"The world as we know it almost ended four years ago, coming within about two minutes of nuclear holocaust...

'Russian Roulette' -- produced by England's Channel Four Television in association with PBS' Frontline documentary unit -- supplies those chilling details, and more...

[The] documentary relies too heavily, as British productions tend to do, on generic archival footage edited to mimic the actual crisis, and the audio track of ominous music doesn't add to the sequence's credibility.

Once past that, however, the report settles down to the hard-edged business of assessing the danger of the situation. What emerges from interviews with experts in both the U.S. and Russia, in and out of both governments, is agreement that the systems of command and control over Russia's nuclear arsenal and its early-warning systems have deteriorated drastically."

"With all the chaos in the former Soviet Union, ever wonder who --if anyone -- is in charge of the nuclear arsenal that made up its defense system? (Word is Russia recently asked the U.S. for $3 billion to fix Y2K problems in the computers that control its missiles. Uh-oh.) Ever think about the chances of a missile accidentally being launched? On Frontline, 'Russian Roulette' raises some very scary possibilities."