Given humankind’s almost limitless potential for screwing up at work, jobs that involve nuclear weapons have always been a pretty lousy risk proposition—but just how lousy hasn’t always been clear. This fall, Command and Control, part of PBS’s American Experience series, will take a closer look at one of the times run-of-the-mill bungling nearly made an enemy of our friend the atom.
But which time? The time we dropped thermonuclear bombs on North Carolina by mistake? Or the time we dropped them on Spain? Or maybe the time we just straight-up lost a bomb off the coast of Georgia? (Attention treasure hunters and/or terrorists: It’s still out there somewhere!) Out of all our nuclear goofs, Command and Control focuses on one particular little office oopsie: a worker who dropped a wrench socket in September of 1980. Unfortunately, that socket was inside a Titan II silo along with a nuclear missile. Even more unfortunately, the socket hit the fuel line on the way down. That caused a rocket fuel explosion that blew up the missile, kililng one person and injuring 21 more while reducing the entire facility to a smoking hole in the ground. Luckily, the nuclear warhead didn’t detonate, although it was blown through the air to land, cartoon-style, by the entry gate. It should surprise no one that the Air Force was not initially very forthcoming about what had happened.
The film, directed by Robert Kenner, is an adaptation of Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser’s book Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety. It looks great: vintage news footage of Bill Clinton telling Arkansans “all we can do is trust the experts,” Air Force representatives refusing to confirm the presence of nuclear warheads, and workers involved with the disaster reminiscing about the time they nearly wiped out Little Rock. The trailer leans pretty heavily on nuclear test footage, but it worked for The Atomic Cafe, so there’s no reason to think it can’t work here. Plus: Radiohead! Of course, even if the film is a disaster, Kenner and Schlosser can take solace in the fact that their workplace screw-ups are relatively unlikely to kill millions or make an entire state uninhabitable for generations. But hey, that’s why pencils have erasers!
