ 400 land-based ICBMs could survive a massive nuclear strike, the vulnerability of ICBMs creates a dangerous use-it-or-lose-it launch pressure to launch at an early stage in a crisis involving Russia or China.

A more prudent, if still bad, option would be for the fictional “House of Dynamite” president to take the time necessary determine who launched the attack and clearly communicate with adversaries before ordering a conventional or a nuclear counterattack. At any given time, there are approximately 950 thermonuclear warheads (most with an explosive yield of 90 or 455 kilotons TNT equivalent) on four or five invulnerable, operational SSBNs that can completely annihilate any aggressor nation.

Viewers should understand, however, that any retaliatory U.S. attack, delayed or prompt, would destroy mostly empty silos and population centers near military command and control targets, which could kill tens or hundreds of millions of people within a few hours.

As the characters caught up the scenario depicted in “A House of Dynamite” realize, once the United States (or Russia or China) launches its strategic nuclear forces at key military and command targets, the United States’ adversary would very likely launch the bulk of their own land-based missile forces (and potentially some of their air- and sea-based forces) at U.S. targets before the U.S. missiles would arrive. It would be MAD—mutually assured destruction—for the leaders to choose such a course of action.

More Nuclear Weapons Won’t Make Anyone Safer

The “insanity” of the choices, as Elba’s character describes them, should make it abundantly clear that deploying more nuclear weapons will not make anyone safer, nor would it more effectively deter a potential opponent from initiating or responding to a nuclear attack.

As Steve Andreasen, former National Security Council director for defense policy and arms control, has argued, “Adding more nuclear weapons … will not change the nuclear fundamentals.”⁶

Yet, today, members of the nuclear weapons establishment argue that the United States needs to build up the size of its already massive nuclear force to counter Russia’s nuclear force and a smaller but growing Chinese nuclear force. Why? They believe the United States needs to be able to target all adversary nuclear forces in order to limit damage and maintain leverage in a nuclear war. The reality is that the United States cannot destroy every adversary silo-based ICBM. It’s more likely that those ICBMs would be launched before they could be destroyed, either before a U.S. strike, or shortly after its detected.

What’s more, such an approach incentivizes opponents to consider rapid and large-scale use of nuclear weapons and to increase their nuclear forces, leading to a spiraling arms race no one can win.

A Safer Path

What we see in “A House of Dynamite,” or something close to it, can and will eventually happen unless we change course. As the film’s president says in exasperation, “We built a house made of dynamite, and now the walls are ready to blow.”

Getting on a safer path begins with channeling public anxiety about the nuclear danger into focused pressure on policymakers to take concrete and sustained steps to reduce it. Key elements include refraining from nuclear threats and coercion, reinforcing effective lines of crisis communications, maintaining the global nuclear test moratorium, engaging Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and France in a sustained process to verifiably cap and then significantly reduce respective nuclear arsenals into the low hundreds, reforming nuclear strategy by expanding decision time and making credible pledges not to use nuclear weapons first, and recommitting to achieving a world without nuclear weapons.

ENDNOTES

1. The production team for the film had assistance from a team of experts, including technical advisor Dan Karbler, a former Army officer who previously served as Strategic Command chief of staff. See “Could A House of Dynamite Really Happen? An Expert Weighs In,” in Tudum, the official companion site for Netlix, October 27, 2025.

2. See Lt. Gen. John N.T. Shanahan, “Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear Command and Control: It’s Even More Complicated Than You Think,” Arms Control Today, September 2025.

3. Ernest J. Moniz, “Kathryn Bigelow’s ‘House of Dynamite’ Is a Wake-Up Call on Nuclear Weapons,” Variety, October 23, 2025.

4. Anthony Capaccio, “Pentagon Frets Over ‘A House of Dynamite’ Nuclear Doomsday Film,” Bloomberg, October 25, 2025

5. For more information on the program, see “Current U.S. Missile Defense Programs at a Glance,” an Arms Control Association Fact Sheet, January 2025.

6. Steve Andreasen, “The Great Powers Are Itching for Another Nuclear Arms Race. Who Will Stop Them?” Los Angeles Times, June 21, 2024.