Snacks are ready, cozy slippers are on and you’re ready to watch A House of Dynamite on Netflix on your couch. Something pops up on your screen that has you wondering: What is that? Is that realistic? What does that mean?
A work of fiction, A House of Dynamite depicts how U.S. national security organizations interact with plausibility, although we would have liked to have seen the State Department featured more prominently — or at all. Our watch-along guide is designed to briefly explain key points of the film in real time and provide helpful facts to enhance your viewing experience — much like butter enhances popcorn — so you can pause and read more or keep watching and come back to answer your questions after you’ve seen the film or during a rewatch.
If you scroll too quickly, you may see spoilers. Plan accordingly!
Is there something you’d like to see explained that we didn’t get to in this guide? Email Communications Director Anna Schumann to let her know!
Note that this timeline follows minutes, not seconds.
PERSPECTIVE #1: Inclination Is Flattening
0:00-0:01: “At the end of the Cold War, global power reached the consensus that the world would be better off with fewer nuclear weapons. That era is now over.”
Is that era over? Perhaps. On February 5, 2026, the last remaining treaty restricting the arsenals of the world’s two largest nuclear powers — the United States and Russia — expires and there is no follow-on agreement in place. That means that for the first time in nearly four decades, Russia and the United States are free to grow their arsenals as they wish, with no treaty to stop them. Equally importantly, the treaty’s information and verification systems also will end, leaving the United States and Russia to assume the worst about each other.
0:02: The 49th Missile Defense Battalion at Fort Greely, Alaska, is one of two sites at which the U.S. interceptors are based. There is also a site at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
0:10: An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is detected over the Pacific Ocean. Based solely on that information (in the movie’s universe), it could be coming from China or Russia (or from North Korea using technologies not available to North Korea as of October 2025).
0:10: “Standby for possible intercept.”
More on missile defense later in the film and in this guide.
0:11: Unlike in the film, in real life, we would know who launched a missile attack; we would not know whether it was conventional or nuclear. Should radar fail, as the movie supposes, it would only require college-level math to determine a precise launch site by using the missile’s telemetry, once detected, to determine its origin.
0:11: Previous North Korean (DPRK) nuclear weapons tests.
0:13: “Inclination is flattening.”
This means a missile’s flight path is beginning to level out — shifting from a steep climb to a shallower angle as it nears the top of its arc. This change means that the missile has finished accelerating under power and is now coasting through space on a predictable path. Tracking this flattening helps analysts estimate how far the missile will travel and where it’s ultimately headed, similar to the way they could track it back to its exact point of origin.
0:14: “19 minutes to impact.”
The timelines for an ICBM attack are extremely short. It is generally understood that an ICBM attack from Russia to the East Coast of the United States would take less than 30 minutes from start to finish while an attack from Pyongyang, North Korea would take around 33 minutes. Check out this minute-by-minute description published by the Federation of American Scientists in The Washington Post.
0:15: Ground-based interceptors or GBIs: The United States’ ballistic missile defense systems seek to defend the country by locating and tracking an incoming ballistic missile and then launching an interceptor to destroy the missile before it can reach its target. All U.S. interceptors are made up of a booster rocket and a kill vehicle. While most interceptors are “hit-to-kill,” meaning the kill vehicle crashes into the incoming missile to destroy them, others use a blast fragmentation warhead that detonates an explosive charge and sprays shrapnel in the hopes of detonating the payload in the incoming missile. The United States employs missile defenses that launch both types of interceptors.
0:15: Note the news chyron: The media would be unaware of the threat and unable to warn anyone. It would be too early to tell the public there might be a nuclear emergency before knowing whether it could be intercepted or even where it is projected to hit. We don’t have to imagine the panic that would ensue if people were warned of an incoming attack — we saw it play out in real time in Hawaii in January 2018. The “Pentagon Pizza Theory” may, however, provide a warning.
0:16: “By sending one warhead at us? That’s like suicide by nuclear cop.“
The writer is acknowledging the implausibility of the movie’s scenario. The risk of devastating nuclear retaliation is so high that it is highly unlikely that a state would risk attacking an adversary with just one nuclear weapon, though it could be launched by accident. Launching just one could be described as “suicide by nuclear cop” as it would make a state vulnerable to retaliation while having inflicted less damage on the adversary. If choosing to attack, a state would likely launch multiple weapons targeting dozens of sites to prevent retaliation on their own soil.
