Disabling The Bomb

I admit I don't know much about nuclear weapons, but just cutting the power line would not necessarily keep that panel from going off if those around it go off. Bombmakers do plan on situations where somebody may attempt to defuse their device so just cutting power lines can often be disastrous.

I do know that the explosion that creates the nuclear explosion must be perfectly symmetrical, thus causing the reactive materal to be compressed into a critical mass. This is not easy to do, and conceivably just prying the one panel loose would work.

Yeah, the other guy is right, they are not mirrors, but shape charges. They idea is to explode these perfectly shaped charges inwards that compresses the core and raises its temperature to a point where fission chain-reaction takes place. Removing one of the plates "should" keep that perfect implosive force from compressing the core and you just get a conventional explosion with a lot of radiation - a dirty bomb.

But there is a certain logic to cutting the wires. I disagree that there would be a danger of setting it off. Why would this be made tamper proof? This is a primary for a nuclear bomb by the military. Criminals make their bombs tamper proof, why would the military? What are they worried about? The missile is descending on some target and the enemy is going to fly up and (as the missile is falling) open it, cut the wires, etc. No, making the bomb go off if someone tampers with it is a completely useless risk and unnecessary complication. That logic would make sense if this were some spy-vs-spy suitcase bomb or a terrorist bomb. I doubt that the terrorists in the film had time to install some anti-tampering measures on the bomb itself - the timer, sure, but not the bomb.

Maybe in the huge adrenalin rush, she just wasn't thinking as clearly as she could have.

Well, the thing is, explosives can be activated by electronics, primers, fuses, etc, but they always by their very nature can be started by other explosives. Only one stick of dynamite in the bundle needs a fuse.

The reasoning behind removing the one plate and not just disabling the fuse for it was to create an imbalance in the implosion. Cutting the wire would have also done this by changing the timing of it's detonation by a few microseconds, but not as much as removing the explosive entirely which virtually ensures that it is no longer going to cause fission.

The idea behind creating fission with explosives is that the plutonium is equally surrounded on all sides and detonated equally on all sides. Even the density of those explosive plates likely is varied depending on how far it is from the fuse, the end result ideally is a perfectly timed perfectly equal explosion that in the inside is really an implosion that compresses the radioactive material down to the point where the atoms split apart creating a chain reaction. In order to compress it that much the radioactive material must be perfectly surrounded by the perfect densities of perfectly timed explosives.

I hope I was clear.

What I was wondering is why half the folks were running around with no concern about the massive amount of plutonium that was just released by the explosion. A de-facto dirty bomb. At the very least I would have liked to see that the evacuation that was called for was real, and them not being surrounded by fire trucks and cops 20 seconds after the explosion.

Further, covering them with blankets? No, they needed to be de-contaminated completely at least for Hollywood purposes. In reality they would have died from radiation poisening, along with all those cops and the firemen outside who were not geared up for radiation exposure.

Still it would have had a relatively minor effect on the city. Dirty bombs would ideally have much more of a lower yield radiation and be atomized high above the city covering a much wider area. But hey it was a movie and I for one enjoyed it.

The ending scene was really the only one that bothered me enough to come here and see if it bothered anyone else. Everything was fine until after they blew thru the window.

Then it was hard to understand or believe that everything was ok even tho a crapload of plutonium was just released all over the block. Better than a nuclear detonation sure, but cmon, a lil reality please. I still give it a thumbs up.

Databyter

It wouldn't create a fizzle. If you left that charge in place it could be detonated by the surrounding charges and the compression would take place albeit slightly reduced. By taking it out the other charges would basically take the path of least resistance and push the material out through the hole she left rather than push it to center mass..

I believe the reason behind not cutting the wires is that the detonators are relatively unstable and disrupting the circuit could cause a discharge which would ignite them. (Not 100% on this theory)

I think by removing the panel it would cause a stop in the vibration enough in the explosion to make it not enough to explode the nuclear stuff. Kinda like blocking part ripple in the water.