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Mike Black @mikeblack114.bsky.social

The Hurt Locker lady made a movie about NC3 and application of deterrence theory written by the NBC News guy that covered for Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer

Ben Affleck smoking a cigarette and looking depressed .
sep 2, 2025, 5:45 pm • 44 2

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Reconstructionist @unavaleable.bsky.social

wait is this an adaptation of Nuclear War or whatever that awful book is with the base jumping president?

sep 2, 2025, 5:48 pm • 5 0 • view
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MK Mittell 🦅🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼🇦🇲🇽🇰 @mkmittell.bsky.social

“Base jumping president” That sounds either bad-fucking-ass or is complete fucking ass lmao

sep 2, 2025, 5:50 pm • 4 0 • view
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Mike Black @mikeblack114.bsky.social

The president parachutes out of Marine One to avoid it crashing when it gets caught in a nuclear blast, so you be the judge And no, THAT one is being directed by Denis Villeneuve 🙃

sep 2, 2025, 5:53 pm • 6 0 • view
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MK Mittell 🦅🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼🇦🇲🇽🇰 @mkmittell.bsky.social

The first sentence is absolutely perfection. Complete fucking absurdity

sep 2, 2025, 5:56 pm • 3 0 • view
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Joe Uchill @joeuchill.bsky.social

Is this "A House of Dynamite"? "An Apartment Complex of Gasoline"? "A Bungalow of Dryer Lint"? "A Split-Level Colonial of Hair Spray?"

sep 2, 2025, 5:56 pm • 2 0 • view
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Mike Black @mikeblack114.bsky.social

The core premise of the film is that the US has no idea who launched the missile (singular) from where, and despite being explicitly set only in the 18 minutes from launch to impact the retaliatory option is depicted as coming from a bomber

Ben Affleck smoking a cigarette and looking depressed .
sep 2, 2025, 5:45 pm • 24 1 • view
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Calder @calderwook.bsky.social

I suspect I will be shouting at the screen when I get to see this. It sounds like they are half arsed remaking By Dawn's Early Light.

sep 2, 2025, 6:01 pm • 1 0 • view
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Stephen Raab @onetruestephen.bsky.social

And they called me mad

image
sep 2, 2025, 5:57 pm • 1 0 • view
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Stephen Raab @onetruestephen.bsky.social

(I kid, of course. LeMay would never retaliate with only one bomber.)

sep 2, 2025, 5:58 pm • 1 0 • view
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Mike Black @mikeblack114.bsky.social

Idris Elba is not-Obama (he gets word the missile is inbound while he's shooting hoops, come ON)

sep 2, 2025, 5:47 pm • 22 0 • view
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Emcee Hammerpants @emceehammerpants.bsky.social

lol “President Darky Funkman! Put down your chitlins and grape drink! There’s an emergency!”

sep 2, 2025, 5:54 pm • 0 0 • view
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Mike Black @mikeblack114.bsky.social

They apparently portray the PEOC as this impenetrable nuclear proof bunker where the President and everyone spends the crisis, instead of, I don't know, trying to get him and the rest of the NCA to an airborne survivable platform

Ben Affleck smoking a cigarette looking depressed .
sep 2, 2025, 5:50 pm • 19 0 • view
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RedBlackHistoryman @redblackhistoryman.bsky.social

This was always something I felt was pretty unrealistic about a nuclear war scenario. Scrambling a helo to the white house, then from the white house to Andrews, then to get AF1 into the air, is simply too long a time in a first strike attack scenario. POTUS is already dead. Retaliate and then die.

sep 2, 2025, 5:50 pm • 1 0 • view
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Mike Black @mikeblack114.bsky.social

Depends on world tensions and the alert posture, but as long as it's not a depressed trajectory SLBM shot from off the coast you might be surprised how quickly the process can work

sep 2, 2025, 5:58 pm • 0 0 • view
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RedBlackHistoryman @redblackhistoryman.bsky.social

Straight-line flying time at 180mph from Quantico-White House-Andrews is 12.4 minutes but you have air traffic, startup time on the helos and plane, taxi time, physically getting people onto the lawn and into the chopper then back off the chopper onto AF1, it just doesn't seem very plausible.

sep 2, 2025, 5:57 pm • 0 0 • view
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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social

It's not perfect in every detail but hands down the movie that gets all this stuff reasonably correct and builds dramatic tension and plot points around true-enough aspects of it is By Dawn's Early Light. Great cast, too.

sep 2, 2025, 5:57 pm • 4 0 • view
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Mike Black @mikeblack114.bsky.social

By Dawn's Early Light is without a fault and is the best portrayal both of nuclear war generally and EAM procedures specifically, period lol The episode of Madam Secretary where we almost accidentally nuke Russia because of a drill is pretty good too

sep 2, 2025, 6:00 pm • 5 0 • view
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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social

I'd love to get an actually good adaptation of Sum of All Fears at some point, too. But even that takes some flights of fancy. Main nitpick about BDEL is the "automated" initial Russian attack after a single false flag launch from Turkey. But you gotta get the whole shebang started somehow.

sep 2, 2025, 6:07 pm • 2 0 • view
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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social

iirc in the book it was a deliberate Russian first strike which isn't necessarily more plausible but I could see why you'd want to tweak that in the movie for something more all-around accidental, it fits better.

sep 2, 2025, 6:09 pm • 1 0 • view
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Mike Black @mikeblack114.bsky.social

If all I have to do is believe the worst case about Perimeter, I'll take it

sep 2, 2025, 6:12 pm • 2 0 • view
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Mike Black @mikeblack114.bsky.social

CC @forbesmm.bsky.social, I had to see this and so do you

sep 2, 2025, 5:54 pm • 10 0 • view
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Mike @forbesmm.bsky.social

oh god damn it

sep 2, 2025, 6:00 pm • 3 0 • view
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Mike Black @mikeblack114.bsky.social

It is absolutely incredible they are going to try to spin this NAIL BITING CRISIS HOW CAN YOU END THE WORLD IMPOSSIBLE CHOICES on the basis of one (1) missile "Well now guess we all have to hand it to MDA after all, salvo the GMD interceptors and then we can figure out what the hell happened"

sep 2, 2025, 6:04 pm • 5 0 • view
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Mike @forbesmm.bsky.social

I’m gonna hate watch this and be like those insufferable EOD guys watching the hurt locker

sep 2, 2025, 6:43 pm • 8 0 • view
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Mike @forbesmm.bsky.social

Case in point: this is a pretty good command center set, looks a lot like N2C2 at Peterson … except it’s supposed to be the WHSR (not even close).

Woman in a suit on a phone, looking serious. She is standing in a command center with computer monitors all around.
sep 2, 2025, 6:54 pm • 4 0 • view
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Probably Not A Crow, Unfortunately @mefcorv.bsky.social

You don’t have to be EOD to hate Hurt Locker; it’s a game the whole Army can play!

sep 2, 2025, 9:48 pm • 0 0 • view