Most famously, 1964 saw the twin-premised films Fail Safe and its more famous cousin, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Both depict U.S. decisionmakers reacting to a fictional nuclear accident in which an unauthorized U.S. missile is headed toward the Soviet Union, unable to be recalled, leaving decisionmakers to fret about how to negotiate, preempt, or retaliate their way out of total nuclear annihilation. Whereas Fail Safe portrayed all of this in sober, earnest terms as serious men doing serious work, Strangelove is a spiraling satire of psychosexual absurdity that paints everyone involved as either ridiculous or insane.

For almost as long as there have been nuclear weapons, there have been movies agonizing about the tortured class of professionals tasked with managing them.

For almost as long as there have been nuclear weapons, there have been movies agonizing about the tortured class of professionals tasked with managing them.

Most famously, 1964 saw the twin-premised films Fail Safe and its more famous cousin, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Both depict U.S. decisionmakers reacting to a fictional nuclear accident in which an unauthorized U.S. missile is headed toward the Soviet Union, unable to be recalled, leaving decisionmakers to fret about how to negotiate, preempt, or retaliate their way out of total nuclear annihilation. Whereas Fail Safe portrayed all of this in sober, earnest terms as serious men doing serious work, Strangelove is a spiraling satire of psychosexual absurdity that paints everyone involved as either ridiculous or insane.

A terrifying new film from Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow, A House of Dynamite, dissects a modern-day nuclear crisis—in which a single intercontinen