Countdown to Zero

After a rather boring last few days, I finally got a bit of a shock after watching Lucy Walker's unsettling documentary, Countdown to Zero.

Using the quote "Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, etc." by John F. Kennedy as a structure of storytelling basis, Countdown to Zero explains in an essay-like form of the dangers of nuclear weapons even after decades since the end of the Cold War, and how these could be detonated, intentionally or unintentionally, and blow numbers of the human race off the earth.

Walker explains this in three categories: "Madness" "Accident" and "Miscalculation." Examining the back story of the invention of the A-Bomb by Oppenheimer, to more current events of near catastrophe, she exacts just the right tone that is necessary for the film. While the editing and pacing feels very slow, and a bit choppy at times, as well as slipping a little back into madness every so often, it's nothing if not a brilliant piece of research into this very subject.

It's a very eye opening movie, probably the best example of this, and the best scene of the film, is a hypothetical nuclear explosion taking place in New York City at Times Square after the New Year's Eve countdown, that features a brilliant sound mixture of audio narrations by many of Walker's sources by Michael Minkler and Tony Lamberti, and boy, is it one intense hypothetical.

It's a compelling piece of film making that asks many to help eliminate a major threat, and never becomes sleep inducing.

I give Countdown to Zero *** out of ****

"There's no doubt in my mind that if terrorists had acquired a nuclear weapon, they would not hesitate to use it." Former CIA covert operations officer Valerie Plame Wilson

Countdown to Zero is as apocalyptic as An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's documentary on global warming: It is fear-mongering enough that it hurts the effort to bring a necessary return to Cold- War thinking.

Countdown to Zero is single minded in its effort to have zero nuclear weapons, of which there are more than 23,000 in the world. When the documentary arrives at calling for a popular movement, by which President Kennedy admitted he was influenced, it loses some credibility. No amount of popular demand will, for instance, change Osama bin Laden's resolve to exact the deaths of millions of Americans should he gain the necessary ingredients. The documentary's point can't be denied: Nuclear proliferation is so possible now that it seems almost impossible to stop it. The sloppy Russian storage of enriched uranium and plutonium is scary. Although over a hundred countries have disavowed nuclear weapons, hundreds like the US and Russia jealously retain them and some sell the theory if not the ingredients.

In a film almost devoid of light moments, the sometimes amusing Boris Yeltsin in 1995 inadvertently showed how serendipity can be a force in our favor. He questioned if the US had launched a missile toward Russia even though his advisors said it had. He prevailed, Russia did not retaliate, and the world discovered that only a scientific rocket had been launched. Whew!

Countdown to Zero makes a manipulative point by showing people in the street calling for zero weapons. Where are those opposed to zero? Most of us agree to a total ban except those security-minded who know deterrence is still a trump card impressive to diplomats and terrorists. While this documentary adds a little to the race to disarm, it lacks the balance a fair documentary should have. But then, Al Gore and Michael Moore haven't been accused of being balanced either, and they both live in nice houses.

Fox News abandoned its balancing act long ago in the face of soaring ratings. Who said life is fair? or balanced?

I liked this film, it's watchable and make some good points, but there are a couple of odd statements:. The US did not test the first atomic bombs. (what was Trinity). Then they list the nuclear states and don't mention South Africa (but towards the end they correctly point out that South Africa developed and then abandoned nuclear weapons)

While the movie goes into great details about the dangers of nuclear weapons, it neglects to mention an important possible beneficial aspect of them.

There are massive objects traveling in the space called NEO (near-Earth object) which come dangerously close to the Earth from time to time. Then there are those called Earth-Crossers whose orbits actually intersect that of the Earth. Astronomers tell us that a collision with such an object is inevitable some time in the future and it could be catastrophic for all life on our planet.

If such an object is ever spotted coming at us (Jupiter had such an event only a few years ago) then those much-maligned nukes and ICBMs may be the only weapons in our arsenal with which to defend ourselves and we will not have a whole lot of time to manufacture them from scratch if we do not have some already on hand. While it may not be possible (or even desirable) to destroy such an object altogether, its trajectory may be deflected just enough to make it miss the Earth.

Therefore it might be wise for us to think things through before taking any drastic measures for their total elimination.

This is an ugly little film, I watched it because I wanted to see a balanced account of the state of world power and the insanity of the mutual destruction doctrine, what I got was a piece of propaganda that Goebbels himself would have been proud of. I watched open mouthed as the political bias of the makers was laid bare for all to see, they must really think we are moronic. If as I suspect this is just a 'psy-op' to make the world believe that is 'woz the Arabs, wot dun it' when a nuclear device is exploded on US soil, then you will see the truth in what I'm saying soon, I hope to the pit of my soul that I am wrong.