Headscratchers / Civil War (2024)

• Where are the nukes? America's ICBM silos, half of their nuclear-capable bombers, and their nuclear submarine bases are now in the hands of rebel states. What are the status of these and why aren't they being used or threatened to be used (especially by a spiralling Nick Offerman)?

• Recent years have seen the proliferation of new technologies such as the battlefield use of small drones, loitering munitions, and other fancy toys while the film seems stuck in the aughties at best. For speculative fiction there isn't a lot of speculation for how future wars like this one will be fought.
  • Those technologies require infrastructure and trained people to work. If a civil war broke out in the United States, a country that is the leader on the production of such tech, forces on both sides would've worked to secure, take over, or disable them. For all we know, they were used early on but became scarce due to lack of resources to replenish them, were disabled by EMP, or were still used and were never shown on screen.

• Force projection: How are the Western Forces capable of fighting all the way though loyalist territory to Washington, DC in what seems to be an extremely rapid time?
  • We don't know how long the war has been going on or how it has progressed. Even in states that were still loyal on paper, there may have been enough dissent for any of the President's Loyalists to turn against him and it just wasn't made official.

• Why was the president hiding the Oval Office instead of being the Emergency Operations Center, y'know, the secure bunker under the White House? Or even evacuated to Raven Rock, deeper into loyalist territory, or even overseas?
  • Suicidal overconfidence is a possibility. The President was a fascist in his third term and probably felt the White House as a whole was secure and fortified from an attack. By the time the Western Forces were invading Washington, DC, it was too late to evacuate. His usual escape routes or secure locations were either compromised or would've required going through enemy forces on the ground and in the air. The use of "The Beast" and sacrificing his remaining people was a desperate, last-ditch act to stay alive.
  • He'd just sent a decoy car out, so he was probably intending to escape shortly, and didn't have time to make it to the bunker before WF troops breached the White House.

• As seen in recent wars, most of the information on conflicts are now disseminated by non-traditional sources, such as Twitter, Telegram, and independent blogs. Social media is conspicuously absent, even when it provides a philosophical challenge to the privilege held by traditional journalists like the protagonists.
  • Social media requires infrastructure to access, whether you’re posting or just viewing it. When the protagonists are in the hotel in New York, they comment that the Wi-Fi is spotty. And if that’s the case in New York, what about the rest of he country?

• Why was the strike team given orders to kill the president instead of capturing him? Or capturing other members of his administration such as the first lady? Even if he is a monster, a trial to bring all of his crimes to light would be critical for reconciliation with the remaining loyalist governments and reestablishing rule of law, as well as being good PR.
  • Possibly to highlight just how far off the deep end everyone's gone? Even if it's rational to capture the president rather than kill him, everyone's so blinded by rage and hatred that they don't care anymore.