There’s no shortage of things that could end the world. But between climate change, risks from AI, and biological threats like pandemics, we seem to be forgetting about one human-made existential risk that has been with us for 80 years: the ever-present possibility of nuclear warfare.

But nuclear war hasn’t forgotten about us.

“Because of extraordinary luck over 80 years, despite many close calls and near-misses, there hasn’t been a detonation of nuclear weapons,” Elise Rowan, the deputy vice president of communications at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), told me over email. “Every concern that is top of mind for Americans right now…could be eclipsed by a snap decision under pressure or even an accident.”

This story was first featured in the Future Perfect newsletter.

Sign up here to explore the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them. Sent twice a week.

That makes the new film A House of Dynamite the perfect movie for the moment.

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow for Netflix — out in select theaters now, and streaming on the service beginning October 24 — the film is divided into three acts that follow government workers, military officials, and finally the president himself (played by Idris Elba) in the roughly 18 minutes that pass between the detection of a nuclear missile........

© Vox