I remember the movie FAILSAFE with Henry Fonda. Great movie, but I felt that Dr. Strangelove was more effective at carrying its message (and who could forget Colonel Bat Guano and his warnings about the Soviets coming to contaminate our Precious Bodily Fluids?).
I agree that humanity is sort of in a race to build a spaceborne civilization before Earth becomes unable to support such an effort. This IMO is our own version of the “Great Filter”. I’m not a fan of Malthusian doomsaying (I actually had to look up his name. It’s been a while), but the single most important factor that will decide humanity’s eventual fate is our success or failure in building a sustainable spaceborne civilization…because as nice as life is on our planet today (*relatively* speaking, humanity is more peaceful *today* than at any time in recorded history), it won’t last. Maybe it will be a global thermonuclear exchange or a superbug, or it might be a supervolcano or a comet/asteroid, or it could be our collective industrial efforts to Make Earth Venus Again…but in any case, we have to find a way to have a sustainable civilization off-planet.