美国空军将领杰克•瑞（斯特林·海登 Sterling Hayden 饰）怀疑苏共的“腐朽思想”正在毒害“正直善良”的美国人民，他于是下令携带核弹头的飞行部队前往苏联，对敌人进行毁灭性的核打击。苏联方面得知此事，立即致电美国总统墨尔金•马夫雷（彼得·塞勒斯 Peter Sellers 饰），并威胁如若领土遭到攻击，苏联将不惜一切代价按下“世界末日装置”。该装置的威力足以摧毁地球上所有的生命。 　　一场有关全人类乃至整个地球命运的战争就这样悄然且荒诞地拉开了序幕…… 　　影片根据彼得•乔治1958年的小说《红色警戒（Red Alert）》改编而成，与《2001漫游太空》、《发条橙》并称为“未来三部曲”。Paranoid Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper of Burpelson Air Force Base, believing that fluoridation of the American water supply is a Soviet plot to poison the U.S. populace, is able to deploy through a back door mechanism a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union without the knowledge of his superiors, including the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Buck Turgidson, and President Merkin Muffley. Only Ripper knows the code to recall the B-52 bombers and he has shut down communication in and out of Burpelson as a measure to protect this attack. Ripper's executive officer, RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (on exchange from Britain), who is being held at Burpelson by Ripper, believes he knows the recall codes if he can only get a message to the outside world. Meanwhile at the Pentagon War Room, key persons including Muffley, Turgidson and nuclear scientist and adviser, a former Nazi named Dr. Strangelove, are discussing measures to stop the attack or mitigate its blow-up into an all out nuclear war with the Soviets. Against Turgidson's wishes, Muffley brings Soviet Ambassador Alexi de Sadesky into the War Room, and get his boss, Soviet Premier Dimitri Kisov, on the hot line to inform him of what's going on. The Americans in the War Room are dismayed to learn that the Soviets have an as yet unannounced Doomsday Device to detonate if any of their key targets are hit. As Ripper, Mandrake and those in the War Room try and work the situation to their end goal, Major T.J. "King" Kong, one of the B-52 bomber pilots, is working on his own agenda of deploying his bomb where ever he can on enemy soil if he can't make it to his intended target.