“Bouncing betty” is the nickname given to a mine that when stepped on bounce up and detonate at about 3ft causing serious injury to anyone within range. Not very nice
I’ve seen a couple of movies where some one has stepped on one of these mines heard the click and froze so the Betty couldn’t bounce and detonate. The end always seemed to be fatal as you can’t stand still for very long.
Recently watched a movie Called “No Mans Land” “No Man's Land (2001) - IMDb” about the Serbian and Bosnian war where two soldiers one from each side are trapped in a trench in No Mans Land.
There is also a body lying on the ground that has a Bouncing Betty under his body set as a booby trap. They thought he was dead when the bomb was set but he recovers and now can’t move because of the booby trap.
It gets a bit involved with the UN, news crews and eventually a bomb disposal expert arriving to defuse the bomb.
The bomb expert has a go at sorting the mine under the guy but when he discovers it’s a “Bouncing Betty” says this is not possible to defuse, nobody could do it, and gives up.
So the movie ends as night falls with everybody just going home leaving the poor guy alone with the bomb under him to his fate.
Would this happen, could it happen? If there is no way to defuse the mine what could anyone do.?
I too have wondered about this and have now been prompted to look it up. The folks at Quora seem unanimous in agreeing that it is “Hollywood nonsense”.
This post seems to sum it up:
the “ click+ stand on it” stuff is Hollywood nonsense.
Most modern ones aren’t triggered by standing on them; they are triggered by brushing an offset trigger bar, or by tripwires.
Even with a pressure operated one, you won’t hear or feel a click. You will just hear the “pop” as it jumps, followed by the large bang when it shreds you.
For ‘Bouncing Bettys’ it isn’t just modern ones, the original Bouncing Betty, the German S-mine from WWII used a triple pronged pressure fuse that could be attached to a trip wire.
As for the click+ stand on it bit:
A common misconception prevailed that the S-mine would not detonate until its victim stepped off the trigger. This fallacy was propagated by incorrect United States propaganda during World War II. The mine would detonate whether the trigger was released or not. Standing still or attempting to run from the S-mine would be equally dangerous. The most effective way to survive the mine’s detonation would not be to flee but to fall to the ground lying face down as quickly as possible.
As for defusing them, it was fairly simple to do as long as nobody had stepped on it yet:
Once an S-mine was discovered, disarming it was fairly simple. To prevent triggering while the mine was being planted, the German pressure sensor featured a hole where a safety pin kept the sensor from being depressed. This pin was removed once the mine was planted. If the discovered mine was fitted with the pressure sensor, the disarming personnel would slip a pin (such as a sewing needle or pin) into this hole. If the device was armed with a tripwire or electrical trigger, this could simply be cut. Germans were known to use booby traps to discourage this, so caution was suggested. The mine could then be removed carefully from the ground and the sensor easily unscrewed. If it was deemed necessary to render the mine completely inert, three plugs on the top granted access to the three detonators inside the mine. These could be unscrewed and the detonators removed.
Long story short, no. Once you hear the click activate the mine, it’s already too late. It’s Hollywood trope that you have time between “hearing” a click and detonation. I put heavy air quotes around “hearing” because the time between activation and detonation is so fast, what’s left of you won’t have time to register what you’re hearing. There’s no point in giving anyone time to react to a mine–that defeats the entire purpose of laying the mine in the first place.
Now don’t get me wrong. . . the Valmara 69 and PROM-1 mines are still littered all over the place. The only way to “defuse” bounding AP mines (‘render safe’ in my vernacular) is to locate one “left of boom” and work yer magic.
Tripler
Delays after “clicks” are solely for plotlines.
I vaguely remember a science fiction story with bullets designed to explode some time (like 30 seconds) after it hits you, specifically to give you some time to think about it.
I suppose next you’ll tell me that nuclear weapons don’t have prominent half-inch tall 7-segment red LED displays on their exterior counting down the seconds until the really big Kablooey. And which countdown will conveniently slow down whenever the camera focusses on the spy trying to defuse it or the buxom chick watching anxiously, but speeds right back up whenever the camera is watching the countdown.
Golly you’re a buzzkill.
@LSLguy
My job was to make 'em go boom right away, not prevent 'em from going boom later.
Maybe you’re thinking of Heinlein’s Starship Trooper? There’s this in chapter 1:
I grabbed the first thing on my belt and
lobbed it in — and heard it start to squawk. As they keep telling you in Basic, doing something
constructive at once is better than figuring out the best thing to do hours later.
By sheer chance I had done the right thing. This was a special bomb, one each issued to us for this
mission with instructions to use them if we found ways to make them effective. The squawking I heard as
I threw it was the bomb shouting in skinny talk (free translation): "I’m a thirty-second bomb! I’m a
thirty-second bomb! Twenty-nine!.. twenty-eight!.. twenty-seven! — "
My personal favorite Hollywood trope about nuclear weapons is that they come fitted with a self-destruct switch that the good guys can broadcast a command to stop them from going boom after they are accidentally launched.
No, because neither the person nor the mine exist any more, both having been blown up. There’s no delay, and no “when the switch is released”. That’s just a Hollywood invention to make things more dramatic. As everyone has been saying in this thread, real mines don’t work that way.
There was an episode of CSI Las Vegas with a similar plot line.
One of the show regulars was kidnapped and placed atop a bomb that would trigger if his weight was later taken off of it, or too much more was added. Much implausible MacGyvering ensued to extricate him
Major Plot Spoiler Ahead. Use Caution With Your Reveal!
No, no LEDs, but what modern nukes do have are beeping countdowns in their host-nation language. US nukes go “Beep” every 5 seconds, Russians go “Beep-ski” every 10 seconds, French ones go “Le BEEP!” on the 5s, the ones from the UK go “Beep beep cheerio!” on the 10s, and the North Korean ones just sound like a broken gong.
Did that happen on “Vegas,” too? I know it happened on “Miami,” because the unlucky soul was Rex Linn, the bald detective, who in real life has been the SO of Reba McIntire.
So in my movie “No Mans Land 2001” the Bouncing Betty under the soldier on the ground, could have been defused just by putting the safety pin back.
Guess it wouldn’t have been so exiting, but still haunting final scene of the guy left all alone in the trench on top of the bomb as night was falling.
Wonder if there has ever been a situation where someone is on a mine or bomb that cannot be defused, would he just be left by himself with the bomb till it exploded.
There was a scene in The Hurt Locker where an local Arab had a bomb strapped to his chest that there wasn’t time to defuse, he was abandoned.
