The highly anticipated new documentary, Command and Control, which presents a chilling account of one of many near nuclear disasters America has faced – and still faces – is opening in select theaters across the country for a limited time.

The film, based on the eponymous bestselling book by renowned journalist Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), will kick-off its theatrical release in New York on September 14, followed by screenings [1] rolled out over the next month in in Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco and Atlanta, among many other cities.

About the film: A chilling nightmare plays out at a Titan II missile complex in Arkansas in September 1980. A worker accidentally drops a socket, puncturing the fuel tank of an intercontinental ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead in our arsenal, an incident that ignites a series of feverish efforts to avoid a deadly disaster.

Directed by Robert Kenner (Food, Inc.), Command and Control is a minute-by-minute account of this long-hidden story. Putting a camera where there was no camera that night, Kenner brings this nonfiction thriller to life with stunning original footage shot in a decommissioned Titan II missile silo. Eyewitness accounts — from the man who dropped the socket, to the man who designed the warhead, to the Secretary of Defense — chronicle nine hours of terror that prevented an explosion 600 times more powerful than Hiroshima.

Learn more about the film [2], and why the lessons learned are so important today as the US is set to rebuild its entire nuclear arsenal [3] – a dangerous and unnecessary plan estimated to cost taxpayers some 1 trillion dollars.

Photo: Titan II missile in the missile silo at the Titan Missile Museum, Pima County, Arizona