[1] While digging in her garden, harried housewife Penny unearths a wooden box containing a gold pendant in the shape of a sundial.
She discovers that saying "shut up" while wearing the pendant causes the entire world but herself to become frozen in time and saying "start talking" makes everything begin moving again.
She also silences news programs about recent arms talks between the United States and the Soviet Union and moves door-to-door anti-nuclear weapons activists away from her house while they are frozen in time.
When the radio reveals that ICBMs have entered U.S. airspace, the terrified Penny freezes time, then leaves her house and walks through town.
As she notices terrified people looking skyward, she looks up to see a Soviet nuclear missile frozen a few hundred feet in the air, nose down, and moments from impact.