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| A series of human and computer errors , including 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.
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| Henry Fonda (The President): President of the United States, who tries desperately to bring the situation to a peaceful conclusion.
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| Walter Matthau (Professor Groeteschele): College professor, a technical advisor on the situation.
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| Frank Overton (General Bogan S.A.C.): General of the Strategic Air Command, sends some S.A.C. fighters to Russia to assist the Russians with intercepting the nuclear bombs.
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| There are many important lessons to be learned from Fail Safe, but these are by no means new to the genre. Human beings have put so much faith and trust into computers and machines to the point where they have allowed these machines a large measure of responsibility, and there perhaps was no larger responsibility than maintaining our nuclear defense and arsenal. When these machines fail to function correctly, even with the checks of human intervention, things can still go terribly awry, as was the case in this film—a combination of operator and technological error results in one of the worst possible scenarios imaginable. As this film reminds us, human and mechanical error will always be with us; humans, by our very nature, are prone to error, regardless of expertise, and the same can be said for their creations. Fundamentally, it is no stretch to ascertain that imperfect beings cannot create perfect machines, and as far as nuclear weapons are concerned, regardless of the technological feat of their creation, this movie reminds us that they are perhaps not worth the risk of their creation. |