0:16: Exhaust plumes from missile launches can be used to help identify the type of missile being launched, its direction and other missile capabilities. For example, certain types of ICBMs use fuel sources that produce brown exhaust plumes. That’s just one way missile imagery can help officials identify types of missiles. Open-source intelligence and satellite imagery can tell government and non-government parties a lot as well.
0:22: “Didn’t the Soviets mistake a flock of birds for ICBMs once?” “83.”
In 1983, a Soviet early-warning radar system malfunctioned, alerting the base of one incoming nuclear missile. Believing that a U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was incoming, the base went into a panic. However, some officers on duty were skeptical that the United States would choose to send only one ICBM. Rather than following protocol, Stanislov Petrov, an officer who helped create the code for the early-warning software, waited for corroborating evidence — which never came. He is credited for averting a nuclear war.
0:24: An exo-atmospheric kill vehicle, or EKV, is the part of a missile interceptor that separates from the rocket that launches it, flies into space, homes in on an incoming warhead and collides with it in order to “kill” the missile. The U.S. interceptor system, the GBI, has failed the vehicle separation phase in several of its 20 tests.
0:25: “With fewer than 50 GBIs in our entire arsenal, we’re gonna need them if they fire more missiles at us.” “If someone fires more, aren’t we all f-cked anyway?”
The United States currently has an estimated 44 interceptors, the majority of which are at Fort Greely. Compare that to the roughly 7,000 nuclear warheads in the world that do not belong to the United States.
0:27: “Negative impact. Object remains inbound.” “We did everything right, right?”
This is hardly surprising given ballistic missile defense’s uneven testing record and inherent limitations. This is why U.S. doctrine would be to expect to use many more interceptors per target (even then hoping the defect was limited to a technical glitch in that single interceptor and not systemic throughout the program). More on missile defense later in the film and our guide.
0:28: “Target is past apogee and entering terminal phase.”
After a ballistic missile is launched, it climbs through the atmosphere (boost phase), enters outer space and coasts along a pre-programmed route (mid-course), and then begins its descent back to earth toward a target (terminal phase). Once past its apogee — the highest point of its trajectory — it reenters the atmosphere and descends along its final flight path. Most U.S. homeland defenses (like the GMD layer) are built for either mid-course interception in space or during early descent; once the missile is deep into its terminal phase, interception becomes much more difficult.
0:28: The movie’s rationale for why more interceptors weren’t launched (a supposed priority to reserve other GBIs for later use) would not hold up with a U.S. city at risk. More on missile defense later in the film and our guide.
0:29: Use the NUKEMAP tool from Alex Wellerstein to see what different types of weapons would do to Chicago, other major cities or where you live.
0:38: “A lot of times, they don’t even detonate.”
This is likely a reference to North Korea’s poor record when it comes to nuclear and missile tests. But it’s true that nuclear warheads don’t always detonate. As an interesting aside, this happened once in 1958, when a B-47 bomber dropped a nuclear bomb about 190 times more powerful than the one that destroyed Nagasaki into waters off the Georgia coast after colliding with a fighter jet. The “Tybee bomb” wasn’t found until 2001. The Tybee bomb, however, had not been armed, so there was little danger to Georgia’s famous beach resort. An actual ICBM would have an armed warhead.
PERSPECTIVE #2: Hitting A Bullet With A Bullet
0:46: Nuclear handbook — more on this later in the film and our guide.
0:48: Communication with adversaries is critical, especially at times of heightened tension. It’s how nuclear close calls have ended in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, in 1969 during the Sino-Soviet border dispute, in 1973 during the Yom Kippur war and in 1983 during Able Archer 83 military exercises.
0:52: “So it’s a f-cking coin toss?! That’s what $50 billion buys us?!” “We’re talking about hitting a bullet with a bullet.”
To defend the U.S. homeland from incoming ICBMs launched by adversaries, Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system bases in Alaska and California track and target incoming missiles using “interceptor” missiles. The targeting of such incoming missiles is such a precise task that it is often described as “hitting a bullet with a bullet.” Presently, these defense systems have a limited testing record, with an approximate 55% success rate in tests. In reality, the system is designed to be only effective against small-scale threats and provides essentially zero protection against attack by a larger adversary such as Russia. There is no record of performance under real-world conditions.
