Drawing on personal experience, filmmaker Mel Halbach takes us on a journey through a Cold War underworld --aboard a nuclear-missile submarine prepared to fight World War III. Through interviews, stock footage, and animation, Mr. Halbach recreates the extraordinary life he and his shipmates led as they prowled the ocean depths with their trigger fingers at the ready, sometimes relieving their anxiety with recreational drug use.

After the film screening, Mr. Halbach will engage in a colloquy with the audience.

Mel Halbach's curiosity about people sustains his 25-year career as an independent filmmaker. Frequent travels to Vietnam in the 1990s culminated in his award-winning film The Long Haired Warriors, a documentary about Vietnamese women who were soldiers, activists, and prisoners of war. He has filmed stories from the wartorn countries of Southeast Asia, Central America, and Eastern Europe and from the sandblasted desert of the Burning Man festival in Nevada. His last film, Sub Conscous, is about his experience aboard a nuclear-missile submarine during the Cold War.