Kathryn Bigelow is exceedingly calm when she talks about nuclear annihilation. That's not to say she's nonchalant about the topic— much the opposite. The Oscar-winning filmmaker discusses it with grave, matter-of-fact seriousness. But she also doesn't need to dress up the threat in hyperbole, whether in conversation or in her new film "A House of Dynamite." The reality of how it would all play out is chilling enough. Eighteen minutes is not a lot of time to decide the fate of civilization, after all. But that's about all U.S. leaders would have in the face of an imminent nuclear strike launched from somewhere in the Pacific. The film, in theaters Friday and streaming on Netflix on Oct. 24, goes inside the White House Situation Room and U.S. Strategic Command to show audiences exactly what might happen in those precious few moments. The nuclear paradox The intersection of the military and geopolitics is familiar territory for Bigelow, whether exploring the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden in "Zero Dark Thirty," or the stresses of diffusing explosives in Iraq in "The Hurt Locker." Nuclear weapons have been in her films too: "K-19: The Widowmaker" was about the Soviet Union's first nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine. Her most acclaimed works seem to always start with a rigorous deep dive into a real world scenario. "I find myself at the intersection of art and information and journalism and, in this case, the military again and again and again," Bigelow told The Associated Press. "It always starts with a question I'm curious about. In order to find the answer, I have to do these movies. It's a rather cumbersome way to get to it." A child of the Cold War, Bigelow, 73, remembers doing the duck and cover drills. Nuclear... Read More