Ernest J. Moniz served as the 13th U.S. Secretary of Energy and is Co-Chair and CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit, nonpartisan global security organization focused on reducing nuclear, biological, and emerging technology threats imperiling humanity.

Watching as the fictional president is evacuated from Washington in Director Kathryn Bigelow’s film, “ A House of Dynamite ,” brought me back to my own helicopter ride to an underground bunker as Secretary of Energy. Fortunately, my ride was a test-run for ensuring continuity of government in the event of a nuclear attack — but as the film underscores, one wrong move could take us beyond test runs and bring civilization crashing down.

Bigelow’s plot centers on what happens when a single, unattributed nuclear-armed missile is

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