Kathryn Bigelow, the director, and Alexandra Bell, the arms-control expert, are both nuclear-attack-submarine literate. Bigelow—whose new Netflix film, “A House of Dynamite,” imagines the U.S. government’s response to an incoming intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) eighteen minutes from impact—shot part of her 2002 submarine film, entitled “K-19: The Widowmaker,” on a decommissioned Soviet sub from the nineteen-sixties. Her team had found it drydocked in Florida, then had it towed to Nova Scotia. “When we were shooting in the submarine, we had to wear helmets and shoulder pads because you were hitting everything,” she said the other day. “It was painful.”

Bell, who is the new president of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has visited active nuclear-missile submarines—“boomers,” in Navy slang—as part of her work on arms control. “I’ve been on the U.S.S. West Virginia twice, and the U.S.S. Maryland as well, working as the State Department rep on the Biden Administration’s Nuclear Posture Review,” she said. She’s toured with Japanese and South Korean officials, making her expert at, she says, “getting photographed in front of military equipment.” She added, “I have a good looking-at-things face.”

Bigelow and Bell had met up in the entrance hall of the Intrepid Museum, and were about to explore the U.S.S. Growler, the Cold War-era vessel, docked on Pier 86, that is the only known American nuclear-attack sub open to the public. It was a first for both women. In the exhibit that precedes the sub tour, Bigelow, who is in her seventies and wore a down jacket, pointed to an old wooden school desk.

“That was my inspiration!” she said. “A House of Dynamite” grew out of her curiosity for the threat that had once had her and her Bay Area schoolmates ducking and covering.

“For all the good that would have done!” Bell said.

“Maybe the desk was made of Teflon,” Bigelow joked.

“There’ve been articles lately about how the diminution of civil defense as a conversation point in American society is one of the reasons that people don’t feel the threat,” Bell said. The Bulletin’s Doomsday Clock was launched in 1947, in Chicago, to illustrate the world’s proximity to global catastrophe. It is currently set at eighty-nine seconds to midnight, and Bell has invited Bigelow to D.C. to see it get reset in late January, days before the nation’s last major nuclear-arms-control agreement with Russia will expire.

Bell, who wore a blazer with a Doomsday Clock pin attached, hadn’t yet been born when Bigelow moved to New York from San Francisco, with dreams of being an artist. Bigelow paid her rent by renovating apartments with Philip Glass. “He would do the plumbing, and I would do the Sheetrock,” she said.

“I was too young to have duck and cover,” Bell said. “But there were still conversations about ending nuclear testing.” She remembered becoming attuned to politics when she was nine: “It was the Exxon Valdez oil spill. I was so pissed. My parents had no idea what to do with that righteous anger. So they’re, like, ‘You should write to the President.’ So I did, complaining about the oil spill, but I also chastised him about nuclear threats.”

The pair moved through the exhibitions that described the Growler’s mission. Before the Navy developed submarine-launchable nukes, such warheads were attached to cruise missiles; the Growler patrolled the Kamchatka Peninsula, its crew knowing that, if they surfaced to fire, the sub would likely be destroyed.

Although the Pentagon has reportedly questioned the over-all accuracy of “A House of Dynamite,” Bell praised its verisimilitude, citing its depiction of Fort Greely, an Alaska base tasked with intercepting ICBMs. “I know the Fort Greely scenes were shot in Iceland,” she said, “but I was, like, ‘How did they get into Fort Greely?’ ” Ditto STRATCOM—short for U.S. Strategic Command—which is based in Nebraska.

“We were there,” Bigelow said, of STRATCOM.“And the ‘Big Board’ sign at the bottom of the screen—that was there.” She was referring to the actual threat-monitoring display board at the command center, which references the moment in “Dr. Strangelove” when a U.S. general protests a Russian ambassador’s visit to the war room: “He’ll see everything! He’ll see the big board!”

“The odd thing about this field is how much you’ve got to insert humor,” Bell said. “Even though I think most people might think it’s macabre.”

Bigelow and Bell entered the sub, starting their tour in the empty missile shed. It reminded Bigelow of the day, in 2001, when the Russians had allowed her to visit the K-19 sub, situated just outside the port city of Murmansk. The vessel had patrolled during the same years as the Growler but, in 1961, suffered a reactor incident that radiated its crew. Bigelow recalled,“I could only stand on the hull.”

Bell moved through the forward hatches, past cramped bunks and a copy of James A. Michener’s “Hawaii,” on a shelf. In the control room, a guide explained the difference between megatons and kilotons—she was reading from “Nuclear War: A Scenario.” “To me, every moment that we have until metaphorical midnight is room for hope,” Bell said. “And that’s the message I’m really trying to get out about the Doomsday Clock. It’s not just to scare people. It’s a call to action.” ♦