Fail-Safe (1964), starring Henry Fonda and Walter Matthau and directed by Sidney Lumet, is a sober, serious film detailing how the United States and Soviet Union would negotiate during a nuclear crisis. After American planes are mistakenly launched to attack the USSR, the US and USSR both communicate and deliberate over how to stop the bombers from destroying Soviet Union. While critically acclaimed, the film was overshadowed by the success of Dr. Strangelove..
Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center has created this site as a resource for the Cuban Missile Crisis. Designed to help policymakers, students, and interested citizens draw lessons from these critical events half a century ago, this site not only provides background on the crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster in October 1962 but also offers tools to understand how it can inform contemporary policy.