History Film / FailSafe

* MoralDilemma:
** As the crisis escalates, the Americans are put in a position where they must either divulge the weaknesses of their own forces to the Russians or risk the breakout of nuclear war.
** [[spoiler:Once the demise of Moscow becomes inevitable, the president must find a way to convince the Russians not to retaliate. His solution? Drop nukes on New York, the most populous city in the United States, and kill five million people along with his own wife.]]
** [[spoiler:At the start of the story, General Black expresses fear of what a total nuclear war would entail. By the end, in order to prevent that very scenario, he has to drop nukes on New York and kill his family in the process. Understandably, Black is [[DrivenToSuicide unable to live with his actions]].]]
** [[spoiler:There's some discussion in the Pentagon after the announcement of the sacrifice of New York, as to whether or not the city's population should be warned. It's decided that with such little time to evacuate or shelter-in-place, it would merely cause panic. The President's wife happens to be in [=NYC=] that very day on a publicity trip; it's assumed he knows full well she's there. Groteschele bluntly points out moments later that shelter or no, 3 million people are gonna die in the immediate effect of the blast.]]

* AMillionIsAStatistic: Invoked and inverted during the dinner party. Groteschele quotes a figure of 60 million casualties the US could expect to withstand in a nuclear exchange (down from an earlier 100 million maximum); when the hosting Senator scoffs at the difference between the two figures, Groteschele replies "Are you prepared to say, Senator, that the saving of 40 million lives is unimportant?" The Senator snaps back that saving the ''60 million'' is important—as in, not engaging in nuclear conflict at all.

* TheBigBoard: ''Fail-Safe'' was one of the first movies (along with ''Film/DrStrangelove'') to have this now-ubiquitous feature.

** In an attempt to intercept Group 6 before it gets too far, the President (on advice of the Pentagon team and SAC) orders the fighter squadron that had been escorting the group to turn back, overtake them, and shoot them down. Because they didn't follow the group on its course to Russia, they have to use afterburners to catch up, burning all their fuel and resulting in the pilots perishing in the Arctic waters once they flame out, ejection or not. Not one missile manages to make it to the bomber group before they all flame out, but it is hoped that by the Soviets seeing this sacrificial action on their own BigBoard, they will be more likely to believe that the bombers' flight towards Moscow is an accident the US is trying to fix.

* YouAreTooLate: Not overtly referenced (and there's no real enemy in this scenario), but bad timing affects everything in the plot. The glitched "Go" code is transmitted at the exact moment the Russians are engaged in preemptive radio jamming, preventing them from getting verbal confirmation and attacking on their "fail-safe box's" authorization alone. The American President doesn't get the Russian Premier to have the jamming shut off until after the pilots are no longer going to accept a verbal stop command, even from the President. And the attempt by the Americans to shoot down their own bombers looks to have been a failure by mere seconds.

* HiddenDepths: The scene where Groteschele slaps the woman with the nuclear death fetish in his car is supposed to demonstrate that despite his advocacy for hardline tactics against the Soviets, even after the accidental "go" code, he himself is NOT a war-loving sadist, and any advice he gives regarding the crisis and nuclear war is based solely out of a survival instinct and patriotism.

* SanitySlippage: Colonel Cascio undergoes this during the whole crisis. He's not on perfectly solid ground to begin with, having been accidentally seen by General Bogan having to deal with his alcoholic parents (who he may still live with). From the moment the Americans order their own fighters to attack the bombers in an attempt to stop them, he keeps trying his best to rationalize the whole thing as an elaborate Soviet trap to lower their guard prior to an attack. The emotional strain gets to the point where he freezes up on a conference call with the Soviet air defenses (he's been ordered to reveal top-secret information about the air-to-air missiles carried by the bombers), then attempts to incapacitate Bogan and take control of SAC forces himself to order a full-scale attack on the Soviets. He's arrested by MPs, and is taken away in a full mental breakdown.

* TheSixties: The height of the Cold War. Many of the characters are old enough to be veterans of more recent wars (UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and Korea) and the horror that they've seen has moulded them greatly.

* AntiVillain: Colonel Grady and his squadron. They have been led to assume through no fault of their own that war has been declared and commit themselves to doing everything they have been trained to do, despite knowing that doing so means possible nuclear annihilation.

* ArtisticLicenseMilitary: Directly invoked by a post-credits disclaimer, claiming that the United States Air Force is aware of the risks of accidental nuclear war and has safeguards in place to prevent the events of the plot taking place.

* BavarianFireDrill: Col. Cascio invokes this when he attacks Gen. Bogan in SAC HQ just before they provide position reports on the bomber group to the Soviets. He tells the officers and men in the room that he has been advised by higher authority that Bogan's mentally unstable, and that he was ordered to take command in case things got out of hand—apparently, obeying a direct order from the President to assist Soviet air defenses counts. Thankfully, the [=MPs=] have enough sense to not fall for this, and they drag Cascio out of the Situation Room in the middle of a breakdown.

