(Bonus) Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (known simply and more commonly as Dr. Strangelove) is a 1964 political satire black comedy film directed, co-written, and produced by Stanley Kubrick and starring Peter Sellers in three roles, including the title character. The film, which satirizes the Cold War fears of a nuclear conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States, also stars George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens, and Tracy Reed, and is loosely based on the thriller novel Red Alert (1958) by Peter George, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Kubrick and Terry Southern. The story concerns an unhinged United States Air Force general who orders a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. It separately follows the President of the United States, his advisors, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a Royal Air Force exchange officer as they attempt to prevent the crew of a B-52 (following orders from the general) from bombing the Soviet Union and starting a nuclear war.