I first encountered Eric Schlosser’s brilliant Command and Control while I was working on the multiple intersections between drones and atomic bombs – ‘Little Boys and Blue Skies‘; the long form version will be finished soon – and Netflix has now added The Bomb to its listings; it’s also available on iTunes.

The Bomb is an experimental documentary Eric made with Kevin Ford and Smriti Keshari.  Here’s the trailer from YouTube:

This is how Claire Spellberg describes the project:

The 56 minutes prior are made up entirely of carefully collected footage of Cold War information, bomb testings, nuclear explosions, and modern news clips from around the world. There’s no narration to explain what we’re seeing; instead, the filmmakers rely on loud electro-rock music from The Acid. The combined effect is jarring; the beat pulsates steadily as one bomb explodes after another, destroying homes, people, and ecosystems.

Ford, Keshari, and Schlosser first premiered The Bomb at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival as a complete multimedia experience. The filmmakers set up multiple 30-foot-high screens and The Acid accompanied the film with live music, creating what was sure to be an incredibly jarring effect. If you weren’t previously concerned about the very real threat posed by nuclear weapons, being surrounded by screens showing a nuclear bomb decimate a rural town as deafening music plays probably changed your mind.

Even without all the bells and whistles, the version of The Bomb on Netflix is sure to resonate with viewers.

Especially now.

There has been an explosion (sic) of commentary on Trump’s light-sabre rattling over North Korea – the more sober-sided are downplaying the possibility of a nuclear strike, though the death and destruction wrought by a conventional strike would surely be catastrophic – but a detailed analysis that speaks directly to the issues raised by ‘Command and Control’ is Garrett Graff on ‘The Madman and the Bomb‘ over at Politico.