A lot of movies and television programs deal with methods used to commit crimes, and methods used to prevent, detect and apprehend those who commit crimes. Some of it might be true, some of it is urban legend or sloppy writing*. But I wonder if any of it is deliberately planted misinformation, so that people stupid enough to think that they can learn how to avoid police detection by watching CSI will get tripped up. One example I can think of is the dramatic device of “tracing a phone call”. It might have once been true that it took several seconds or longer to trace a call; but my understanding is that with electronic routing traces today are virtually instantaneous: by the time you connect at all, the phone company knows exactly where the call is originating.
I’m aware of the basic maxim “Everything you see on TV is wrong”.
Not exactly what you’re looking for, but the old motion picture production code explicitly forbade showing the hos of committing crimes:
I recall seeing a number of news programs about things like counterfeiting where the correspondent said things like “we have ommitted several steps in the process to prevent imitation.”
In recent years TV shows typically put the caller on a cellphone and go through the “trace what cell tower he’s using!” routine. The worst example I can think off offhand was an episode of Law & Order: SVU in which they go nuts trying to track an imprisoned child who conveniently can’t or won’t give them clues to her location, and her captor has gone to ridiculous lengths to route his cellphone signal through exchanges seemingly on Jupiter and Mars (as opposed to the infinitely easier approach of not leaving your cellphone where the girl can get her mitts on it - DUH!).
I believe that in Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk deliberately left out some of the details for making explosives etc from soap/other household chemicals, and in the film version, there’s a reference to making Napalm by mixing Cat Litter with Diet Cola- this clearly isn’t going to work, but it sounds just feasible enough to suit the story without giving idiots ideas…
Although it was not designed that way, crooks did not get the whole information from the TV news:
Several years ago, a police helicopter crashed and tragically 2 police officers died in the San Fransisco bay area.
The news reported that there was going to be a big funeral with almost all the police force present and there was a news bit that I thought odd to report: that the other helicopter for the police was at that time being repaired.
Right there I predicted “clever” crooks were going to get into action with their cars; sure enough, about 4 or so unrelated bank robberies occurred on the day of the funeral, but here is the twist: The police was ready. It turned that police choppers and patrols from other areas were in position relieving the local officers, all the crooks were captured.
As I recall from the DVD commentary for Fight Club, Palahniuk actually put in a real working recipe for an explosive in the book. At first they were going to put the same recipe in the movie, but they chickened out and instead put in a dud recipe.
There’s a long-standing urban legend that the LAPD asked Hollywood producers to have their gangstas hold their guns sideways because it looks cool and you can’t possibly aim like that.
In Backdraft, the chemical they quote as being used as an accelerant (you even see it listed on the ingredients in a can of paint thinner) is completely made up. Not that it’s that big a deal, but I guess they didn’t want to be blamed for naming a particular accelerant.
In a Lois Lane comic she hears about someone using a truth serum “diamethyltribenzol”, which doesn’t realy exist. For some reason this name has stuck in my mind ever since that comic came out. I did a search on it, and only had one hit (scroll 2/3 down):
I find it quite annoying how recent explosive related Mythbusters episodes have been censored. They’re censored in both the US version (with the American narrater) and the UK version (with the British narrater). Who cares if we know the name of the explosive paint they covered the trousers in? They’ve done it on a number of occasions most notably with the manufacture of guncotton and nitrous oxide for the Confederate Rocket myth and the various explosives for the Exploding Pants myth.
Anyone who actually wants to make that stuff can look it up on the internet or at the library if they want to.
I never read the book, but in the movie, Tyler mentions using gasoline and orange juice concentrate (the frozen stuff). Seems pretty plausable to me, I might use something thicker and a bit more flammable the OJ, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t get the job done.
Is it possible they’re just obscuring a particular brand name? They regularly do that for colas, spray paint, tubes of biscuit dough, and anything else with an identifiable brand name on the package.
It’s definitely beyond that. They skip steps and leave out key ingredients.
Actually, while it bums me out, I think its probably not all that bad of an idea to avoid broadcasting exact recipies for high explosives. Sure, you can get it on the Internet, but thats a far sight different then being walked through the process step by step on the tube.
A lot of fictional works make up chemicals because there isn’t one that has the exact effect they’re looking for (or the authors/producers/etc are too lazy/research-inept to find one that does). I would think that’s what happened here–there’s really no mimickable crime here.
I saw this episode. They were very deliberately avoiding telling you what any of the chemicals were. It was pretty annoying.
A quick bit of Googling reveals that the herbicide that cased the trouble was sodium chlorate. Apparently, New Zealanders don’t consider this to be a big secret or anything. I can make educated guesses what the fertilizer and acid were, but I think I’m going to chicken out here
I’ve heard that MacGyver left out key steps on several of his more dangerous projects, too, but I don’t know of any specific examples. And I know that in one episode, he did mix ammonia and bleach-based cleaners to produce a noxious cloud, and that one is dangerous, just as presented.
Not quite what the OP asked for, but on a similar note…
Trevanian’s novel Shibumi contains a footnote explaining why he will not be going into any detail describing the “advanced sexual techniques” employed by two of his characters. He mentions how a series of art gallery thefts had occured subsequent to the publication of one of his books (The Loo Sanction, though he does not mention it by name) using the exact method described therein. He also refers to the accidental death of “a young climber” (a stuntman, I presume) during the filming of his novel The Eiger Sanction (again, the title of the book is not mentioned).
That’s precisely it, to discourage the casual spur-of-the-moment backyard experimenter. Merely making something inconvenient really can save a lot of injuries/lives.
“Hey Larry, those Myth guys just blew up a car!”
“Cool, let’s try it on your old Pinto out back”
“Aw nuts, censored the recipe. Wanna go to the library and research it?”
“Ugh, sounds boring now. Let’s watch NASCAR”
