This is an interesting documentary that suffers three ailments. It feels a decade late… It doesn’t offer anything particularly new… And it is tremendously naive.
Essentially, “Countdown to Zero” is a warning against the rampant proliferation of nuclear materials and weapons around the world today — and a plea to viewers to get involved in eliminating them altogether. The film continuously references President Kennedy’s famous quote, “Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness.”
Yes, my attention was held as the documentary reeled off the extraordinary numbers and detailed the many close calls we have had over the years. After all, it is a fascinating subject. However, I found the entire exercise to be futile. Nuclear material isn’t going anywhere. The technology isn’t going anywhere. Some lunatic will one day detonate a nuke in a populated area. Smaller countries like North Korea and Iran will someday have their own arsenals. Disaster will strike one day. UNLESS!!! Unless we keep some nukes as a deterrent. And even then, it probably won’t matter.
The number will never be zero because we will never be able to trust that everyone else is behaving.
If 200 criminals with guns are locked in a warehouse and they all agree to throw their guns into a furnace… how long do you think it will be before some of them start losing their trust in the others to follow the rules? You go first… no you… no you.
And even if we managed the minor miracle of eliminating all the nukes from the face of the earth, how long before someone secretly starts making them again?
