Hollywoods neueste Obsession ist der Atomkrieg

*Thomas Buckley for Bloomberg News*

The apocalyptic political thriller *A House of Dynamite* — about the White House’s response to an imminent ballistic missile strike on a major US city — has tapped into America’s renewed fascination with the mushroom cloud genre.

The nuclear theme last gained popularity on screen at the height of atomic anxiety during the Cold War. Stanley Kubrick’s *Dr. Strangelove* (1964), about a paranoid US general who orders a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, is considered one of the greatest movies of all time. Despite its biting political satire, the film struck a nerve, and many viewers found the scenario of mutual self-destruction frighteningly plausible. *The Day After*, released on TV in 1983 amid renewed Cold War tensions under US President Ronald Reagan, conjured an all-out war between the US and Soviet Union with startling realism that prompted a national debate over nuclear proliferation. The film reportedly influenced Reagan to think about pursuing arms reduction talks with the Soviets.

The theme receded in the 1990s and 2000s as audiences became more preoccupied with climate change and the financial crisis. But the recent success of *Oppenheimer*, about the physicist who helped develop nuclear weapons during WWII, and TV shows such as *Paradise* and *Fallout*, which center on survivors of nuclear war, have helped it become fashionable again, said David Craig, a media professor at the University of Southern California.

[Read the full essay here.](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-31/netflix-s-a-house-of-dynamite-fuels-hollywood-s-nuclear-war-revival?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc2MTkxNDIyOCwiZXhwIjoxNzYyNTE5MDI4LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUNFpXMDhHUEZIUlkwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJEMzU0MUJFQjhBQUY0QkUwQkFBOUQzNkI3QjlCRjI4OCJ9.w4aNI-CoAF5LLSvmEyxxXmKTVHpAqHC_qNxsxdy41NY)

Apparently, Thomas Buckley didn’t watch Oppenheimer.