Television Turns Terror into Thrills

By Chris Schneidmiller
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Nonproliferation and health experts are tuning in or even offering guidance as an increasing number of television shows use weapons of mass destruction as plot devices (see GSN, Sept. 28, 2004).

Fiction makers have regularly turned the fears of the day into entertainment, and this new century’s threat of WMD-armed terrorists has proven no different

During the Cold War, the threat was nuclear — played satirically as Slim Pickens rode an atom bomb to armageddon in Dr. Strangelove, or dead serious in the aftermath of a nuclear strike in The Day After.  Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, weapons of mass destruction turned up in filmed entertainment as agents of national blackmail or in futile attacks on aliens.

Unconventional weapons today are used in stories across the entire entertainment media spectrum, but the menu is perhaps largest on television. Shows and movies in recent years have depicted the threat or aftermath of terrorist attacks involving nuclear weapons, nuclear reactors, radiological “dirty bombs,” anthrax, smallpox, tularemia, sarin and unidentified biological agents.

These offerings have increased alongside heightened fears of terrorist attacks, particularly in the wake of the Sept. 11 strikes, the U.S. anthrax mailings and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, experts said.

“The popular media is going to draw on anything that’s going to draw an audience, and this area right now is getting a lot of attention,” said Greg Evans, director of St. Louis University’s Center for the Study of Bioterrorism and Emerging Infections.

Not just from viewers — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted a Web page to point out “misconceptions” viewers might derive from watching fictional televised representations of smallpox events. The Council on Foreign Relations and Washington’s public television station WETA both this year organized screening events for the BBC film Dirty War, and invited public health, homeland security, law enforcement and media heavyweights afterward to discuss the threat of a dirty bomb attack.

There’s also the possibility that terrorists themselves are watching, said Gary Ackerman, director of the WMD Terrorism Research Program at the Monterey Institute’s Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

Producers say their work is meant only for good, to provide entertainment or to raise awareness. Some aim for realism, while others play a bit looser.

“We’re not looking for documentary-style precision, but we don’t want to be ludicrous,” said Bob Cochran, co-creator of Fox Broadcasting Co.’s 24.

24 has made the threat of nuclear or biological events the core plot lines of its last three seasons, following a comparatively quiet first season involving the attempted assassination of a presidential contender.

This year, terrorists armed with an “override” device threatened to cause meltdowns at six U.S. nuclear reactors.

“The override that they describe is totally fictional,” said Scott Burnell, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees all private nuclear reactors in the United States. “It simply is not possible to affect the operation of the control room from outside the plant.”

Burnell said the show’s producers contacted the agency last year seeking basic details on reactor operations and safety measures, enough to give the plot a “touchstone of reality.” However, they designed their own threat in order to avoid giving anyone ideas on things that could actually be done, he said.

The show focuses on weapons of mass destruction because that is now the world’s great terrorism fear, Cochran said. However, the specificity of the threats is less important than how the characters respond to the events, he said.

“In the end when the NRC said that couldn’t happen in real life, we said that was fine with us,” Cochran said. “We didn’t want to give any blueprints or ideas.”

Producers similarly hedged their bets in the previous season of 24, in which the Los Angeles area was threatened with a genetically engineered biological agent. The powdered weapon was fictional, allowing it to be more contagious and have a shorter incubation period than something like smallpox.

“It wasn’t inaccurate because it was a made-up agent,” said Vicki Beck, director of Hollywood, Health & Society, which helps provide accurate health information to television producers.

The BBC has produced two WMD movies in recent years with an eye more toward awareness than escapism.

Smallpox 2002: Silent Weapon, which was slightly revised and renamed simply Smallpox when it aired in the United States, was shot documentary-style to tell the fictional story of an act of bioterror that leads to an outbreak.

Before filming the movie, the filmmakers spent six months researching smallpox outbreaks, interviewing doctors and scientists who had worked to eliminate the disease and speaking with survivors and family members of victims, producer and co-writer Simon Chinn said on the BBC Web site.

Filming began in June 2001, and the movie was first shown in the United Kingdom the following February, said director and co-writer Daniel Percival. By that time, the Sept. 11 attacks and U.S. anthrax mailings had already occurred. “Reality started overtaking the fantasy,” Percival said.

A CDC official said she saw the movie two years ago and noted some “scientific inconsistencies.” Those led the U.S. health agency to post a Web page addressing smallpox facts and the movie when it came to the United States this January on the FX Network.

The movie shows one carrier infecting 20 people, each of whom infected another 20 people, the CDC said. By the fifth generation of infection, 3.2 million people would have contracted smallpox. The federal health agency believes a more accurate estimate would be that each victim would infect five other people, so by the fifth generation there would be 3,125 smallpox patients.

Fictional smallpox victims in the movie are shown transmitting the disease even through brief physical contact with others, while some people become infected by entering a space where a victim had been several hours earlier. 

“The disease is not that contagious,” said D.A. Henderson, who led the World Health Organization campaign to eradicate smallpox. Transmission of the disease generally requires contact that is direct and extended, up to three hours, according to the CDC.

Henderson consulted with the Smallpox filmmakers in the early stages of script development and said they made changes based on his input. While he took issue with some representations of the outbreak in the end product, he said the portrayal of people’s reaction to the epidemic was “well done.”

