Imagine a nuclear missile flying toward Chicago.
This horrifying scenario is at the center of Kathryn Bigelow’s new Netflix film, “A House of Dynamite.” In Hiroshima, we know that a nuclear attack is not a simple hypothetical or plot device: It is a real-life nightmare that Hiroshima has lived.
As audiences watch the film, I hope they will consider how nuclear weapons have held our planet and its people hostage for 80 years and how the risks they pose today may be greater than ever before.
When the U.S. detonated an atomic bomb over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, nearly 50% of those within 1.2 kilometers — a little under a mile — of ground zero died that same day from the effects of the blast, heat rays and radiation. In the weeks that followed, countless others suffered slow, torturous deaths as a result of severe burns and radiation sickness. By the end of the year, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bombed three days later, collectively suffered more than 200,000 casualties, with many more experiencing permanent disability.
In the decades that followed, an arms race ensued as more countries developed these ghastly, indiscriminate weapons. Today, nine countries have nuclear weapons. Although the number of weapons is down significantly since the height of Cold War in the 1980s, there are still 12,000 nuclear weapons on Earth, with approximately 90% held by the U.S. and Russia — more than enough destructive power to decimate human life many times over. And a new arms race is brewing.
There’s no question that the decrease in weapons from a high of 70,000 is progress. At the same time, it’s important to remember that today’s nuclear weapons are up to 80 times more powerful than the one that leveled Hiroshima. In a city the size of Chicago, that could mean millions of immediate casualties, followed by hundreds of thousands more due to radioactive fallout poisoning bodies, air, soil and water. The fallout from such an attack could contaminate Lake Michigan and surrounding farmland, threatening water supply and agriculture across the Midwest for decades.
The devastation would not stop there. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki destroyed civilian infrastructure far beyond the blast zones — from schools, to hospitals, to homes — crippling essential services and displacing communities. A single detonation today in Chicago, a central hub for commerce and a critical node for transportation, logistics and finance, would paralyze these systems, making humanitarian aid impossible. Combined with widespread radioactive contamination, there would be reverberating effects, sending shockwaves not only domestically, but also across the global environment, economy and community.
The blasts also wiped out our cultural heritage. In Hiroshima, what now is commonly called our “Atomic Bomb Dome” was one of very few buildings that remained standing. Today our beautiful city has been rebuilt, but the dome remains a painful and powerful symbol of all that was lost.
Our most precious asset is, without doubt, the people who survived the bombings, known as hibakusha, and at the heart of “A House of Dynamite,” rightly, is the characters’ fears that their friends and family members will be casualties in the nuclear attack. In Japan, we know that fear doesn’t end with the blast itself. For decades, our communities have suffered abnormally high cancer rates. We know that when nuclear weapons are used, the psychological trauma, fear, uncertainty and loss span generations.
It’s no wonder. “A House of Dynamite” lays bare the inherent fragility and absurdity of a system based on the threat of annihilation in 30 minutes or less. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy told the United Nations that “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 madness.” It is still true today.
Some people continue to believe that the threat of total destruction is enough to prevent any use of the world’s nuclear weapons. “A House of Dynamite,” which received guidance from many military advisers and experts, plays out a credible scenario of what could happen when such naive beliefs come crashing down.
With tensions rising between multiple nuclear-armed states, a global shift toward authoritarian leadership and a breakdown in international cooperation around arms control and risk reduction, the chances of a nuclear exchange or detonation are the highest they’ve been since the bombs were dropped on Japan.
The world has been lulled into complacency, believing that a city like Chicago could never be in the crosshairs. It’s time to stop gambling with our lives. If deterrence fails or if there’s a major accident or miscalculation, Chicago — or any major city — could be a casualty. The only way to prevent another catastrophic nuclear detonation is to eliminate nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. We can never be safe while living in a house made of dynamite.
Hidehiko Yuzaki is the governor of Hiroshima and president of Hiroshima Organization for Global Peace, which works for a peaceful world without nuclear weapons.