I don’t know a thing about bombs, but if you’re gonna try cutting wires, why not measure each wire with an ammeter and cut the wires that don’t have any current running in them?
The Wall Street Journal ran a front page article back around 1979 about two families in the Chicago area named (IIRC) Joyce. They were cousins, and held 7-Up distributorships. They were reputed to hate each other’s guts.
One cousin was convicted of trying to kill his cousin; he was unable to account for why, immediately after an explosion, he was in the cousin’s garage next to a known mobster who was holding the remains of a time bomb.
In the parlance of the “Farm Film Report” on the old Second City Television, he had gotten blowed up real good.
It was said that the deceased had been part of a prominent criminal organization but had reportedly been kicked out for not being very bright. Apparently time bombs–both in the movies and in real life–generally work by having a circuit completed when a clock reaches the set time. It appeared that the one he had may have worked in reverse, so that a circuit was I]broken*when the set time was reached. If so, whoever gave him the bomb to install had apparently neglected to mention that.
Ah, a fine joke to play on a friend…
I do have some diabolical ideas but I decided I won’t be sharing them over the Interweb. Anyone with a little knowledge of electronics and fabricationn could put together a dandy bomb and there’s no purpose in helping an aspiring bomber.
That said we may as well rant about bad screen writing. One of my most hated lines is something like, “they used mercury switches, we’re dealing with real pros here.”
Or dealing with real dorks. Anyone who can solder and find a Radio shack can add a mercury switch. Never mind the fact that a glass envelope mercury switch is one of the least likely bomb components to survive enough to be identified.
If I ever find need to make a Hollywood bomb it will have an inscription on the bottom that reads: “McGuffin Manufacturing, a division of Hudsucker Industries.” …but then again the Cohen brothers would probably sue me.
A normal ammeter has to be connected in series with the wire - you gotta cut the sucker for that. The clamp on type only works (as far as I know) on AC.
No voltage won’t get you much either. You might just cut a ground wire, and there’s another that still lets the bomb go kablooie.
There are ammeters that work on DC – but you bring up a good point. The clip-on coils are transformers, so, how do they work?
DC ammeters use hall effect sensors instead of coils. Basically, the DC current causes a magnetic field which causes electrons through a semiconductor to be deflected. This causes a change in potential which can be measured.
Thanks!
Fist of all, kudos for not wanting to spread deadly ideas over the net.
Secondly, I don’t think I’m sure what you mean by your quote, but mercury switches are exactly what I had envisioned as the best trigger. A four-way (NSEW) switch would be activated by any movement of the package. The only way one could defeat that is by detonation.
I hope that’s not a new idea, otherwise I just contradicted myself.
Bombers…try every explosive in your own room, otherwise it might not work. Bastards.
BTW, there is basically no such thing as “at the same time” in dealing with electricity. Are you off by .01 second? That should be more than enough to trigger something bad in an electronic circuit board. Things traveling essentially at the speed of light don’t have the same scale of appreciation for time.
Yeah. Commodore Hopper used to keep a length of wire about a foot long to show how far an electron goes in a nanosecond. Electron time and human time are on completely different scales when it comes to simultanity.
Well that’s why I would have something electronically timed/synchronized to cut them all at the same time. Obviously a “1…2…3…Cut!” isn’t going to do it.
dropzone: Grace Hopper was an Admiral.
I work for an electronics distributor, and we sell a very basic mercury switch on page 1211 of our catalog, for $ 5.37 plus shipping and handling. We currently have them in stock.
I think the point was that, “Duh, why would you use anything but a mercury switch, if they are so cheap and readily available.”
This is just layman to layman here, and I may be splitting hairs here, but I distinctly remember my ninth grade Physics teacher telling the class that it actually takes several hours for an electron to move the length of a meter. It is the charge that travels at close to the speed of instantaneous. I’ve always wondered about this, so please correct me if I’m wrong.
In my opinion, the worst movie bomb was in Blown Away. At the end, Jeff Bridges is trying to escape from the carcass of moored and rusting barge that was the villian’s (Tommy Lee Jones) home. This bomb encompassed the entire boat and the triggering mechanism resembled a Rube Goldberg contraption with twirly things flying around and metal balls rolling all over the place. But it was dramatic with all of the slow motion and close up shots.
The red wire.
Oh, wait …
Did I say red?
I meant to say gr
Yeah, but Commodore is a much cooler title–IIRC, at the time she was the only one we had.
Nope. The United States Navy went through an ill-advised (IMHO) period in which the paygrade of O7 was referred to as Commodore. IIRC, this was in response to the other Services being justifiably peeved that the Navy was pulling a fast one with the stars: O7 and O8 both got to wear 2 stars since they were both Rear Admiral. O7 was Rear Admiral (Lower Half) and O8 was Rear Admiral (Upper Half). The difference was in pay. Nowadays, the O7 is Rear Admiral (Lower Half) and wears only one star.
On a related note, there are a number of Captains who pretend to the title of Commodore based on the unit they command. I ignore such pretensions. And since I’m no retired from the Navy, it doesn’t interfere with my life!
er…“no retired” should be “now retired”.
I forget where I read this (Snopes, maybe?) but I remember reading that the whole “Cut the (whatever color) wire!” thing came from WWII. Apparently, when the German army was mass-producing bombs, the wiring was all standard, too. So if you were defusing one of those bombs, you had to cut the same color wire every time. Any other bomb, and all bets are off.
I’m not saying that a mercury switch wouldn’t be an excellent choice but that it takes no extraordinary level of expertise to use one.
Speaking of hollywood bombs has anyone been following the case of the blown up pizza delieveryman? The bomb was locked to his neck using a sophisticated collar that had multiple key and combination locks.
There’s a nice, easy to use device that will cut a whole lot of wires at the same time, and disable all the surrounding mechanism as well. It doesn’t require fiddling about with multiple little arms with cutters on the end.
It is known as a sawn off shotgun, and it has already been mentioned.