Unlike in this film, where the success rate in tests is 61%, the actual success rate is 55%, much closer to a “coin toss.” In actual use, the rate could be lower. Also, the United States has already spent closer to $67 billion on its current missile defense system.
0:56: It is unlikely that North Korea and other adversarial countries have nuclear weapons capabilities that we don’t know about. In the movie, North Korea is supposed to be able to deploy nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). Although Kim Jong Un has called for such a capability, it is at best many years away.
0:58: The film suggests that an enemy cyberattack disabled a U.S. launch-warning satellite and thus a missile attack was missed. In reality, while cyber and digital threats are real, U.S. missile-warning capabilities are highly redundant, with many satellites and sensors across land, sea and space, making it extraordinarily unlikely that a missile launch would go completely undetected. A single satellite being “taken out” would not, by itself, let a missile attack completely slip through the cracks.
1:00: “There is no Plan B.“
Other than limited missile defense systems with unproven effectiveness, there is no defense against an incoming nuclear missile. The only courses of action following the launch of an adversarial nuclear weapon would be to prepare for the effects and deliberate possible retaliation as seen in the movie — which would not prevent massive destruction on U.S. soil. (Unlike in the movie, the United States could not and would not launch a counterattack against an unknown aggressor). The only way to ensure a nuclear weapon is never used against the United States is to take steps to realize the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. Engagement on arms control and non-proliferation with allies and adversaries is the first step.
1:03: “I’d accept the loss of 10 million Americans if I could be absolutely certain it stops there. Of course, in absence of that certainty, we can all certainly say a prayer and rely on the goodwill of our adversaries to keep us safe. Or we can hit their command centers, silos and bombers while they’re still on the ground, eliminating their ability to take further action against us. We’ve already lost one American city today. How many more do you want to risk?“
This quote illustrates the dangerous and absurd logic that nuclear weapons force upon the world. The deaths of 10 million Americans is never an acceptable option.
1:04: “This is insanity!“ “No, Sir, it’s reality.“
For the most part, this film is a possible depiction of the urgency with which the United States would be forced to respond to a nuclear attack — while “insane,” it is also real.
1:06: “If you do retaliate, can you guarantee that your response will not infringe on our airspace?”
The United States tries to assure Russia that U.S. missiles possibly overflying Russia in a retaliatory strike (presumably on China or North Korea) would not hit Russia. This assumes the United States believes Russian assurances that Russia was not responsible and the President will authorize nuclear retaliation, neither of which is the case in the movie. Even if a U.S. official were taking the incredibly foolish and ill-advised step of discussing this with a potential adversary before a presidential decision, there are submarines in the Pacific and bombers in the region that could hit the presumed targets without setting off Russia. At this point, it’s best to stop trying to make sense of the plot and just go with it for entertainment value.
1:09: “Your choices are surrender or suicide.“
In this scenario, the deaths of 10 million Americans become a foregone conclusion. The American President is faced with the choice of accepting this loss without retaliation (surrender) or retaliating, causing the deaths of millions more and engaging a nuclear war (suicide). Actually, there is another choice: waiting to see what happens to Chicago and identifying those responsible before blowing millions more lives away — likely what any sane President would do. Here, the movie sacrifices realism on the altar of the Hollywood trope of the warmonger military officer.
1:10: Four hundred intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are based out of Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. More on the code and keys to unlock the weapons later in the film and our guide.
PERSPECTIVE #3: A House Filled With Dynamite
1:12: The briefcase the Lieutenant Commander is carrying is with the president at all times, though it has been separated from presidents a few notable times. It’s known as the nuclear football and in it is the Presidential Decision Handbook, which is the menu of nuclear strike options available to the president (more on that later in the film and in this guide). The football is not full of sophisticated equipment, it’s simply full of paper, including information about how the president can use the emergency broadcast system to talk to the public during or after an attack and about relocation facilities he can go to. The aide who carries the football also carries a secure phone to connect with the Pentagon to start the nuclear launch process.
