Review of Countdown to Zero (2010) by Paul D — 16 Aug 2011

Countdown to Zero might be one of the scariest films I've seen - and it's a factual documentary. Although already a bit dated (the death of Osama Bin Laden for example, a few weeks before the film's theatrical release in the UK, makes moot the point about his hiding in Pakistan), this exhaustive study of "where we are now" with regard to nuclear arms is a fascinating, engrossing and terrifying piece.

Though a straightforward structure that examines how a nuclear bomb could go off through error, miscalculation, madness etc., we learn about the history of the nuclear race, the countries that have the technology, the countries that *could* have the technology, how incredibly easy it would be to make a bomb with the procurement of the necessary refined uranium, and the huge number of close calls there have been.

Add in to this how lapse the security is around, for example, US's nuclear cache, how easy it is to launch them (the potentially complicated code to unlocking nuclear missiles was, for a very long time, reset to "all zero", one of the number of meanings of the film's title), and the picture painted is not of "if" but "when".