Disarm a bomb (red wire or blue wire?)
September 16, 2014 9:31 AM Subscribe
In the movies --- the hero's wire cutters hover between the red wire and the blue wire of the bomb. As the seconds tick away on the digital timer, and at the last moment, he/she cuts the green wire, the bomb is disarmed and everybody is saved.
In real life, wouldn't you just rip all the wires out? (Or cut them all together). Can you be quick enough to prevent any kind of trip-wire detonation? Do home-base and/or commercially made explosive devices have booby-trap wires that, when cut, trigger the device? Wouldn't cutting the wires that lead to the explosive material itself just be the way to go - no matter no complicated the timers, sensors etc are, if the explosive itself is disconnected, it can't go off. I guess I just am looking for reassurance that the stuff in the movies is made up fantasy. Can any expert here please help?
Quickly please - the counter says 59, 58, 57 ....
Thanks
ps: bonus question. Surely there's no wire that would really make the timer count down in super-quick speed?
In real life, wouldn't you just rip all the wires out? (Or cut them all together). Can you be quick enough to prevent any kind of trip-wire detonation? Do home-base and/or commercially made explosive devices have booby-trap wires that, when cut, trigger the device? Wouldn't cutting the wires that lead to the explosive material itself just be the way to go - no matter no complicated the timers, sensors etc are, if the explosive itself is disconnected, it can't go off. I guess I just am looking for reassurance that the stuff in the movies is made up fantasy. Can any expert here please help?
Quickly please - the counter says 59, 58, 57 ....
Thanks
ps: bonus question. Surely there's no wire that would really make the timer count down in super-quick speed?
Take a deep breath and have a browse through wikipedia.
Bomb Disposal, particularly Techniques and Equipment. The tl;dr version is "why disassemble it, when you can blow it up".
Anti-handling device covers various kinds of booby traps.
posted by zamboni at 9:39 AM on September 16, 2014 [2 favorites]
Bomb Disposal, particularly Techniques and Equipment. The tl;dr version is "why disassemble it, when you can blow it up".
Anti-handling device covers various kinds of booby traps.
posted by zamboni at 9:39 AM on September 16, 2014 [2 favorites]
Real bombs often have anti-handling devices that can include secondary circuits to trigger the explosives if they detect electrical faults in the primary circuits. Since it's highly unlikely that you'd be able to disable every circuit simultaneously, it would be a very bad idea to just cut wires at random on a so-equipped bomb.
A more practical approach that is less frequently depicted is removing the blasting caps from the explosives without compromising the electronics. This, too, is dangerous, but is harder for a bombmaker to design against.
posted by fifthrider at 9:41 AM on September 16, 2014 [4 favorites]
A more practical approach that is less frequently depicted is removing the blasting caps from the explosives without compromising the electronics. This, too, is dangerous, but is harder for a bombmaker to design against.
posted by fifthrider at 9:41 AM on September 16, 2014 [4 favorites]
Skimming, in Northern Ireland bomb makers started adding anti-handling widgets to their homebuilt bombs.
posted by sebastienbailard at 9:41 AM on September 16, 2014
posted by sebastienbailard at 9:41 AM on September 16, 2014
Real bombs often have anti-handling devices that can include secondary circuits to trigger the explosives if they detect electrical faults in the primary circuits.
Apparently these can be called collapsing circuits in bombs and security alarms.
posted by sebastienbailard at 9:46 AM on September 16, 2014
Apparently these can be called collapsing circuits in bombs and security alarms.
posted by sebastienbailard at 9:46 AM on September 16, 2014
If you're interested in WWII-era bomb-disarming thrills, techniques and details with a British flavour, seek out the Danger UXB mini-series from 1979.
posted by Rash at 9:54 AM on September 16, 2014 [4 favorites]
posted by Rash at 9:54 AM on September 16, 2014 [4 favorites]
Here's a decent account of how improvised devices were/are dealt with by a modern military.
In short, it's a movie fiction. Bomb disposal experts do everything they can to avoid putting themselves in this situation.
posted by bonehead at 9:55 AM on September 16, 2014
In short, it's a movie fiction. Bomb disposal experts do everything they can to avoid putting themselves in this situation.
posted by bonehead at 9:55 AM on September 16, 2014
The English Patient has a character who is a bomb disposal tech. The book is quite detailed about how they did disarmed German bombs in WWII, including special fuzes set to blow up the bomb disposal teams.