* DoesntTrustThoseGuys: Both sides have this in spades, as decades of training themselves for an inevitable war against the other results in the crisis worsening.

* FailsafeFailure: SAC's computer system is installed to remove the possibility of human error causing catastrophe, but ends up causing the crisis.

* FamousLastWords: "''[[spoiler:Katie]]...a dream...a dream...the matador...the matador... the matador...me...me.''" Spoken by [[spoiler:General Black.]]

* GoneHorriblyRight: The president and SAC open a line of communication to Grady's fleet ordering them to stand down. But because they have been told that the Soviets might send transmissions imitating their commanders during training, the bomber group follows protocol and ignores the counter-orders.

* HellIsThatNoise: The horrible shriek of a telephone being abruptly cut off [[spoiler:by a massive nuclear explosion. The man on the other end was the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, and the city being destroyed was Moscow]]. The sound is so loud and piercing that it reverberates around the President's bunker...and the Pentagon bunker...and SAC HQ.

* HeWhoFightsMonsters: Professor Groeteschele is arguing with Air Force General Black over the merits of launching a first-strike nuclear attack against the Soviet Union in the wake of a technical malfunction that sent a U.S. bomber to drop a bomb on Moscow, arguing that the threat posed by Communism justifies it.

* MoralDilemma: As the crisis escalates, the Americans are put in a position where they must either divulge the weaknesses of their own forces to the Russians or risk the breakout of nuclear war.

* MutuallyAssuredDestruction: Considering the subject matter of the film, this concept hangs heavily over the entire plot.

* SpamAttack: [[spoiler:The Soviet last-ditch plan against the two remaining bombers involves taking the rest of their nuclear surface-to-air missiles and detonating them over the bombers' estimated position, hoping to slam the bombers into the ground with a gigantic nuclear wall. It doesn't work, unfortunately.]]

* SuddenlyShouting: In places throughout the script, but it get special notice as the pervasive lack of soundtrack gives these events considerably more impact.

* SuicideMission: In an attempt to intercept Group 6 before it gets too far, the President (on advice of the Pentagon team and SAC) orders the fighter squadron that had been escorting the group to turn back, overtake them, and shoot them down. Because they didn't follow the group on its course to Russia, they have to use afterburners to catch up, burning all their fuel and resulting in the pilots perishing in the Arctic waters once they flame out, ejection or not. Not one missile manages to make it to the bomber group before they all flame out, but it is hoped that by the Soviets seeing this sacrificial action on their own BigBoard, they will be more likely to believe that the bombers' flight towards Moscow is an accident the US is trying to fix.

* AIIsACrapshoot: Minor version. The whole situation starts because the computers that held the attack codes (because the military thought them to be a better option than giving the codes' authority to any single man) have a minor, apparently routine electronics malfunction that -- unknown to Air Command at the time -- made them broadcast the code.
** The Russians get it, too, as the radio jamming that made it impossible to either recall the bombers or for the group to confirm their orders at the most critical time was based on their own computer systems predicting that the routine staging of bombers at their fail-safe points (which have been stated to occur once or twice a month with no consequence) might be a real attack. When the President asks the Premier on what basis the computer made that call, his answer is basically "a lot of math I don't know a lot about, and it's not really accurate, but it gives us 'something' to work with."

** The book adds in some background to this: Groeteschele's family were German Jews, and his father had seen what was coming with the Nazis and emigrated out of there quickly. Said father often argued that point with his fellow Jews in America, claiming that if the Germans suffered enough deaths trying to exterminate the Jews, they might have rethunk the Holocaust. So it's a little of this trope and WellIntentionedExtremist.

* MultitaskedConversation: Buck, the Russian translator, is saddled with this, especially as he has to not only relay the Premier's words, but also provide clues to the President of the Premier's emotional state—Buck's not actually speaking on the phone circuit, but is monitoring the conversation. But when the President reveals [[spoiler:his proposal to nuke New York City to level the scales in case Moscow is destroyed]], Buck's statement of "Holy Mother of God" could be either aken as his own reaction, that of the Premier, or both.

** The President's wife only appears in a photograph on a newspaper front-page. Apparently to compound the impact on the film's original audiences of the First Lady's life being sacrificed, she greatly resembles Jackie Kennedy.

* DrivenToSuicide: General Black, after [[spoiler:he is forced to drop nuclear weapons on New York City and kill five million New Yorkers, including the President's wife and his own his wife and daughter]].

%%* ApocalypseHow: By the end of the story, the Americans trade a likely Class 4 for a very bittersweet Class 1.

