If you want to see what a real bomb looks like, take a look at the FBI’s recreation of one of Ted Kaczynsky’s bombs:
In WWII, there were quite a few unexploded bombs, and people did get experience defusing them. But then German spies in England noticed that the unexploded bombs were themselves really good terror weapons. This set off a bit of an arms race between the German bomb makers and the English bomb disposal folks. The Germans would put fake switches, misleading wires, and all sorts of booby traps into the bomb, so that procedures that one English bomb export had figured out on one bomb might cause the bomb to explode on the next series of bombs. If you cut the wire going to the detonator, you might find out the hard way that the wire you cut was a fake and actually triggered the bomb to explode.
One of the things the Germans put into a lot of bombs was a second detonator that used a timer. If for some reason the bomb failed to explode, the timer would wait 72 hours and would then set off the bomb.
I’ve always been puzzled by the complaints of “cut the red wire,” as I always presumed it was, as someone noted above, a matter of “I’m a bomb expert, I’ve taken a look or noted your description of the bomb, and I think it’s the red wire that is the one to cut,” rather than “I’m the bomb expert so trust me, it’s always the red wire, so cut it.” I always loved Bob Newhart’s bomb disposal sketch: “One of the the wires is a bluish grey, the other one is a greyish blue…”
There was a “Six Million Dollar Man” episode where the wires were red, white, AND blue. The thing was that the bombmaker always put “obvious” solutions in his creations, and if the person defusing the bomb selected the obvious solution - bad things would happen. Sorry, I forgot how this was resolved - maybe there was a hidden GREEN wire.
Indeed. There was a BBC Series “Danger UXB” about this.
The book of the same title went into greater detail about the “arms race” of the fuse designers versus the people doing the defusing. One thing I thought showed great ingenuity was described - drill a hole in the bomb casing and insert a steam line to soften and extract the explosive - while not touching the fuse at all.
Another option is to remove the power source. You can make the electronics tiny enough to hide the “real” electronics anywhere, or to include fake ones… but there’s a minimum practical size for a battery, and without that, nothing’s going to happen.
Yet another option is to cut all of the wires, all at once, very quickly, often involving another explosive or a firearm.
Reporting for duty. And yes, Santo Rugger and I were friends through correspondence here. He too worked here at my “company” until his accident. I periodically hear from his mom, which reminds me, I need to drop her a line. . .
Too involved (too many steps). Just cut the circuit wires leading to the detonator, one at a time (never both at the same time). Then, remove the block of C-4 with det in situ, and proceed to disposal.
Nope. Color of wire is basically dictated by whatever the bomb maker* has on hand. I’ve seen plenty of IEDs built with birds-nests of nothing but yellow lamp cord.
But myself, having lots of bomb experience**, look at the movie bombs and say, “Just put a charge on the damn thing, BIP*** it, and move on. . .”
There’s good truth to this assumption. Render Safe Procedures (RSPs) are developed on known designs with practical testing done on them. Need me to RSP a certain Soviet fuze on a 250 kg bomb? We already know what the fuze contains, and there’s already a script for it.
Dude! Quit exposing my magic tricks!
Notes:
The bomb maker is not always the bomb emplacer.
I spent eight years in EOD. I have ‘experience.’ I consider those NCOs with 10+ years/multiple deployments the ‘experts.’
Blow In Place. Don’t mess with it, just detonate it, if the area can reasonably withstand a high-order detonation.
Tripler
It’s my birthday today. What a cool present: a thread I can intelligently speak to!
I wonder if this was the inspiration for the (realistic) scene in The Abyss where, due to the lack of light at the deep depth, Ed Harris can’t distinguish the colors of the wires on the bomb. A twist since he’s been given exact instructions from the SEAL guy on which wire to cut.
In that episode, The Price of Liberty, the explosive genius guy stole the Liberty Bell and rigged it with explosives. Chuck Connors, a Philly bomb squad captain, and Steve Austin had to defuse it.
The last bomb came down to four wires, red, white, blue, and yellow. Chuck Connors figured out that red and white were correct. The bomber’s dying words were “Red, white and blue”. Steve Austin chose yellow instead of blue and saved the Liberty Bell and hence America.
I recall a scene from somewhere where the Hero is confronted with a nuke (I think it was an actual nuke, not just an ordinary bomb) in the back of a truck, with a timer getting very close to zero. He has no idea what to do, and no time to contact anyone who does, so he just grabs the whole birds-nest of wiring and yanks.
Occasionally in movies you’ll see a bomb that has weird liquids in the detonator, like when the bomb is getting ready to detonate you see a vial full of liquid suddenly start draining into somewhere in the bomb.
I’ve seen movie or TV bombs that have a vial or some type of clear glass container in which what looks like liquid mercury is in it. It’s a motion sensor trigger.
Alternately, I’m not a chemist so I couldn’t say what, but there are certain liquids that, when mixed together, will cause an explosion or fire. That’s why we can only take no more than 3 oz. of any liquid on a plane.
Those are not motion sensors. They are tilt switches:
If you tilt the ampoule, the metallic mercury completes the circuit.
Well, I assume anyone who has completed high-school chemistry knows how to concoct primary explosives, redox reactions, etc. Mixing liquids in an actual improvised bomb sounds like a Rube Goldberg device compared to using a blasting cap or other reliable detonator, though.
Mixing large tanks of liquids might be the Hollywood version of illustrating binary chemical weapons, though.
Yeah, it’s in the Die Hard 3 movie. The bomb guy is analyzing circuits when the blue liquid starts infusing into the red liquid. We’re talking like 100 gallon plastic tanks. But the whole thing is safe until the fluids mix. Just cut the damn plastic tubing and let one fluid run out.
I hope this doesn’t ruin the movie for anyone, but I hate that scene. All of the bomb disposal techs are wearing headsets so they can talk to each other. The point of which is that if Harris makes a mistake and sets off his bomb, the others won’t repeat the same mistake with theirs. But that only works if he tells them what he’s going to do before he does it. For most of the movie, that’s exactly what they do. But when it gets to that final scene, he leads everyone to believe that he’s going to cut the blue wire, and then he cuts the red. If he’d guessed wrong, someone (maybe everyone) else would have also cut the red wire and blown up. If I was one of the guys who worked with him, I’d have beat the shit out of him for needlessly risking my life.
