In Netflix’s A House of Dynamite, the President of the United States, portrayed by Idris Elba, and the entire country face a lethal crisis. When a nuclear missile races toward Chicago, he is nowhere near ready to handle the emergency.

When the film’s screenwriter, Noah Oppenheim, and director, Kathryn Bigelow, did some digging around to prepare for the film, they made a disturbing discovery. A House of Dynamite’s dilemma and how ill-prepared the protagonist was for the attack weren’t far from reality. Presidents are rarely involved when it comes to preparing for a nuclear attack.

Oppenheim and Bigelow found out that Ronald Reagan was the last president who took a hands-on approach when it came to dealing with nuclear threats. Most of the time, these matters are handled by the Secretary of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Military Command Center, and U.S. Strategic Command. While it’s great that the country does have a lot of people who are ready to take on these threats, the president’s lack of involvement isn’t ideal.

In an interview with Deadline, Oppenheim provided more insight into the situation as he has had a lot of experience researching these matters. The writer was once the president of NBC News. As a result, he had plenty of contacts whom he spoke to throughout the process, so A House of Dynamite could be more accurate than other films in its genre.

The people that we met and spoke to who had been watch officers in the White House Situation Room, who had been civilian officials within the Pentagon, who had been retired military, who worked for Stratcom or in missile defense — these are incredible public servants. They’re experts in their field. They devoted their entire careers to keeping us safe. The people we spoke to were as apolitical as you can imagine.

The writer also spoke about how scary it was that the President of the United States isn’t more involved in the process. He explained how a person who can command the use of nuclear weapons should know more about them and the dangers that come with using them.

One of the scariest facts that we uncovered early in our research process was when we were speaking to a former senior official who had worked at the Pentagon, and we asked him, “How often does the president of the United States rehearse for this scenario?” And his response was, “Hardly ever at all.” And that’s particularly troubling, because in the United States of America, we have a nuclear monarchy. We have a system that’s based on sole authority. The president of the United States gets to decide if, when and how we use nuclear weapons unilaterally. He doesn’t have to take a vote of the Cabinet or the Joint Chiefs. He doesn’t have to build any kind of consensus at all. It’s all on his or her shoulders, and yet he’s the least prepared and practiced.

While he and his film did face some criticism from the Pentagon, he was also commended by many others. According to him, a lot of experts praised the accuracy of A House of Dynamite.

Two things stand out. One is the number of people that we have heard from who work on the front lines at these agencies and in these institutions, whether it’s the White House Situation Room or Strategic Command or the Pentagon or the CIA — people telling us that they felt like we accurately captured their worlds, which was, of course, of enormous importance to us. So that’s been enormously gratifying. The second thing is the extent to which so many people seem eager to be finally having this conversation about the nuclear threat and what we all might do to help mitigate it. It’s a topic that lawmakers, scholars, activists, many of them feel like has been far too long neglected, and it’s been great to see how many have kind of used the movie as a jumping-off point to have these important conversations.

A House of Dynamite is now available to stream on Netflix.