The CDC Web page is meant to supply information on smallpox rather than as a critique of the movie, said Varian Brandon, CDC long-lead media manager.

“It is not our mission to make a judgment call on anything the entertainment industry does,” she said.

Percival said he believes the movie is an “accurate prediction” of a smallpox outbreak on an unvaccinated populace able to reach all corners of the globe. There is disagreement within the health community on the results of an outbreak, the director said. He acknowledged, though,  that advances made in prevention and preparation for an outbreak since filming would slow the spread of infection shown in the movie.

Smallpox is “a very visceral depiction of the consequences of being unprepared,” Percival said.

The movie was shown at a meeting of the G-7 health ministers and is used by the World Health Organization as a training model for epidemiologists, Percival said.

“The core conceit of the film was to be as realistic as possible,” he said. “It’s not just designed to scare people, it’s designed to do a job of work.”

Dirty War, also directed by Percival, is similarly a depiction of a WMD event launched at an unready public and emergency response system. The movie depicts the detonation in London of a radiological weapon, and the deaths, chaos, sickness and financial devastation that follow.

Research on the film, developed by the BBC with HBO, took 14 months. Experts on terrorism, biological weapons, police response and other areas were consulted, and provided guidance during filming, research producer Stephen Barrett told the BBC.

Experts questioned some of the details — one saying the initial radiation fallout from the bomb was larger than might be expected from such a weapon, another that the movie possibly underestimated the panic that would result from an attack — but said the film is a generally realistic portrayal of what might occur if a dirty bomb were detonated in a city center.

“It was sobering, it was realistic, it was well done and obviously food for thought for us,” New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said last month following a showing of the film in Washington (see GSN, Feb. 14).

Percival said his movies are meant to “rattle the cages,” and make the case for more protection and response spending, training, medicine distribution systems and better public information against the WMD threat.

“I hope that what it does is put it high on the public agenda and high on the political agenda,” he said.

The potential exists in WMD television for good information to go to bad people, or for bad information to go to good people. There is possible danger, but also opportunity.

The Monterey Institute’s Ackerman is preparing a research project examining how WMD terrorist events are depicted in fiction — from novels to television — how accurate the portrayals are and what effects they might have on terrorists.

There are known cases in which actions by terrorist groups have closely followed fictional representations of events, Ackerman said.

Al-Qaeda initiated its chemical and biological weapons development program after seeing the attention such weapons received in the Western media, he said. The novel The Turner Diaries has been cited as an inspiration to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

Television and film are not terrorists’ “only, or primary, source for information,” Ackerman said, but the media’s ability to influence action can’t be quickly dismissed.

While Ackerman said he would oppose any governmental restrictions on media, the planned study is expected to consider whether there is value in organizing a voluntary set of guidelines for representations of terrorist events.

“You want to give them a case that is completely infeasible, you don’t want to give them ideas that could be done,” he said. “You can still tell a very engrossing story without telling anybody how to build a nuclear bomb.”

Percival said he considered during the making of both Smallpox and Dirty War whether the movies might give ideas to terrorists and whether they might expose weaknesses in authorities’ capabilities.

It’s clear now that terrorists have already considered using biological or radiological weapons, and sources such as the Internet provide far more information than might be gleaned from the BBC films, he said. The need to inform the public and press for safety improvements outweighs the minor risks of showing the movies, Percival added.

“The horse has bolted already, so let’s not put our head in the sand and hope it won’t happen,” he said.

Everyday viewers can also be affected by fiction representations of health issues.

A survey by the Harvard School of Public Health and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that regular viewers of the hit television hospital drama ER who saw the television show’s 2002 smallpox episode were less likely to say they would visit an emergency room if they had symptoms of infection than regular viewers questioned before the episode aired.

Regular viewers who had seen the show also appeared more knowledgeable about smallpox vaccinations than those surveyed before the episode aired, according to the survey.

Nonproliferation and health experts said they don’t expect dramatic television to be fully true to life. However, viewers often talk about shows that catch their attention, creating the chance for bad information to spread, Beck said.

“We know there will be dramatic license, but where we get concerned is where that could be harmful to the public through misinformation,” she said. “We want accurate information because we know … that people pay attention to the information that’s on television.”

Screening of movies can be an opportunity for education — the HBO and FX Network Web sites for Dirty War and Smallpox both offered links to Web pages offering information on their respective topics. Public and private screenings of Dirty War have also helped spread its message, Percival said.

Hollywood, Health & Society connects television writers and producers with health professionals who can provide accurate information for their plots. 

CDC official Mitchell Cohen consulted with the producers of 24 in the show’s third season. They accepted his recommendation to have an infection outbreak in a hotel switched from a depiction in which all guests die to a portrayal of a response by law enforcement and health personnel that saves lives.

“It was potentially a vehicle by which we could educate the public about bioterrorism and preparedness,” said Cohen, director of the CDC Coordinating Center for Infectious Diseases.

Hollywood Health also collaborated with the CDC on informational online “tip sheets” on anthrax, smallpox, bioterrorism and a host of other health topics.

Percival probably won’t need that sort of guidance on his next film. He is working with his Dirty War co-writer Lizzie Mickery on a political thriller set in the British Embassy in Washington.

“I’m very happy to back off from disasters right now.”

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