Homeys On Film: Fail Safe (1964)
Synopsis:
Okay, I’ll admit right at the start that this post goes against a key Homeys On Film stipulation — that our springboard to discussions of homeland security issues and lessons be a bad (silly/atrocious/inept/inaccurate) movie. None of these adjectives can be applied to Fail Safe. But this tense, well-acted, superbly scripted Cold War drama offers so much in the way of homeland security pointers, we had to let go of a central part of the Homeys on Film brand identity — just this once.
Here’s the plot: At the height of the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union each field fleets of supersonic bombers armed with atomic bombs, all standing on round-the-clock alert, a series of mechanical and doctrinal failures leads the two superpowers to the brink of all-out nuclear conflict. A computer malfunction at Strategic Air Command headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska causes personnel to replace of a faulty piece of computer control hardware. Nothing seems out of the ordinary when this bit of routine maintenance causes SAC’s mainframe computer to turn off, then reboot. However, unbeknownst to SAC commanders, this temporary glitch in their mainframe leads to the remote activation of the Fail-Safe boxes aboard the Vindicator bombers of Group Six, stationed outside Anchorage, Alaska, commanded by Colonel Jack Grady (Ed Binns). Every radio aboard the Group Six bombers is being jammed by their opposites in Soviet Russia, leaving the pilots and crews with no ability to receive communications from SAC. Colonel Grady verifies the fail-safe signal. He then informs his men that nuclear war has broken out. According to protocol, they are required to carry out their final orders — penetrate Russian airspace from the North Pole and destroy Moscow.
From an underground White House command bunker, the President (Henry Fonda) and his translator (Larry Hagman — boy, Jeannie sure would’ve come in handy in this fix!) directly contact the Soviet Premier through a dedicated hot line. The President simultaneously works with his Secretary of Defense (William Hanson) and General Bogan (Frank Overton) to try to turn back Group Six. However, the six bomber pilots prove unshakably true to their training, which calls for them to disregard all outside voice communications as potential enemy disinformation. Using effective tactics, all six bombers evade Soviet air defenses and fly deep within the Soviet Union.
The American leaders are forced by dire circumstances to instruct Soviet air defense headquarters on how to remotely detonate the American bombers’ air-to-air missiles, allowing the Russians to blow up several of the planes. However, not all the bombers are downed. Realizing that the remaining planes will destroy Moscow, the President makes a horrifying but tragically necessary deal with the Soviets, to prove to them that the attack is an accident and to avoid full-scale nuclear war and the destruction of both nations and likely the world. He orders that New York City be destroyed by an American nuclear bomb as soon as Moscow expires in radioactive fire.
Homeland Security Lesson #1: Critical infrastructure (in this case, the computer systems managing the issuance and acceptance of the go codes) will often fail when you need it most. In which case, you need a workable plan B. Further, the failure, when it occurs, may be in a completely unanticipated failure mode-thus the plan B that you have must be creative and robust, capable of dealing with even the most fluky failures.
Homeland Security Lesson #2: Chance can derail even the best laid plans. SAC headquarters’ attempts to rescind the fail-safe order fail because a new Soviet defense measure has begun jamming radio communications between the bomber group and SAC. As a result of the jamming, Colonel Jack Grady does not receive the backup order and orders the bomber group to attack Moscow. Even if you have a plan B, it may not work due to chance, and so you need to be as creative as possible in our crisis resolution decision-making.
Homeland Security Lesson #3: We train as we fight and we fight as we train. With pressure mounting, the President and his advisors convince Soviet military leaders to halt their jamming of the Group Six radios. However, the crews follow their training and protocols and dismiss the counter-orders as a Soviet ruse. If our training is not sufficiently robust, and if we do not build in capacity for taking the initiative on the part of our leaders when faced with out of the box scenarios, when the unthinkable happens, we will have less than desirable results.
Homeland Security Lesson #4: We must be sufficiently flexible in our decision-making under duress to allow for seemingly unthinkable scenarios. Sometimes, when faced with crap sandwiches all around, we may have to do things that involve great cost to our homeland and to our persons. Fail Safe’s agonizing climax occurs when the President struggles to find a solution which will prevent a Soviet thermonuclear counterattack. Out of other options, he offers to sacrifice an American target to appease the Soviets for the likely destruction of Moscow. He orders an American bomber to strike New York City, which will result in the deaths of the First Lady, General Black’s entire family, and seven million unsuspecting Americans. The final scenes of the film show images of people in New York going about their daily lives, unaware of the coming disaster.
Homeland Security Lesson #5: When forced to confront the unthinkable, find a way to salvage what you can. Once the decision to sacrifice New York City is made, the discussion in the White House bunker quickly turns to what can be done to salvage the city once it is ruined. The key takeaway is we need to think through the unthinkable now, when we are not under duress and can still think straight. Under duress, we will likely make less than optimal decisions if we are not prepared and are insufficiently mentally tough.
Other articles you may enjoy:
Homeys on Film — Captain America: Civil War
Homeys on Film — Alvin and the Chipmunks: the Road Chip