I worked a bit with an Explosive Ordinance Team (EOD) a while back in the military. Their favorite technique was the robot with a shotgun. They would just shoot the bomb apart before it had a chance to go off. So try your shotgun!
posted by procrastination at 10:01 AM on September 16, 2014 [4 favorites]
I worked a bit with an Explosive Ordinance Team (EOD) a while back in the military. Their favorite technique was the robot with a shotgun. They would just shoot the bomb apart before it had a chance to go off. So try your shotgun!
posted by procrastination at 10:01 AM on September 16, 2014 [4 favorites]
The other extreme is the suitcase nuke. If I understand the design of a nuclear bomb, the precise alignment is critical, I'd like to see the solution in a film where at the last second the hero takes a sledge hammer to the bomb.
Mostly if you see it in a film, it's just not real.
posted by sammyo at 10:21 AM on September 16, 2014
Mostly if you see it in a film, it's just not real.
posted by sammyo at 10:21 AM on September 16, 2014
Best answer: Previously on the Straight Dope message board. And previously. And previously. (And there are few more similar threads there, but those seem to be the ones with the most responses.)
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 10:24 AM on September 16, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 10:24 AM on September 16, 2014 [2 favorites]
Well, if you are dealing with mass-produced bombs...
I have a previous answer on this.
This trope was introduced at a time when there had been a lot of mass produced bombs around, and their design was studied to find ways of disarming them -- leading the bomb makers to change their methods.
Surely there's no wire that would really make the timer count down in super-quick speed?
There's no reason someone couldn't design a circuit to do this.
I guess I just am looking for reassurance that the stuff in the movies is made up fantasy
In general, or just on this topic? Movies generally incorporate many fantasy elements, but any movie may have a mix of accurate and fantasy elements.
For instance, a movie might have a prop with wires and a numeric display that will speed up if a certain wire is cut, and a bundle of tape or modeling clay that is completely harmless.
You can be reassured that any fiction movie made by a major studio will not use an actual explosive on the bomb prop that the actor is cutting wires on. A documentary movie that uses archival footage might have footage of someone actually disarming a real bomb in a real-life dangerous situation.
posted by yohko at 11:33 AM on September 16, 2014
I have a previous answer on this.
This trope was introduced at a time when there had been a lot of mass produced bombs around, and their design was studied to find ways of disarming them -- leading the bomb makers to change their methods.
Surely there's no wire that would really make the timer count down in super-quick speed?
There's no reason someone couldn't design a circuit to do this.
I guess I just am looking for reassurance that the stuff in the movies is made up fantasy
In general, or just on this topic? Movies generally incorporate many fantasy elements, but any movie may have a mix of accurate and fantasy elements.
For instance, a movie might have a prop with wires and a numeric display that will speed up if a certain wire is cut, and a bundle of tape or modeling clay that is completely harmless.
You can be reassured that any fiction movie made by a major studio will not use an actual explosive on the bomb prop that the actor is cutting wires on. A documentary movie that uses archival footage might have footage of someone actually disarming a real bomb in a real-life dangerous situation.
posted by yohko at 11:33 AM on September 16, 2014
The other extreme is the suitcase nuke. If I understand the design of a nuclear bomb, the precise alignment is critical, I'd like to see the solution in a film where at the last second the hero takes a sledge hammer to the bomb.
[spoilers ahoy]
They do pretty much this at the end of _The Peacemaker_ with Clooney and Kidman.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:07 PM on September 16, 2014
[spoilers ahoy]
They do pretty much this at the end of _The Peacemaker_ with Clooney and Kidman.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:07 PM on September 16, 2014
Surely there's no wire that would really make the timer count down in super-quick speed?
There's no reason someone couldn't design a circuit to do this.
My thought on this: if they're not using an off-the-shelf clock, and have built a timer themselves, then their timer needs an oscillator -- a series of 'pulses' that the counter 'counts' to tell time. If you're using a 555 oscillator like a good electronics hobbyist, the speed and duration is controlled by resistors and capacitors; I can totally envision a circuit made up of whatever-crap-you-have-lying-around-wired-together-like-twist-ties where snipping one wire increases the pulse speed to crazy-fast levels in a non-intentional-didn't-design-it-to-do-that but technically possible way.
But, to address the first question: partly real, in that people built anti-tampering into their bombs, but also a trope to increase tension in a story, relying on dumb luck or a sudden reveal of new information at the last moment, to save the day.
posted by AzraelBrown at 2:34 PM on September 16, 2014 [1 favorite]
There's no reason someone couldn't design a circuit to do this.
My thought on this: if they're not using an off-the-shelf clock, and have built a timer themselves, then their timer needs an oscillator -- a series of 'pulses' that the counter 'counts' to tell time. If you're using a 555 oscillator like a good electronics hobbyist, the speed and duration is controlled by resistors and capacitors; I can totally envision a circuit made up of whatever-crap-you-have-lying-around-wired-together-like-twist-ties where snipping one wire increases the pulse speed to crazy-fast levels in a non-intentional-didn't-design-it-to-do-that but technically possible way.
