The story concerns an insane brigadier general of the United States Air Force who orders a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.

At the time of issuance of said order, the planes, flying B-52 bombers armed with thermonuclear bombs, are on airborne alert two hours from their targets inside the Soviet Union.

Happening upon a radio that had been missed earlier and hearing regular civilian broadcasting, Mandrake realizes that no attack order has been issued by the Pentagon and tries to stop Ripper, who locks them both in his office.

Muffley warns the premier of the impending attack and offers to reveal the targets, flight plans, and defensive systems of the bombers so that the Soviets can protect themselves.

The president's German scientific adviser, the paraplegic former Nazi Dr. Strangelove, points out that such a doomsday machine would only have been an effective deterrent if everyone knew about it; de Sadeski replies that Kissov had planned to reveal its existence to the world the following week at the Party Congress.

In the War Room, Dr. Strangelove recommends that the President gather several hundred thousand people to live in deep underground mines where the radiation will not penetrate.

The condition stemmed from the studio's opinion that much of the success of Kubrick's previous film Lolita (1962) was based on Sellers's performance, in which his single character assumes several identities.

[16] There is also a heavy resemblance to Sellers's friend and occasional co-star Terry-Thomas and the prosthetic-limbed RAF flying ace Sir Douglas Bader.

Sellers drew inspiration for the role from Adlai Stevenson,[16] a former Illinois governor who was the Democratic candidate for the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections and the U.N. ambassador during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Dr. Strangelove is a scientist and former Nazi, suggesting Operation Paperclip, the US effort to recruit top German technical talent at the end of World War II.

[25] According to Alexander Walker, Sellers improvised Dr. Strangelove's lapse into the Nazi salute, borrowing one of Kubrick's black leather gloves for the uncontrollable hand that makes the gesture.

Kubrick wore the gloves on the set to avoid being burned when handling hot lights, and Sellers, recognizing the potential connection to Lang's work, found them to be menacing.

[29] Kubrick's biographer John Baxter explained, in the documentary Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove: As it turns out, Slim Pickens had never left the United States.

He is seen during most of the movie advising President Muffley on the best steps to take in order to stop the fleet of B-52 Stratofortresses that was deployed by Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper to drop nuclear bombs on Soviet soil.

[32][33] Stanley Kubrick started with nothing but a vague idea to make a thriller about a nuclear accident that built on the widespread Cold War fear for survival.

At Kubrick's request, Alastair Buchan (the head of the Institute for Strategic Studies) recommended the thriller novel Red Alert by Peter George.

[35] Kubrick was impressed with the book, which had also been praised by game theorist and future Nobel Prize in Economics winner Thomas Schelling in an article written for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and reprinted in The Observer,[36] and immediately bought the film rights.

One side of the room was covered with gigantic strategic maps reflecting in a shiny black floor inspired by dance scenes in Fred Astaire films.

Kubrick insisted that the table would be covered with green baize (although this could not be seen in the black-and-white film) to reinforce the actors' impression that they are playing 'a game of poker for the fate of the world.

When some United States Air Force personnel were invited to view the reconstructed B-52 cockpit, they said that "it was absolutely correct, even to the little black box which was the CRM.

As told by editor Roy Benson in the BBC radio documentary Celluloid Beatles, the production team of Magical Mystery Tour lacked footage to cover the sequence for the song "Flying".

[51] What worried Kubrick the most was that Fail Safe boasted the acclaimed director Sidney Lumet and the first-rate dramatic actors Henry Fonda as the American president and Walter Matthau as the adviser to the Pentagon, Professor Groeteschele.

[52] Kubrick insisted that the studio release his movie first,[53] and Fail Safe opened eight months after Dr. Strangelove, to critical acclaim but mediocre ticket sales.

[61] Military strategist and former physicist Herman Kahn, in the book On Thermonuclear War (1960), used the theoretical example of a "doomsday machine" to illustrate the limitations of MAD, which was developed by John von Neumann.

With this reasoning, Kahn became one of the architects of the flexible response doctrine which, while superficially resembling MAD, allowed for the possibility of responding to a limited nuclear strike with a proportional, or calibrated, return of fire (see Conflict escalation).

Kahn in his writings and talks would often come across as cold and calculating, for example, with his use of the term "megadeaths" and in his willingness to estimate how many human lives the United States could lose and still rebuild economically.

[64] The fallout-shelter-network proposal mentioned in the film, with its inherently high radiation protection characteristics, has similarities and contrasts to that of the real Swiss civil defense network.

The director wrote back to Benson and confirmed the interpretation, "Seriously, you are the first one who seems to have noticed the sexual framework from intromission (the planes going in) to the last spasm (Kong's ride down and detonation at target).

All the gods before whom the America of the stolid, paranoid 50s had genuflected—the Bomb, the Pentagon, the National Security State, the President himself, Texan masculinity and the alleged Commie menace of water-fluoridation—went into the wood-chipper and never got the same respect ever again.

"[85] Southern recalled how Kubrick grew concerned about seeming apathy and distancing by studio heads Abe Schneider and Mo Rothman, and by Columbia's characterization of the film as "just a zany, novelty flick which did not reflect the views of the corporation in any way.