AllMovie

As narrated by Liev Schriber, this historically-themed documentary travels back in time to the early 1950s, when the United States and the Soviet Union began a fierce competition with one another to determine who could construct the largest and deadliest bomb. The results were not simply overwhelming but horrifying, culminating with a March 1, 1954 fifteen megaton test (called "Castle Bravo") that vaporized three coral islands, and the Soviets' detonation of a 50-megaton device called the "Tsar Bomb" that sent shock waves around the world. This program tells the story of the early atomic arms race, making fervent use of archival footage to establish context and evoke the said period.