Washington, DC, December 23, 2014 -- A recently released Sandia Labs film contains fascinating glimpses into the U.S. government's efforts to maintain nuclear weapons safety over the years, including a late 1960 episode in which a senior Los Alamos Laboratory staffer advised a U.S. soldier in West Germany to take shots with his gun at nuclear bombs on German fighter-bombers if he ever became concerned about the possibility of their misguided or accidental use.

This startling recollection appears in Always/Never: The Quest for Safety, Control and Survivability, a documentary film completed in 2010 and recently released under the Freedom of Information Act, which the National Security Archive is presenting today in its entirety for the first time.

Produced and directed by Sandia staffer Dan Curry, Always/Never melds historical motion picture footage, still photos, interviews, movie excerpts, computer animation, and even some well-timed clips from Stanley Kubrick's classic Dr. Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.