Adaptation of the 1962 novel by Harvey Wheeler and Eugene Burdick, in which Cold War tensions climb to a fever pitch when a U.S. bomber is accidentally ordered to drop a nuclear warhead on Moscow, due to a transmission blunder. The President and U.S. military leaders must take drastic measures to save the world.Colonel Jack Grady, a U.S. Air Force bomber pilot, is assigned with co-pilot Pierce, to what he imagines to be another routine flight. At the same time, in the Omaha Room, Colonels Bogan and Cascio and Gordon Knapp, one of the developers of the computer defense systems, are giving a tour of the facility to Congressman Tom Raskob. Bogan points out an unidentified object on the radar, but assumes it will be identified, as usual. Meanwhile, at the Pentagon War Room, Warren "Blackie" Black and his fellow war advisors are monitoring the same blip on the radar. Just seconds before the fail safe point at which bombers are ordered into action, the U.F.O. is identified as a lost plane and the bombers are called in. But a computer malfunction has caused the lights to flash on Grady's fail safe box, enforcing his group of planes to follow orders corresponding to a special code -- in this case to bomb Moscow.