Kathryn Bigelow, Catastrophe Connoisseur

"Kathryn Bigelow, the director, and Alexandra Bell, the arms-control expert, are both nuclear-attack-submarine literate. Bigelow-whose new Netflix film, "A House of Dynamite," imagines the U.S. government's response to an incoming intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) eighteen minutes from impact-shot part of her 2002 submarine film, entitled "K-19: The Widowmaker," on a decommissioned Soviet sub from the nineteen-sixties. Her team had found it drydocked in Florida, then had it towed to Nova Scotia."

"Bell, who is the new president of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has visited active nuclear-missile submarines-"boomers," in Navy slang-as part of her work on arms control. "I've been on the U.S.S. West Virginia twice, and the U.S.S. Maryland as well, working as the State Department rep on the Biden Administration's Nuclear Posture Review," she said. She's toured with Japanese and South Korean officials, making her expert at, she says, "getting photographed in front of military equipment." She added, "I have a good looking-at-things face.""

"It was a first for both women. In the exhibit that precedes the sub tour, Bigelow, who is in her seventies and wore a down jacket, pointed to an old wooden school desk. "That was my inspiration!" she said. "A House of Dynamite" grew out of her curiosity for the threat that had once had her and her Bay Area schoolmates ducking and covering."

Kathryn Bigelow filmed parts of her earlier submarine movie on a decommissioned Soviet vessel found in Florida and towed to Nova Scotia, requiring helmets and shoulder pads during shooting. Her new Netflix film, A House of Dynamite, imagines a U.S. government response to an ICBM eighteen minutes from impact. Alexandra Bell, president of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has visited active nuclear-missile submarines as part of arms-control work and served as a State Department representative on the Nuclear Posture Review. Both women toured the U.S.S. Growler at the Intrepid Museum, where an old school desk inspired Bigelow's curiosity about Cold War-era civil-defense fears.

Read at The New Yorker