Nuclear Rescue 911 - Broken Arrows & Incidents
The U.S. government uses the phrase "broken arrow" to refer to an  accident involving a nuclear weapon, and asNuclear Rescue 911: Broken Arrows  & Incidentsmakes chillingly clear, there have been many more such mishaps  than the public realizes. Between 1950 and 1980, there were 32 accidents that  involved a nuke, dire situations that featured crashing bombers, disappearing  submarines, and even a deadly fiasco in Arkansas triggered when a hapless  technician dropped a socket wrench down a missile silo. While some of these  events were calamitous, none of them, thankfully, actually set off a nuclear  explosion. This film, however, makes the point that some of these misfortunes  came astonishingly close to wiping out millions of people. Using a combination  of news footage and stock archival footage to portray real events, and a  narration delivered by Adam West ofBatmanfame, the documentary is  appropriately sober and tends not to be sensationalistic. Credibility is  established by some interviews with participants in the various accidents, and a  former Department of Energy spokesman appears throughout to provide details  about particular events. An interesting DVD bonus item is an alarmingly upbeat  1950s vintage film short the U.S. Air Force made to showcase its safety  procedures in handling nuclear weapons at the height of the cold war.-- Robert J. McNamara