The anti-nuclear campaign film Countdown to Zero sets out to frighten viewers into supporting the associated Global Zero campaign. But Tania Mason reckons there is a word for people who go around spreading terror.
At first glance, it’s hard to fault the objectives of the anti-nuclear lobby Global Zero. The global movement, manifested in the movie called Countdown to Zero which premiered in the UK last week, seeks the decommissioning of all nuclear weapons held by all nine (that we know of) nuclear weapon-producing states. Until there are none left, that is: zero.
No doubt about it, nuclear warheads are dangerous things – we’ve known that since 1945. The statistics presented in the film are genuinely scary – there are something like 23,000 nuclear weapons in the world and just 50 such bombs can wipe out vast areas in seconds, vaporising 200 million people. (And those are the lucky ones - much better to be right under the bomb when it drops than ten miles away.) The ease with which one can be built or bought is equally terrifying – makes you wonder how on earth we’ve got away without nuclear holocaust for this long.
On that note, the tales of near-accidents were pretty hair-raising too. The best was from 25 January 1995 when the US military launched a research rocket from the Norwegian coast in order to study the Northern Lights. They’d informed the Russians beforehand, but apparently the message went astray. The Russians saw the rocket, assumed they were under attack, and Boris Yeltsen had eight minutes to decide whether to retaliate. Utter pandemonium reportedly broke out but Yeltsen, bless ‘im, refused to believe the threat was real and wouldn’t play that particular game of Russian Roulette, instead erring on the side of caution. Phew, that’s a relief.
But that’s the problem with the film and indeed the whole campaign – it deploys fear to make its point. After the movie ended at my local viewing there was a Q&A about the issues raised before we were patched through to a live link at Bafta, with a panel discussion and a studio audience (pictured). One man commented how pleased he was that finally another terrifying movie had been made that reminded him of the 1970s public information film Protect and Survive which “put the fear of God” into him as a child, a fear that stayed with him for many years hence. I too had experience of such a film, mine was called ‘The day after’ and it terrified my 12-year-old self and all my classmates. Watching it was a perfectly horrible experience that I could happily have done without. Countdown to Zero isn’t nearly as graphic, but it has the same objective – to spread fear amongst those that see it so that they join the campaign. Isn’t spreading terror what terrorists do?
The naked pro-US propaganda inherent in the film also makes for uncomfortable viewing. The fact is, the West invented nuclear missiles and for years were happy enough to tolerate the threat they posed because the US had way more warheads than anyone else and so felt in control of the situation. But now that more and more so-called ‘rogue states’ are acquiring nukes the US senses it is losing control – and we all know how it likes to be in the driving seat. So it is attempting to re-seize the initiative by leading or joining various anti-nuclear covenants and expecting the rest of the world to fall into line behind it once again.
But Iran’s President Ahmadinejad made a perfectly valid point in the film when he said: “If nuclear weapons are so bad, why do you have them? And if you’ve got them, why can’t we have them too?”
And audience participants in the Q&A rightly highlighted the hypocrisy of Western politicians who claim to express support for the Zero campaign while blatantly flouting non-proliferation treaties and voting to renew Trident.
Of course, those that devised and support this campaign have the best of intentions; they seek a world of peace and harmony and wish to avoid needless death and suffering. Nobody can argue with that. But this campaign breaks one of the golden rules of campaigning – pick something that can actually be achieved. Because campaigning for a world without nukes is utterly unrealistic, as is campaigning for a world without anything that has already been invented. You can’t ‘zero out’ knowledge, just as you can’t turn back time. Sure, the existence and ongoing proliferation of nuclear weapons poses a threat, and I’m sure the US doesn’t really need 9,000 of the things, but somehow we’ve managed to make it through the 66 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki without wiping out further big chunks of the human population through nuclear accident - or design. The technology exists, we can’t pretend it doesn’t, and trying to terrify people into striving for a zero policy is crazy. You can’t remove all risks – security doesn’t exist in nature, and human beings are still part of nature. This campaign really is health and safety gone mad.
So if you do see the film, don’t bow down to the fear. Instead, marvel at the incredible intelligence that human beings possess which made us able to split the atom; resist the urge to tell others what they can and can’t do, and trust that when it comes to the crunch people will do the right thing, just as Yeltsin did on that fortuitous morning in 1995. Don’t "put the fear of God" into your teenage son or daughter by encouraging them to watch the movie – instead, give them a hug and tell them how amazing they are. And then smile and celebrate your life – in the grand scheme of things it’s over in the blink of an eye anyway, so just enjoy it, and stop worrying.
