Editor Reviews:

Product Description:
Since 1950, there have been 32 nuclear weapon accidents, known as "Broken Arrows." A Broken Arrow is defined as an unexpected event involving nuclear weapons that result in the accidental launching, firing, detonating, theft or loss of the weapon. To date, six nuclear weapons have been lost and never recovered.Now, recently declassified documents reveal the history and secrecy surrounding the events known as "Broken Arrows". There have been 32 nuclear weapon accidents since 1950. Six of these nuclear weapons have been lost and never recovered. What does this say about our defense system? What does this mean to our threatened environment? What do we do to rectify these monumental "mistakes"? Using spectacular special effects, newly uncovered and recently declassified footage, filmmaker Peter Kuran explores the accidents, incidents and exercises in the secret world of nuclear weapons.

Amazon.com:
The U.S. government uses the phrase "broken arrow" to refer to an accident involving a nuclear weapon, and as Nuclear Rescue 911: Broken Arrows & Incidents makes chillingly clear, there have been many more such mishaps than the public realizes. Between 1950 and 1980, there were 32 accidents that involved a nuke, dire situations that featured crashing bombers, disappearing submarines, and even a deadly fiasco in Arkansas triggered when a hapless technician dropped a socket wrench down a missile silo. While some of these events were calamitous, none of them, thankfully, actually set off a nuclear explosion. This film, however, makes the point that some of these misfortunes came astonishingly close to wiping out millions of people. Using a combination of news footage and stock archival footage to portray real events, and a narration delivered by Adam West of Batman fame, the documentary is appropriately sober and tends not to be sensationalistic. Credibility is established by some interviews with participants in the various accidents, and a former Department of Energy spokesman appears throughout to provide details about particular events. An interesting DVD bonus item is an alarmingly upbeat 1950s vintage film short the U.S. Air Force made to showcase its safety procedures in handling nuclear weapons at the height of the cold war. -- Robert J. McNamara

Rating : - Recycled footage, incongruent, amateurish
I usually greatly enjoy anything with footage of nuclear weapons, nuclear tests, Manhattan project, etc. When I saw this DVD for sale, I was excited. After viewing it however, I was very disappointed.

The story line is incongruent. Just seems to jump all around aimlessly. Very amateurish. The narrator seems almost bored with the film and strangely exaggerates the word "nuclear" almost every time he says it. Seems like he's trying to get your attention or something, but it just sounds silly.

The nuclear weapon footage is almost all stuff I had seen before in the film "Trinity and Beyond" (which is very good film). You can get more images of lost nuclear weapons just with a google search than you will get in this film.

Special effects are cheezy. For example, there is a special effect segment showing a large bomber crashing. This shows that the nose of the airplane stays completely intact throughout the crash, but the narrator goes on to say and the film later shows that the plane was completely smashed to bits. Maybe they felt compelled to use the animation because they spent a lot of money on it and not because it was historically accurate.

Very little footage of any nuclear weapons, mostly old footage of planes, millitary bases and stuff and interviews with some weird people.

There was some interesting footage of a people wearing special suits going into a missile silo while there was fuel leak and also a story of a nuclear weapon test that failed to fire. Those were interesting to me, but the rest was pretty poor.