Fear of nuclear annihilation isn’t quite the issue it once was, occupying a sizable portion of the 20th century with nightmarish imagery and political threats as the U.S and the Soviet Union used the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) to build massive arsenals of nuclear weapons and gain the ability to kill everyone on the planet, practically at once. Command and Control recognizes the gradual relaxation around apocalyptic visions, with other critical national security issues taking center stage as the world now plays a different style of fear-based gamesmanship. Director Robert Kenner (Merchants of Doubt, Food, Inc.) instills horror when considering the impact of nuclear proliferation, isolating such tensions with a tale of homeland horror, examining the 1980 Damascus Titan II missile explosion. Command and Control may not be overwhelming work, but as a critical reminder of the fallibility of men around thermonuclear weapons, it’s terrifying.
On September 18th, 1980, airmen stationed inside the Little Rock Air Force Base Launch Complex 374-7 in Damascus, Arkansas were working on the Titan II missile. While attempting to raise the pressure in the stage 2 oxidizer tank, an airman on the PTS (Propellant Transfer System) team using an unauthorized ratchet wrench and socket, dropped the eight-pound socket from a height of 80 feet. The socket bounced off a thrust mount and pierced the missile’s exterior, releasing a spray of fuel. The two PTS team airmen delayed reporting the leak for thirty minutes, during which time a potentially manageable situation escalated into inevitable disaster. Lacking practice in such emergencies, launch complex technicians scrambled to contain the leak and assess the greater situation of possible nuclear warhead detonation.Thus began a long night of panic and procedure as those inside executed a special escape, while members of the PTS team faced a life-ending descent into the launch complex to assess the risk of a fuel/oxidizer explosion.
An adaptation of a 2013 book by Eric Schlosser, Command and Control takes a focused look at the Damascus Titan II missile explosion, exploring the incident in great detail, opening up the subject to examine similar nuclear accidents (known as Broken Arrows) over time that threatened the fate of humanity without humanity even knowing how close they came to eradication. Kenner spotlights a few horrors, including the initial testing phase of the atomic bomb, where officials had no clue how powerful and destructive their work would be, but elected to try out the weapon anyway, establishing a hunger for power that’s slipped into recklessness over the course of history. Command and Control studies the proliferation of nuclear weapons, with America answering a threat from Russia by matching their stockpile over the decades, trusting in the power of deterrence. The film also recalls the 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash, during which two nuclear bombs were accidentally released on North Carolina soil, miraculously landing without incident. Kenner makes his point clear: we’ve come close to annihilation before, and not from an enemy, highlighting human error and mechanical failure as the primary cause of nuclear threat to the U.S.A.
After reviewing history and examples of other nuclear accidents, Command and Control concentrates on the sequence of events that led to the Damascus Titan II missile explosion. A surprising number of airmen and supervisors participate in the interview segments, recalling disturbing details of the night, including the actual socket drop that began the disaster. The interviewees are honest about their mistakes and fears, and some are overwhelmed by emotion when recalling the minute-by-minute terror of the situation. Few of the military men had familiarity with anything beyond their training, trying to make sense of a freak accident, not only worried about their own safety, but the possibility of a nuclear warhead detonation involving one of America’s largest warheads. Evacuations were ordered and procedures were in some cases ignored, and as terrible as the early stages of the event were, things got even worse.
The disaster eventually resulted in the Titan II missile exploding as fuel and oxidizer mixed, ejecting the warhead from the silo, killing one airman and injuring several others. In addition to focusing on the sacrifices made, Kenner uses Command and Control to expose military callousness, with ranking officers pressing to clear the site, cover up the magnitude of the accident and refuse to provide necessary information to citizens, the press and local law enforcement. It’s especially unnerving to hear these stories, but Command and Control is effective at instilling fear and revulsion in describing the history of America's military nuclear program and the situation today.
Labels: documentary, history
No comments:
Post a Comment