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On Tuesday the nominations for the 2024 Oscars will be revealed, with Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer expected to be the frontrunner. By apt coincidence, on the same day an organisation called The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will unveil the latest Doomsday Clock, a symbol illustrating how near the world is to the kind of global nuclear disaster envisaged by Robert Oppenheimer.
Nuclear Armageddon: How Close Are We?, a BBC documentary tied to the Doomsday Clock update, asks why the hands have ominously ticked to within 90 seconds of a catastrophic “midnight”, the shortest time recorded since the clock’s inception in 1947. The title strikes an alarmist tone but the show itself is built on the reporting of journalist and filmmaker Jane Corbin and insightful interviews with experts in international security, diplomacy and military science. They include a Nobel Prize winner and a physicist who has been given rare access to North Korea’s nuclear facilities.
There are no morbid projections of hypothetical death tolls and fallout zones or exhortations to start converting our basements into bomb shelters. But the current reality of geopolitical tensions and nuclear weapon stockpiling outlined is discomfiting. “We have moved from a period where nuclear weapons were considered unusable and nuclear war unwinnable into a period where we’re not so sure,” says the Bulletin’s president, Rachel Bronson.
There are discussions of Vladimir Putin’s threats of nuclear deployment, China’s plans to double its nuclear arsenal in the next six years and even the oft-underestimated “calculated progression” of North Korea’s fission programme. The show also thoughtfully assesses Britain and the US’s place in the world’s fraught, nine-member nuclear family. On a visit to the strangely idyllic environs of Faslane, Scotland, where Britain’s nuclear subs are docked, Corbin considers whether this base provides reassurance or puts the public in danger. In Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the National Laboratory for security science run by Oppenheimer still operates today, she questions the institution’s director about the vicious cycle by which nations inflame one another in the name of defensive deterrence.
The documentary is balanced and informative yet it can only scratch the surface in a single hour. A longer runtime would have left room for a more thorough analysis of how the conflict in the Middle East could shape Iran’s uncertain nuclear future, and what the re-election of a man accused of keeping classified domestic documents in the bathroom of his private residence might mean for the US and the world. As Bronson notes at one point, all it takes are careless “accidents and misperceptions” to plunge us into midnight darkness.
★★★★☆
On iPlayer now
