The first clear lesson is that nuclear weapons are back. The movie opens with a title card stating that, after the Cold War ended, major powers thought the world would be better off with fewer nuclear weapons but “that era is now over.”

A House of Dynamite, Kathryn Bigelow’s new film about nuclear war, premiered on Netflix on Oct. 24. It is a Hollywood production meant to entertain, and it does that well, but it also teaches us four big lessons about nuclear strategy.

A House of Dynamite, Kathryn Bigelow’s new film about nuclear war, premiered on Netflix on Oct. 24. It is a Hollywood production meant to entertain, and it does that well, but it also teaches us four big lessons about nuclear strategy.

The first clear lesson is that nuclear weapons are back. The movie opens with a title card stating that, after the Cold War ended, major powers thought the world would be better off with fewer nuclear weapons but “that era is now over.”

This is correct. During the Cold War, the general public understood the threat of nuclear war, and popular films, like The Day After, dramatized the world-ending danger of atomic weapons. Over the past several decades, however, U.S. foreign policy focused on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and mass media followed suit—just look at Bigelow’s previous films, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty.

But in the last few years, nuclear w