* MultitaskedConveration: Buck, the Russian translator, is saddled with this, especially as he has to not only relay the Premier's words, but also provide clues to the President of the Premier's emotional state—Buck's not actually speaking on the phone circuit, but is monitoring the conversation. But when the President reveals [[spoiler:his proposal to nuke New York City to level the scales in case Moscow is destroyed]], Buck's statement of "Holy Mother of God" could be either aken as his own reaction, that of the Premier, or both.

* ApocalypseHow: By the end of the story, the Americans trade a likely Class 4 for a very bittersweet Class 1.

* MutuallyAssuredDestruction: Considering the subject matter of the film, this concept hangs heavily over the entire plot.
** The heated debate at the dinner party at the beginning of the film discusses this topic: Groteschele is of the opinion that nuclear war is merely no more than war as it always has been—resolution of political conflict by violent means—and that in human history, genocidal campaigns have wiped out entire cultures and peoples before, and that even nuclear war has a winner and a loser at the end of it. The hosting Senator disagrees, essentially invoking the [=MAD=] trope that the number killed so quickly and the resulting long-term effects on society transcend traditional warfare, and there would not be much of a "culture" left to survive.

** The heated debate at the dinner party at the beginning of the film discusses this topic: Groteschele is of the opinion that nuclear war is merely no more than war as it always has been—resolution of political conflict by violent means—and that in human history, genocidal campaigns have wiped out entire cultures and peoples before, and that even nuclear war has a winner and a loser at the end of it. The hosting Senator disagrees, essentially invoking the [[=MAD=]] trope that the number killed so quickly and the resulting long-term effects on society transcend traditional warfare, and there would not be much of a "culture" left to survive.

** The book adds in some background to this: Groeteschele's family were German Jews (IIRC), and his father had seen what was coming with the Nazis and emigrated out of there quickly. Said father often argued that point with his fellow Jews in America, claiming that if the Germans suffered enough deaths trying to exterminate the Jews, they might have rethunk their policies. So it's a little of this trope and WellIntentionedExtremist.

* ArtisticLicenseMilitary

* CrazyEnoughToWork: Grady's plan to [[spoiler:evade the nuclear missile wall set to detonate ahead of them on their run-in to Moscow.]] [[He surmises that the collection of [=SAMs=] sent their way may still have their infrared/heat seekers active, so he orders his defensive systems operator to fire their two remaining nuclear air-to-air missiles and send them on a straight-up trajectory, hoping to fool the Soviet missiles into detonating too high to cause any damage.]] It works. [[spoiler:The crew still end up with a fatal dose of radiation, and their path to Moscow is wide open.]]

* JerkAss: Professor Groeteschele. He tries to egg on the president to follow up Grady's attack wing's accidental first strike with a genuine second one from their missile [=ICBMs=], and after [[spoiler:the president orders the nuking of New York as a conciliatory gesture]], suggests recovering corporate financial records instead of victims.

* LetNoCrisisGoToWaste: Rather than wanting to deescalate the situation, Professor Groeteschele sees the accidental crisis as an opportunity to wipe out the Russians ''for real''.

-->'''Groeteschele:''' I make death into a game for people like you to get excited about. I watched you tonight. You'd love making it possible, wouldn't you? You'd love pressing that button. What a thrill that would be, knowing you have to die, to have the power to take everyone else with you. The mob of them with their plans, their little hopes, born to be murdered. Turning away from it, closing their eyes to it, and you could be the one to make it true. Do it to them. But you're afraid, so you look for the thrill someplace else. And who better than a man who isn't afraid? [''She reaches for him, and he slaps her in the face''] I'm not your kind.
* RealityHasNoSoundtrack: While a soundtrack was scored for the music, it was not used. The silence is far more ominous.

* SpamAttack: [[spoiler:The Soviet last-ditch plan against the two remaining bombers involves taking the rest of their nuclear surface-to-air missiles and detonating them over the bombers' estimated position, hoping to slam the bombers into the ground with a gigantic nuclear wall.]]

** The Soviet Premier gets some of this during his conversations with the President on the hotline, when you can hear his angrier delivery suddenly burst through the headset.

* TactfulTranslaton: Played with. The President's instructions to Buck, his translator, are to be as true to the Premier's delivery of his words, and even report changes in the tone of his voice as an indicator to his emotional state. However, Buck's understandably nervous translation doesn't quite match the Premier's emotional state, especially when he gets especially pissed.

* AIIsACrapshoot: Minor version. The whole situation starts because the computers that held the attack codes (because [[{{Irony}} the military thought them to be a better option than giving the codes' authority to any single man]]) have a minor, apparently routine electronics malfunction that -- unknown to Air Command at the time -- made them broadcast the code.