STARTLINGLY REALISTIC, BUT NOT VERY PLAUSIBLE
Having mentioned all that, the central premise of the film isn’t very believable. Solely a small variety of nations have an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) functionality. Deterrence 101 applies – in the event that they had been to make use of them, they’d be annihilated.
Let’s faux, for the sake of argument, that they managed to hide the origin of the missile by cyberattack, as implied in A Home Of Dynamite. There may be nearly no likelihood that the US wouldn’t discover out within the hours, days and weeks after the assault, which means that their destruction is perhaps delayed however it might not be averted.
The larger drawback although is on the timing of the US response. Within the film, the implication is that the president is on a clock. If he doesn’t reply earlier than the missile hits Chicago, which emerges because the goal, he may lose his alternative to retaliate and invite an extra assault.
This was a problem within the early years of the Chilly Conflict, when administrations frightened a couple of decapitating first strike, however this doesn’t apply in a state of affairs of a single launch or in a world of submarine launched nuclear missiles (SLBMs), which can survive a missile assault on the US. The president has time to reply after the detonation, permitting him to collect extra details about who’s accountable quite than attacking all adversaries pre-emptively earlier than Chicago is destroyed.
