The Lost Missile 1958

An unknown missile-like object appears in near space, prompting a European nation on the edge of the Iron Curtain to fire a rocket at it. Although the interceptor detonates the object, the explosion only nudges the craft into an orbit around the Earth, racing about five miles above the planet. The immense heat generated by its engine scorches the landscape below, unleashing widespread destruction on whatever lies in its path.

In suburban New York, at the Havenbrook Atomic Laboratory, a facility thinly disguised as a nod to Brookhaven National Laboratory, Dr. David Loring [Robert Loggia] and his assistant Joan Woods [Ellen Parker] are counting down to their wedding later that day. They are deeply in love, yet their plans collide with David’s single-minded devotion to his work. He is absorbed in developing a hydrogen warhead for the new “Jove” rocket, a project so consuming that it has already strangled past attempts to seal the knot. As the couple prepares for the moment, David’s laser focus on his experiments irritates Joan, and she bluntly accuses him of letting his obsession with science eclipse their relationship. The tension boils over, and she ultimately calls off the marriage, leaving David to reckon with the personal cost of his ambition.

Meanwhile, the skyward threat continues to close the distance toward North America. A radar station along the DEW Line detects the incoming missile, and the warning quickly transmits to CONAD (Continental Air Defense Command). A patrol jet is scrambled to intercept, but as it approaches, it is overwhelmed by the missile’s incredible heat and is destroyed. The image captured by the jet’s camera is relayed to defense centers, triggering a broader mobilization of air and ground forces across the United States and Canada. In the ensuing hours, Canadian jets attempt to engage the missile, but their efforts fail, and the craft’s trajectory remains unstoppable.

With the threat looming over New York, civil defense procedures are put into effect, and the city begins to evacuate as the authorities predict the missile’s path. The defense network recognizes that conventional weapons cannot stop this firestorm, and the clock begins to tick toward a desperate plan. David, in a moment of insight and stubborn resolve, realizes that the Jove rocket could be used to pierce the extreme heat and reach the missile. The plan hinges on a fission bomb trigger—an unfinished hydrogen warhead’s plutonium core—that must be safely transported to the rocket’s base. In the meantime, emergency crews push to evacuate Havenbrook and move civilians away from potential impact zones.

A dangerous twist emerges as a group of young criminals steals the couple’s jeep, hoping to seize the precious plutonium core. The chase that follows ends in tragedy: the would-be thieves are found dead from radiation poisoning after they dare to open the lead-lined container that safeguards the core. Time is running out, and the consequences of exposure are deadly. David, fully aware that handling the core is a fatal gamble, grabs the box and drives toward the waiting rocket, determined to complete the mission even at the cost of his life. He loads the plutonium core into the warhead and sacrifices himself so that the weapon can do what conventional forces could not: intercept the rogue missile.

The launched rocket arcs into the upper atmosphere, intercepts the ballistic threat over Lake Champlain, and detonates in a controlled strike that destroys the incoming missile before it crosses into the populated zones. In the final minutes, the narrative shifts to the aftermath: New York City’s streets begin to show signs of life amid the reconstruction, while a movie marquee for 1951’s Two Tickets to Broadway scrolls by as a quiet reminder of ordinary life continuing in the wake of catastrophe.

In the end, the story presents a sober portrait of a crisis averted through sacrifice, science, and urgent civilian resilience, underscored by the personal cost of pursuing a mission at any price.