Plot summary for
Fail-Safe (1964)

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A technical malfunction in the Pentagon's strategic control system causes an erroneous order to be sent to a B-58 squadron on a routine training mission instructing the bombers to fly beyond their fail safe distance. At this point the flight crew are trained to cease communications and prepare to fulfill their objective by bombing Moscow. As the planes near their target, the crisis deepens and together the Americans and Soviets decide on a final, desperate solution. Written by Dave Jenkins {david.jenkins@smallworld.co.uk}

A series of human and computer errors sends a squadron of American B-58 bombers to nuke Moscow. The President, in order to convince the Soviets that this is a mistake, orders the Strategic Air Command to help the Soviets stop them. This movie pulls no punches. The ending will make you thank God the Cold War is over! Written by KC Hunt {khunt@eng.morgan.edu}

Warren Black is a brigader general in the US Air Force who is troubled by a nightmare about a matador. Walter Groeteschele is a professor with some audacious theories about nuclear warfare. Carl Cascio is an Air Force Colonel ashamed of his low-class upbringing and is XO of Strategic Air Command's commanding general Frank Bogan. Jack Grady is an old-school Air Force Colonel who leads a squadron of Vindicator nuclear bombers. Gordon Knapp is head of a defense electronics contractor. Hubert Raskob is a visiting Congressman. Peter Buck is translator to the President of the United States. And all of these men become enveloped in the ultimate accident; when a malfunction damages SAC's fault indicator, the system is changed routinely, but it causes a malfunction in the mainframe that launches Jack Grady's squadron on an attack mission to obliterate Moscow. When the full horror of the accidental attack order becomes clear, SAC and the President must work to recall or stop the bombers, but all efforts are frustrated by the skill and working orders of the pilots involved as well as the power of their planes, and when they penetrate Soviet airspace a running sky battle erupts. But the bombers press on, and through negotiations with the Soviet premier, the President is left with but one hope of averting Armageddon, an order so audacious it even shocks the Soviet premier and leaves the President's subalters speechless. Written by Michael Daly

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