Nuclear Talks Trivia Quiz

Answer: WarGames

1983's "WarGames" starred Matthew Broderick as a high school kid who accidentally hacked the North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD) computer system, thinking it was a game site. He starts a "game" of Global Thermonuclear War but the human controllers at NORAD don't know it is just a game.

The quote is said by actor John Wood, playing Professor Falken, the creator of the defense system. He is trying to convince the NORAD Commander, General Beringer played by Barry Corbin, that the attack he is seeing is indeed a simulation.

Answer: K-19: The Widowmaker

Kathryn Bigelow directed this 2002 movie that is a dramatization of actual events that occurred in 1961. Harrison Ford plays the hard-nosed Soviet captain, who is badgered by his second-in-command to accept help from a U.S. Navy ship after the nuclear missile submarine suffers a horrible reactor accident.

The historic K-19 did suffer a reactor failure that immediately killed 7 of the crew, with 15 others dying from radiation sickness in the following years. A U.S. Navy ship did indeed pick up the real K-19's distress signal meant for Soviet units and offered help, which was declined.

Answer: Crimson Tide

This short, simple sentence captures the conflict of the 1995 movie "Crimson Tide", starring Gene Hackman as commanding officer (CO) of a nuclear missile submarine and Denzel Washington as his executive officer (XO). An earlier confrontation between the CO and XO ended with Hackman reciting a phrase often repeated by actual military commanders "We're here to preserve democracy, not to practice it."

Answer: Fail-Safe

Made in the height of the Cold War, 1964's "Fail-Safe" is spare in cast and sets, but is deeply disturbing because it contemplates one of the biggest fears of the nuclear age: accidental war. Henry Fonda plays the unnamed U.S. President who is trying to convince the Soviets that a U.S. attack was launched by accident.

Here, the President has ordered a U.S. bomber to drop the same number of hydrogen bombs on New York as had just been accidentally dropped on Moscow, in hopes of preventing a full-scale nuclear exchange.

Answer: Dr. Strangelove

The dark comedy "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" was directed by Stanley Kubrick and released in 1964. In this scene, a U.S. officer catches the Soviet ambassador taking surreptitious pictures of the War Room, tackles him and the two men scuffle. President Merkin Muffley tries to restore order with this command, with about as much effect as he has handling the Soviet Premier. President Muffley is one of three roles played by Peter Sellers, including Dr. Strangelove himself.

Answer: Thirteen Days

"Thirteen Days" is a 2000 dramatization of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, focusing on actions, decisions, and conflicts in the Kennedy White House. The quote is by Kevin Costner, playing Presidential Advisor Kenny O'Donnell, an actual member of the Kennedy administration. O'Donnell is speaking to a U.S. Navy pilot of an unarmed reconnaissance plane; he is asking the pilot to deny any damage he may receive came from enemy fire, so the President will not have to escalate the standoff by bombing the sites that attack him.

Answer: The Bedford Incident

This 1965 movie was directed by James Harris, who had split with Stanley Kubrick over the tone of Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove"; "The Bedford Incident" is the result of Harris' desire to produce a cold war movie of serious tone. The USS Bedford is a U.S. Navy destroyer captained by a tense and aggressive man, who is relentlessly pursuing a submerged Soviet submarine in peacetime. An inexperienced and harried young man serving as Weapons Officer mistakes the captains shouted statement as an order, and fires an anti-submarine rocket at the submarine.

Answer: The Atomic Cafe

The 1982 documentary "The Atomic Cafe" has many clips of actual U.S. military and Civil Defense films of the 1940s-1960s. This quote is from a U.S. Army film for training soldiers, with the narrator trying to make the bright flash and iconic boiling mushroom cloud seem less threatening. "The Atomic Cafe" was added to the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2016, an honor reserved for films that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Answer: The Day the Earth Caught Fire

"The Day the Earth Caught Fire" is a 1961 British entry in the nuclear doom genre; however, not due to actual war. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. unwittingly test large nuclear devices at the same time, producing increasingly ominous clues of what has happened to the Earth.

Here, an astronomer investigating why a solar eclipse happened a week earlier that expected realizes that the tests have altered the axial tilt and the orbit of the Earth.

Answer: Colossus: The Forbin Project

Based on the 1966 novel "Colossus", this movie explores concerns about humans increasingly trusting computers to predict and react to nuclear attack. An early example of artificial intelligence, the U.S. defense system becomes self-aware and, in concert with its Soviet counterpart system, takes steps to protect humans from themselves.

Here, the voice of the combined US/Soviet computers announces the new world order.