Fail Safe is a 2000 televised broadcast play, based on Fail-Safe, the Cold War novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler.

In the early-to-mid-1960s, the height of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, an unknown aircraft approaches North America from Europe.

U.S. Vindicator bombers of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) are scrambled to their fail safe points near the Russian Far East.

However, due to a technical failure, the attack code, CAP811, is transmitted to Group Six, which consists of six Vindicator supersonic bombers and four escort fighters.

Concluding that the attack order and the radio jamming could only mean war, Grady commands Group Six towards Moscow, their intended destination.

At meetings in Omaha, the Pentagon, and in the fallout shelter of the White House, U.S. politicians and scholars debate the implications of the attack.

After using their afterburners in an attempt to catch the bombers, the fighters run out of fuel and crash, dooming the pilots to die of exposure in the Arctic Sea.

General Bogan tells Marshal Nevsky, the Soviet air defense commander, to ignore the decoy plane because it is harmless.

As a last-minute measure, the Soviets fire a barrage of nuclear-tipped missiles to form a fireball in an attempt to knock the low-flying Vindicator out of the sky.