Command and Control

2016 "How do you manage weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them?"
7.3| 1h32m| NA| en| More Info
Released: 14 September 2016 Released
Producted By: GBH
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://www.commandandcontrolfilm.com/
Info

September 18, 1980, 6:25 p.m., Titan II base in Damascus, Arkansas. On this fateful night an explosion kills an Air Force member and transforms the lives of everyone on the base. Honing in on a single case of so-called “human error”, Command and Control juxtaposes precision on a minute scale against the gargantuan risks inherent in the United States’ aggressive nuclear proliferation policy during the Cold War.

Genre

Documentary

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Command and Control (2016) is now streaming with subscription on Prime Video

Cast

Director

Robert Kenner

Production Companies

GBH

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Command and Control Audience Reviews

Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped
Console best movie i've ever seen.
Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
mrbb-1 There are some excellent detailed reviews available, so I'll just say that this is the chilling story of the 1980 near detonation of a nuclear warhead near Little Rock, Arkansas. The story is told in riveting fashion with many excellent eyewitness interviews. It is a stark reminder that the possibility of nuclear devastation is still with us, and the unpredictability of the human factors.
poe-48833 From the violations at the Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York to the dumping of nuclear waste just above the High Tide water line in San Diego to the radiation-releasing sink-hole in Washington State, the state of nuclear power in this company ain't so good (nor has it EVER been). There ARE some things, it seems, that Man just wasn't meant to f--k around with. COMMAND AND CONTROL is yet another piece of damning evidence: When scientists "testing" Atomic bombs believed that detonating such a device might kill everything on the face of the Earth... "they did the test, anyway." Is it any wonder that the Military is the largest user of fossil fuels (and, hence, the biggest contributor to Global Warming)? According to this documentary, "the only victims (of nuclear power) so far have been Americans." (With the VERY notable exception of the Japanese you-know-when...) The LISTS of accidents we see here are chilling. "The weapons were nowhere near as safe as everyone had assumed." That only a single life was lost in the Arkansas accident is nothing short of a Miracle. And the recent revelation that a HOLE has, in fact, been blown through the outer atmosphere of this planet as a direct result of nuclear "testing" may well foreshadow the Epitaph at the end of BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES: "In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe lies a medium-sized star- and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now Dead..."
johnm-38132 This documentary shows how inherently dangerous and unpredictable nuclear missiles are. It also shows how deceptive the FEDS and the military have been regarding these dangers. The military's treatment of the enlisted men who got seriously injured and risked their lives to prevent this accident from turning into a nuclear holocaust is totally inexcusable. SHAME SHAME SHAME!!!
Nicholas Ruddick You won't find much about the 1980 Damascus Titan Missile Explosion on Wikipedia. It was one of those minor Cold War mishaps that barely made it beyond the local news. A young airman was doing routine maintenance at an Arkansas ICBM site. He didn't fully appreciate the difference between a ratchet and a socket wrench (who knew there was a difference?) and accidentally dropped the heavy steel head of his tool into the silo of an aged Titan II missile. The head punctured the skin of the missile, resulting in a fuel leak and, a few hours later, an explosion that wrecked the silo, killing one airman and wounding 21 others. Fortunately, the Titan's nine-megaton thermonuclear warhead, the most powerful US bomb then in existence, did not explode. This low-key but powerful documentary examines the chain of events that led to the accident and, more pertinently, looks at the wider significance of what did and didn't happen. There are interviews with the surviving site crew and some impressive re-enactments of the sequence of events, so realistic that at first you think it must be authentic historical footage. The investigative journalist Eric Schlosser, author of an acclaimed book about the Damascus accident, had a large hand in this production and appears periodically in the film. Knowing little about Damascus, you might be tempted to chalk it up as a calamity avoided because the safety systems in place actually worked. By the time the film is over, you won't be so dismissive. The most serious nuclear threat to the US at this time (because it occurred on a frequent daily basis, and had little to do with international tensions) was from accidents within its own arsenal. (A similar situation must surely have prevailed in the Soviet Union.) Are we safer now, given that there are far fewer nukes deployed and Command and Control organizations have learned from past experiences? The documentary has a clear answer, and it's probably not the one we hoped for.