I'm a U.S. senator. 'House of Dynamite' exposes a brutal truth.

MSNBC.com ^ | 10/27/2025 5:09 PM CDT | Sen. Edward J. Markey

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Watched it last night. Main point for me was we have a 61% chance of shooting down an incoming ICBM. It's like "trying to shoot a bullet with a bullet," as one of the characters says.

[marktwain]

“Reducing global arsenals” resulted in WWI and WWII, according to some.

Reducing arsenals emboldened those who sought to gain by war.

[Skywise]

Wow… did I just wake back up in 1985?

Or are the democrats dusting off old talking points.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

“A House of Dynamite” depicts U.S. ground-based interceptors launching and failing to stop the incoming missile.

This supposes that there will be an incoming missile. There will be dozens. If not hundreds. Quoting Laz..."We are so screwed."

[Owen]

61% is absurdly optimistic, no doubt quoted from a contractor who constructed a CDR acceptance test to be successful.

I have not seen the film. I presume the incoming missile was not MIRVed? The trailers look absurd.

There is no defense against ICBMs. There is even less defense against SLBMs. We park 80% of our warheads on subs for this reason. The Russkies park 60%. They can be more flexible because their ICBMs are mobile and can move and be missed. Ours are in fixed silos.

This is why bombers are largely insignificant for nuclear exchange. The war is over by the time they arrive with their very few warheads.

[aimhigh]

the terrifying 30-minute window

With the new hypersonic missiles, it will be a 15 minute window.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

This supposes that there will be an incoming missile. There will be dozens. If not hundreds. Quoting Laz..."We are so screwed."

It occurred to me that there wasn't a missile at all, that it was a phantom VR missile created by malevolent hackers who were targeting multiple nations at once because other unnamed nations were scrambling their resources the same way the US was scrambling ours.

The ending is very ambiguous. I wasn't sure if Chicago had been nuked or not.

[FreeReign]

Is this the same APS that is pushing the idea of man-made globull warming?

[The Louiswu]

Why do doctors go to ridiculous lengths to save a dying patient, why do athletes bleed and fight to overcome a losing game, why to soldiers fight to the death in lost causes because it’s who we are. We fight, we try and continue to fight even if the odds makers don’t give us much of a chance. To continue to try to defend and develop ways to protect us and others from nuclear weapons is a saintly, heroic gesture, one deserving of much respect and as much support as can be given.

Until the world finds a way to do without nuclear weapons and indeed war itself, we will continue to need people who fight against the odds.

[LouAvul]

I think I already saw this movie. With Jason Robards.

[enumerated]

I watched it too - seems like a rehash of the old unilateral disarmament argument. “We should disarm regardless of our enemies”. “Having a defense is provocative”. Blah, blah, blah.

I say - peace through strength.

And from a pure entertainment standpoint, it was a huge let-down that they didn’t show everything get blown up at the end - I felt like a fool for watching it.

[montag813]

Who is the supposed attacker in the trailer? A rogue element would not have MIRV missiles

[BenLurkin]

[Larry Lucido]

I am a US senator

Not the flex he thinks it is.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

I watched it too - seems like a rehash of the old unilateral disarmament argument. “We should disarm regardless of our enemies”. “Having a defense is provocative”. Blah, blah, blah.

I'm not sure what the message was other than the US has bunkers under mountains for the elite to ride out nuclear Armageddon ala "Dr. Strangelove."

[Judge Bean]

That is why it seems that particle beam weapons or laser weapons like Israel’s Iron Beam, which is operational are the only option. They realized that they cannot afford to spend enough on missiles to defend against missiles or even drones. But a beam weapon uses just a few dollars per shot, and it can fire multiple shots at a reasonable cost, until the target is knocked down.

[Organic Panic]

BINGO.

“The U.S. has spent hundreds of billions of dollars chasing long-range missile defense systems. Not one has delivered dependable protection.”

The Israelis shot down hundreds of Iranian missiles. All that’s missing is “...spending money on defense systems while people of color and underrepresented communities are facing uncertainty with the government shutdown.”

[pierrem15]

The 61% claim is largely nonsense as the tracking and sensing capability keep improving.

Above all, with thousands of satellites in LEO like Starlink, the early warning capabilities are much higher and possibility of launch phase intercepts much higher.

It depends on the tech and how much money we can spend on it.

Kubrick had fun in Dr. Strangelove mocking Turgeson for saying, "no more than 10, err, 20 million dead Mr. President" if we struck first. But one thing that should never be forgotten is that enemies such as China would be wiling to take 10-20% population loss if the US could simply be annihilated.

The fact that we simply ceded our unparalleled economic and military position after 1991 through the most feckless bipartisan policies imaginable should anger every American.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Who is the supposed attacker in the trailer?

It is never made clear. It seems to have spontaneously erupted from somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

[clearcarbon]

"Wow… did I just wake back up in 1985?

Or are the democrats dusting off old talking points.

I thought the same, and they used the modest success rate of the original Patriot system as proof. But the Patriot system quickly improved. Sponsors then said it was intended for Rogue nations like Iran or North Korea.