On a cold, gray morning in March 2008, a handful of New York City officials sat in a conference room high above Midtown, watching a nuclear bomb incinerate the city below. The blast was a simulation — a digital model built by a government scientist — but its realism was terrifying. We watched waves of destruction race outward, erasing block after block. The skyline vanished in a blinding instant. Then came the revelation: with swift, coordinated action, countless lives could be saved. I left that room shaken but sure of one thing: survival would depend on what we did next.
That grim demonstration wasn’t unique to New York. In the months that followed, federal officials crisscrossed the nation, plunging officials from many major cities — Los Angeles, Houston, Washington, D.C. — into that dystopian nightmare. Each was shown what a nuclear explosion would do to their downtown, and each was told the same thing: With decisive action in the first hour, hundreds of thousands could be saved.
Seventeen years later, the work required to prepare — the planning, training and exercising with communities — isn’t happening. Fewer than one-third of major U.S. cities have any kind of plan for a nuclear attack. Another third said they couldn’t respond at all without federal help.
That’s not cynicism — it’s psychology. During the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation was ever present. Americans managed their fear in the simplest way possible: by blocking it out. That denial has always been our defense — a brick wall of hope shielding us from the thought that everything we love could be erased in an instant.
Kathryn Bigelow’s new film “A House of Dynamite” tears down that wall. A nuclear missile is detected arcing over the Pacific. The clock starts: 18 minutes to impact. In Washington, alarms erupt, aides sprint, generals yell into cellphones — and paralysis sets in.
The movie isn’t just entertainment; it’s a warning disguised as a thriller. Because while the fictional blast targets Chicago, it could just as easily be Salt Lake City. The inversions that turn the valley’s winter air into a gray, choking soup would trap radioactive ash over the Wasatch Front. The freeways would gridlock and the neighborhoods that have endured drought, quake and flood would face something far worse — alone.
Utahns carry the frontier spirit in their bones — faith, fortitude and the belief that with enough hard work and grace, we can withstand anything. But faith isn’t preparedness. In the first minutes after such an attack, survival would depend on the smallest acts of discipline: get inside, seal windows, stay put stay tuned. Those steps only work if we know them and practice them. But not only does our government not plan for them, it doesn’t even talk about them.
Since 9/11, the U.S. has poured nearly $8 trillion into homeland security. We’ve built command centers, launched satellites and hardened communications networks. What we haven’t built is the connective tissue that makes those systems come alive. Philip Zelikow, in “Lessons from the COVID War,” called it a “crisis of competence” — the failure to turn capacity into capability. We know what to do. We just don’t do it.
That must change. Every city should have a plan it can execute without waiting for Washington’s permission. Every community should have leaders who know what to say when seconds matter. And every American should have those first steps committed to memory — no different from a fire drill.
Preparedness is power — the antidote to fear. And it starts long before the sirens wail. Because when the missile is inbound, the cavalry isn’t coming. The real line of defense isn’t in Washington or in the sky. It’s in us — our competence, our courage and our willingness to face the unthinkable before it happens.