Synopsis
The movie focuses on the media's coverage of news, and whether covering the news changes it. The film has no opening credits (unusual for the time). Instead, the program begins with a promo for a typical daytime network lineup: previews of a game show and soap opera are shown, along with a catchy jingle, "RBS: We're Moving Up!" Suddenly, an ominous "Special Bulletin" slide appears on the screen, with an announcer saying "We interrupt this program to bring you a Special Bulletin from RBS News." It shows how a local TV crew, covering a dockworkers' strike, become caught in the middle of a firefight between the U.S. Coast Guard and a tugboat sitting at a dock in Charleston, South Carolina. After several Coast Guard personnel are wounded, the Coast Guardsmen, apparently outgunned, surrender and are taken hostage, as are the reporter and cameraman.
The reporter is asked to televise a statement by the terrorists of their demands: the delivery to them of every nuclear trigger device at the U.S. Naval Base in Charleston, so that they can be taken out to sea and destroyed. Without these special triggers, the nuclear weapons on the naval warships and nuclear-powered submarines based at Charleston, to include the Fleet Ballistic Missile (FBM) submarines, cannot be used. The terrorists reveal that they have constructed their own nuclear device—one roughly equivalent in strength to the bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. Their device is set to detonate within 24 hours if the demand is not met. It is also equipped with anti-tampering devices that will set it off if any attempt is made to move or disarm it.
As the faux news broadcast continues, details about the terrorists slowly begin to emerge as the broadcast hosted by Susan Myles (Kathryn Walker) and veteran newscaster John Woodley (Ed Flanders) continues. The group is led by Dr. Bruce Lyman (David Clennon), a scientist and former designer of nuclear weapons for the American government who had recently been imprisoned for taking part in anti-nuclear demonstrations. His cohorts include David McKeeson (David Rasche) a nuclear scientist who stole weapons grade plutonium from the Hanford nuclear research facility in Richland, Washington and constructed the bomb; a bank robber whom Lyman met in jail; a poet and anti-war activist implicated in a bombing that killed several people a decade earlier; and a meek housewife and mother of two who had been friends with Lyman back in college.
Several times during the program, Woodley finds himself debating with Lyman and his colleagues the ethics of television journalism and the role it plays in both covering the activities of terrorists and, at the same time, inadvertently promoting such activities. "TV news is essentially show business," says McKeeson during a particularly heated exchange with Woodley.
At first the government chooses to ignore and underplay the story. McKeeson eventually reveals his device, which is kept in the ship's lower hold, to RBS's cameraman. The scientist describes it as an Implosion-type nuclear weapon and ominously warns viewers that he designed the bomb to detonate should anyone try to tamper with it or move it. As facts come out indicating the threat being real, various public announcements occur, culminating with the decision to order the evacuation of the downtown Charleston area, which causes a public panic. The Government later announces, just shortly before the terrorist's deadline, that it would accede to their demands. A van rolls up to the tugboat, allegedly containing the first load of triggers that they had demanded.
In the interim, the terrorists, who are still holding the RBS reporter and cameraman, become suspicious when the TV on which they are monitoring the RBS broadcast suddenly goes blank, supposedly due to a transmitter power failure at the local station. In fact, the signal was cut-off to mask the arrival of a Delta Force team sneaking aboard the tugboat (which is caught live by a distant TV camera). In the ensuing gun battle, all but two of the terrorists are killed by the commandos. The journalists survive without major injury. McKeeson commits suicide before he can be captured. The remaining terrorist is taken into custody.
All this occurs a little over an hour prior to the detonation time of the bomb. Members of the Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST) enter the boat in an attempt to defuse the bomb. The reporter and cameraman remain to comment on their efforts, despite pleas from the news anchor in New York City that they leave the area. Over a remote camera installed on the tugboat, the NEST team is shown having an argument over how to bypass McKeeson's many safeguards. Abruptly, the NEST team gets into a heated argument. At the studio, an expert, Dr. Nils Johannsen, brought in by RBS (remotely) says that there are conventional explosives in the device, geared to set up the chain reaction. "They have just put a match under the whole pile!" he says. The members of the NEST team are shown working frantically, then breaking into a panic just before the signal is abruptly broken. Static fills the screen and contact Charleston is lost.
The network switches back to the main RBS newsroom in New York, which is initially in confusion, the broadcast image briefly going to a test pattern. Woodley at first shows annoyance, looking around at staffers and angrily barking out "Somebody get me some information, dammit! What the hell is this?" then falls silent and stunned as he realizes what has probably happened. Myles, nervous and cautious, merely advises viewers that they "seem to have lost contact" with Charleston. After considerable effort to reestablish contact, the anchors manage to get hold of Megan "Meg" Barclay (Roxanne Hart), a reporter for the local RBS television affiliate station in Charleston, WPIV, who was two miles from the tugboat aboard the aircraft carrier museum ship USS Yorktown across Charleston Harbor on the opposite bank of the Cooper River in Mount Pleasant. In the midst of wreckage aboard the aircraft carrier, with huge fires blazing in downtown Charleston in the background and clearly stunned and dazed, she expresses fear of imminent radiation sickness. Her cameraman, who has also survived, reveals that he was recording a few moments earlier and they ask him to rewind and play back the recording. The tape shows Barclay standing in front of a relatively normal looking harbor overlooking the tugboat, facing the camera, her back to the boat. We then see an enormous bright light coming from the other side of the harbor. As the camera lens recovers from the sudden flash of light, we catch a brief glimpse of a mushroom cloud rising over the shoreline, followed by a huge blast of wind that blows through and knocks the camera over. The tape ends. The cameraman then pans the harbor which is now nothing but a firestorm. At this, Myles breaks down, saying "Oh, my God!" on the air.
More chaos is revealed in Charleston itself: scenes of fires ("People are standing here watching their city burn," says a stunned corrspondent), destruction and wounded people. It is revealed that the government's intention was to play for time until the Delta Force team could be put on the ship, on the assumption the nuclear response team could defuse the nuclear weapon. Now, local authorities and the government have to deal with the destruction of a city, and after showing scenes of mass destruction farther out from the blast, a tearful John Woodley can only say "This is a very dark moment" as the image fades to black.
The film then moves ahead three days to reveal the aftermath of the explosion. Thanks to the evacuation, the immediate death toll was less than 2,000; however, another 25,000 suffer severe injuries, including about 4,800 severe burn cases, at a time when the total number of burn unit beds in the United States numbers only about 2,400. Some half a million are left homeless due to inland fallout and the region is expected to be uninhabitable for decades.
At this point, the broadcast shifts its attentions from the destruction of Charleston to cover other chaotic subjects around the world such as (labor riots in Poland, a World Bank announcement) which have continued to occur despite the destruction of Charleston.
Read more about this topic: Special Bulletin