The Scariest Film of the Year: Lucy Walker's COUNTDOWN TO ZERO

By Terry Keefe

The Berlin Wall fell nearly 21 years ago, and millions celebrated around the world. Hindsight reveals that the end of the Cold War was also the start of a far scarier era where the detonation of a nuclear weapon could come from any number of sources. With her documentary Countdown to Zero, filmmaker Lucy Walker has created a film which (and I say this with no hyperbole) should be mandatory viewing for everyone on the planet, although prepare to be chilled by the experience. Through considerable research and interviews with some of the most powerful world figures of the past few decades (including Tony Blair, Pervez Musharraf, President Jimmy Carter, and Mikhail Gorbachev), Walker makes the case that nuclear proliferation has become so out of control that the death of millions by a nuclear device, whether via a nation-state or a terrorist organization, is an inevitability unless major changes are undertaken, and yesterday.

Which of your many undoubtedly difficult-to-arrange interviews was the most difficult to arrange?

Lucy Walker: Well, I think the most interesting interview was Oleg Khinsagov (a now-imprisoned Russian smuggler who was convicted of selling enriched nuclear materials to an undercover officer). I've just received word that he is due to be released from jail in five years. Which is really scary. But, I think he'll be dead the minute he gets out of jail, the experts tell me. That interview, it took a lot of work to secure that one, and it is an absolute exclusive. No other print media or journalists had spoken to him yet. And that was a lot of working with the Georgian authorities and ministries. All of those world leaders took a lot of persistence.

You had the opportunity to speak with the late [former U.S. Defense Secretary] Robert S. McNamara, who along with his appearance in The Fog of War, really was making an effort to warn future generations about nuclear weapons before his passing.

This was his last interview, and he felt so strongly about the issue and that he wanted to make this statement …that he made me sign a deal that the statement would be in the movie. That was the last interview he did before he died. He sort of wagged his finger at me and then exited.

A.Q. Khan [the Pakistani scientist who is considered the father of Pakistan's nuclear program and who exported nuclear technology to North Korea, amongst other countries] was someone who you also spoke with. Could you describe those conversations?

I had a long series of phone conversations with him. When I first called him up and said that I'd be doing a movie and was interesting in speaking with him, he said, “Oh madam, you must be looking for a villain for your movie.” I think that the bomb is the real villain, I don't think he is, but he certainly is the king of proliferation, isn't he? The risks that his legacy presents are truly mind-boggling to contemplate.

Do you think Khan was primarily driven by greed, ideology, nationalism, or all of the above?

Oh my goodness, he's such a fascinating, Shakespearean character. He's a complicated mix of motives. But I think that the important lesson, moving forward, is that people in the West want nuclear weapons, and they're going to have to get used to the fact that everyone else wants them too. I think the A.Q. Khan story really illustrates that. I think he felt primarily motivated the idea that this was something his country just had to do. And who are we, in the Nuclear Club, to tell other countries that they can't have them when their national security needs are arguably much more acute than ours? We're going to have to get used to the fact that other nation-states will want nuclear weapons, and potentially very soon, as the amazing young Princeton physicist Scott Kemp says in the film, not just nation-states, but also non-state actors, are going to be able to enrich their own uranium. The technology is only becoming more accessible. So, we're looking at a very scary future unless things get under control right now.

Do you think that the world can possibly come up with a solution to the nuclear problems presented in your film?

I think that the only solution is zero [nuclear weapons]. I had an open mind on this issue. I didn't come into it from a position of nuclear elimination being the only solution. I wasn't a fan of nuclear weapons - who is? - but I wanted to examine the merits of each argument. Over the course of making the film, there was no other solution that made any sense to me.