The high-stakes premise of “Last Resort,” co-created by “The Shield’s” Shawn Ryan, is as follows: The nuclear submarine the USS Colorado is contentedly swanning around the Indian Ocean when it receives suspicious orders to fire four nuclear bombs on Pakistan. Capt. Marcus Chaplin, the ever-commanding Andre Braugher, and XO Sam Kendal, the ever-whispering Scott Speedman, request that order be reconfirmed before they kill 4 million people. Instead of reconfirmation, the Colorado gets hit by an inbound missile, fired from another U.S. warship. The Colorado books it to an island paradise — verdant, well populated, home to a NATO satellite station, but, as of yet, anyway, without polar bears — to plot its next move. Things get crazier from there, with nukes detonated in both Pakistan and 200 miles off the coast of D.C. (“Last Resort” joins “The Dark Knight Rises” in being totally unconcerned with radiation poisoning), dissension among the crew, and the early unspooling of a grand conspiracy. The episode ends with Braugher, gone spine-tinglingly Colonel Kurtz, releasing a YouTube video establishing a 200-mile perimeter around the island. Anyone who enters will say hello to one of the 17 nuclear weapons in his arsenal. No man is an island, unless he has the bomb.

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