Contrary to what some might believe, the president doesn’t have codes to launch nuclear weapons — he has codes to verify his identity before giving his order. There are multiple footballs — one for the president, one for the vice president and one for the designated survivor, during an inauguration or State of the Union, for example.
Aides who carry the football undergo a stringent background check, regular mental health checks to ensure they are fit for the job, and financial checks to ensure they can’t be compromised.
You can learn more about the nuclear football, what’s in it, how it moves between administrations and more in an episode of our Nukes of Hazard podcast.
1:25: “I had one briefing on this when I was sworn in. One. They told me that’s the protocol.“
Presidents typically are briefed the day they are sworn in or the day before about their responsibilities as they relate to the nuclear launch process. While we don’t know how far Idris Elba’s character is into his presidency, a real president will likely have more briefings on the process, though perhaps not as many as on other topics.
1:29: The nuclear handbook is depicted realistically based on publicly available information. In it are many war plan options and it has been likened to a menu. The president doesn’t have to choose from these pre-vetted options. It’s assumed they would, but they could call for something “off menu.“ The handbook reportedly uses pictographs to depict what each option entails and what kind of damage it is expected to cause.
1:33: MIRV stands for Multiple Independently-targetable Reentry Vehicle, which allows a single missile to deliver multiple warheads to different targets.
1:33: The Minutemen are the 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles currently deployed in underground silos across Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado. Each carries one warhead but could theoretically hold up to three.
1:33: An SSBN is a nuclear ballistic missile submarine.
1:35: “I always thought just being ready is the point. It keeps people in check. It keeps the world straight. If they see how prepared we are, no one starts a nuclear war.”
This quote describes the modern-day basis of nuclear deterrence, but being prepared is no guarantee against nuclear war. Being highly prepared to launch a nuclear weapon has meant, at times when radars have warned of incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that weren’t there, nuclear-armed countries have been ready to launch missiles in response.
1:35: “It’s like we all built a house filled with dynamite — making all these bombs and all these plans and the walls are just ready to blow. But we kept on living in it.“
There are now nine nuclear-armed countries, and at the height of the Cold War, there were 70,000 nuclear weapons on the planet. There are now closer to 12,000. We’ve made progress toward disassembling the house of dynamite we live in, but there is still work to do.
1:36: “End it now, once and for all. It’s the best chance some of us survive this.”
Although this line highlights the paradox of believing nuclear weapons to be usable, the reality is stark. With the power of worldwide nuclear arsenals, any use of nuclear weapons would cause global devastation beyond our understanding. Today’s nuclear bombs are tens of times more powerful than the nuclear bombs the United States dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed hundreds of thousands of people. Even a “limited” nuclear war would lead to a global catastrophe likely including nuclear winter and famine conditions.
1:40: The president is supposed to carry this laminated card, called a “biscuit,” around at all times, though there are stories about times they have not. On it are a series of alphanumeric codes that verify the president’s identity before issuing an order. Should the president feel inclined to order a nuclear attack, he calls the duty officer at the National Military Command Center, who will give him a challenge response code to which the president must respond accordingly. There are reportedly a number of codes on the card, as depicted in the film, so that if it falls into the wrong hands, no one will know which code is correct.
1:41-1:43: If the president gives the right response verifying his identity, the duty officer will ask what he wants to do, the president will give his order from the handbook and the order will be transmitted down the chain of command. The people in missile silos, at bomber bases and in submarines will receive the order, verify that it’s correct and input the codes to unlock and launch the weapons.
Everyone around nuclear weapons — except the president — must follow a two-person rule, whether they maintain, guard or launch the weapons — meaning there must be two people doing the designated activity at all times. The president alone can make the decision about whether to launch a nuclear attack and where. They do not have to consult with anyone before deciding to launch one or 10 or 100 nuclear weapons anywhere in the world, essentially making them a nuclear monarch.
1:43: What do you think happens next?
MORE: Our experts discuss what they liked and didn’t like — starting with the ending — and what they wish the film had shown more of in our latest Nukes of Hazard podcast episode, Are We Living In A House of Dynamite? Also read: What ‘A House of Dynamite’ Gets Right and Wrong About Missile Defense and What ‘A House of Dynamite’ Gets Right and Wrong about the U.S. Nuclear Launch Process.