But, to address the first question: partly real, in that people built anti-tampering into their bombs, but also a trope to increase tension in a story, relying on dumb luck or a sudden reveal of new information at the last moment, to save the day.
posted by AzraelBrown at 2:34 PM on September 16, 2014 [1 favorite]
But, to address the first question: partly real, in that people built anti-tampering into their bombs, but also a trope to increase tension in a story, relying on dumb luck or a sudden reveal of new information at the last moment, to save the day.
In scriptwriting circles this is commonly known as the "ticking time bomb". It has been around forever and is still one of the most effective ways to add tension to a story. This is mostly employed as a scene where a goal is time dependent. The outcome can allow the story to diverge in a multitude of ways. Good examples are like the seven locks in Die Hard or a movie based on the premise Blown Away.
For the actual bomb question, it is a figment of the screenwriter's imagination based on fantasy, but there is no reason that a real bomb couldn't behave as played out in a movie.
posted by Benway at 3:02 PM on September 16, 2014 [1 favorite]
In scriptwriting circles this is commonly known as the "ticking time bomb". It has been around forever and is still one of the most effective ways to add tension to a story. This is mostly employed as a scene where a goal is time dependent. The outcome can allow the story to diverge in a multitude of ways. Good examples are like the seven locks in Die Hard or a movie based on the premise Blown Away.
For the actual bomb question, it is a figment of the screenwriter's imagination based on fantasy, but there is no reason that a real bomb couldn't behave as played out in a movie.
posted by Benway at 3:02 PM on September 16, 2014 [1 favorite]
The other extreme is the suitcase nuke. If I understand the design of a nuclear bomb, the precise alignment is critical, I'd like to see the solution in a film where at the last second the hero takes a sledge hammer to the bomb.
This would work to save the city, but the problem with it from a story point of view is that it would still almost certainly result in the death of the hero.
All but the crudest nuclear weapons use a very carefully arranged array of conventional explosives to produce an inward-moving spherical shockwave to compress a lump of fissile material (plutonium or highly enriched uranium) into a super-critical arrangement where a runaway chain reaction can take place. This is a fiddly business. One of the Los Alamos scientists who helped build the first bombs compared it to crushing a beer can without spilling any of the beer.
So a few whacks from a sledgehammer could very well damage the weapon sufficiently either to prevent it from producing a nuclear yield, or to radically reduce the nuclear yield. The problem for the sledgehammer wielder is that even if you prevent a nuclear yield, you still have a significant amount of high explosive blowing up within sledgehammer's reach of you. I don't have a real good handle on how much exactly, but surely it would be measured in pounds or kilograms, not ounces. More than enough to make your life expectancy very very short indeed.
posted by firechicago at 5:44 PM on September 16, 2014
This would work to save the city, but the problem with it from a story point of view is that it would still almost certainly result in the death of the hero.
All but the crudest nuclear weapons use a very carefully arranged array of conventional explosives to produce an inward-moving spherical shockwave to compress a lump of fissile material (plutonium or highly enriched uranium) into a super-critical arrangement where a runaway chain reaction can take place. This is a fiddly business. One of the Los Alamos scientists who helped build the first bombs compared it to crushing a beer can without spilling any of the beer.
So a few whacks from a sledgehammer could very well damage the weapon sufficiently either to prevent it from producing a nuclear yield, or to radically reduce the nuclear yield. The problem for the sledgehammer wielder is that even if you prevent a nuclear yield, you still have a significant amount of high explosive blowing up within sledgehammer's reach of you. I don't have a real good handle on how much exactly, but surely it would be measured in pounds or kilograms, not ounces. More than enough to make your life expectancy very very short indeed.
posted by firechicago at 5:44 PM on September 16, 2014
There's no reason anyone would put a digital countdown display inside a real bomb, Hollywood style.
posted by monotreme at 9:53 PM on September 16, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by monotreme at 9:53 PM on September 16, 2014 [2 favorites]
It may have been included in one of the previously's mentioned but I have always been a student of The Fast Show's school of bomb disposal
posted by handybitesize at 1:21 AM on September 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by handybitesize at 1:21 AM on September 17, 2014 [1 favorite]
Of course you need a countdown timer. So you can set the bomb to go off when the timer reaches "10 minutes 37 seconds" or some other random number...
posted by Mogur at 4:21 AM on September 17, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by Mogur at 4:21 AM on September 17, 2014 [2 favorites]
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Also there's a movie called The Hurt Locker which is set during the Iraq war. Good movie, not sure about the realism of the explodey stuff.
posted by natteringnabob at 9:37 AM on September 16, 2014