Special Bulletin

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
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 Chorus: RBS, we're moving up!

Announcer: We interrupt this program with a Special Bulletin...

Thus begins this 1983 Made for TV movie about a group of people who have allegedly placed a home-made nuclear bomb on a boat in Charleston, South Carolina harbor. They want to make a stand against the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and demand a beginning to the end of such weaponry. Unless they receive some 400 trigger devices (which would make it impossible for the U.S. to detonate the nuclear weapons requiring those triggers) which they will then dump into Charleston Harbor, they will detonate their own weapon. The U.S. has 48 hours to comply.

We watch as the media doesn't just cover this event, but becomes part of it as a camera crew, covering an unrelated story, are kidnapped as part of the terrorists taking over that part of the harbor facilities. The movie actually asks the question, does the presence of the media make this sort of incident more likely to happen? By the next day, TV coverage of the event continues with a professionally done graphic introduction, "America Held Hostage" and a zoom in on South Carolina and the City of Charleston, along with an up-tempo music track.

During the film, we discover many pieces of information about the terrorists, their motivations, and the media's hunger to cover a story at any cost -- even asking if the presence of the media makes this sort of incident more likely to happen. But the big question is: Do the terrorists really have both the technical capacity to construct a nuclear weapon, and obtain the fissile material to arm it, or is this an elaborate hoax? If it isn't a hoax, will the government give in to blackmail or will they attempt to stop the plot with an assault team?

The Department of Energy (which is responsible for civilian control of nuclear weapons), realizing that the leader has the technical capacity to design a nuke (that was his former job) and some of his contacts had the capacity to steal nuclear material, decide to announce a limited evacuation of the City of Charleston as a precaution. Meanwhile, they set up a diversion to pretend to bring the nuclear triggers to the boat, while having an assault team take over the boat on the presumption the Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST) can override any anti-tamper mechanisms the designer might have installed if the bomb is real...

While the assault is happening, on TV no less because of the crew that is still on the boat, a nuclear expert at the network is listening on-camera to the remarks of the NEST team as they disarm the bomb, and realizes from what they are saying that the NEST team has realized they've made a mistake and armed the bomb, as the video cuts off. Subsequent events and video being recorded at the exact moment from a mile away show that there was no hoax, it was a real nuclear bomb, and it went off. The nightly news several weeks later shows the devastation of the city of Charleston, then goes on to the typical problems and strife in the rest of the world.

The movie was shot on videotape rather than film, recreating the look of a "live" TV broadcast. Faux-impromptu dialogue (hesitations, stumbles, overlaps) and technical glitches intensify the effect.

Gives examples of

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