Special forces bomb disposal expert rates 10 bomb disposal scenes in movies and TV

• EOD expert Lloyd Davies rates the realism of bomb-disposal scenes in popular movies and TV shows.
• Davies addresses land mines in the TV show "SEAL Team" (2018) and other improvised explosive devices in "The Hurt Locker" (2008), "Die Hard with a Vengeance" (1995), and "Bodyguard" (2018).
  He breaks down the "red wire, blue wire" movie device from "Juggernaut" (1974) and "Blown Away" (1994).
• Would nuclear devices have countdown timers as seen in "Mission: Impossible – Fallout" (2018)? Does sarin gas release the way it's shown in "The Rock" (1996)? And would a bathtub protect you from an explosion such as in "Lethal Weapon 2" (1989)?

Following is a transcript of the video.

- Two liquids. Either one by itself, but mix them... [explosion booms]

Lloyd Davies: I'd like to say I've never been to a police station where someone picked up an IED and brought it into the police station, but unfortunately I have, so that's pretty realistic.

My name's Lloyd Davies. I'm a former British Army ammunition technical officer. Through my time in military, I specialized in counterterrorism, hostage rescue, bomb disposal, or improvised-explosive-device disposal. I'm now a defense consultant, and I also work with industry to develop counter-EOD capability. And today I'll be reviewing some Hollywood bomb-disposal scenes.

"SEAL Team" (2018)

Sonny: Once old fat-head Shaw got on that plane.

Trent: Felt something depress under my right foot. Pretty sure it's a land mine.

Lloyd: His reaction in this particular case is very realistic of the kind of guy. You know, these are SEALs. They are incredibly professional, incredibly stoic.

Jason: Nobody move. We're in a minefield.

Lloyd: What we saw there, that pile of rocks, is fairly realistic, particularly in Afghanistan, where pressure plate IEDs were placed quite a lot. So that's a little pressure plate buried in the ground attached to explosives to target personnel or vehicles. They would often be marked, to either warn the local population, and they would mark them with piles of stones, rags, flags, that kind of thing. The issue I have is that's not how land mines work. There is absolutely no benefit in designing a land mine that works on arming under pressure and then firing on pressure release. What you're trying to do is initiate the explosion when that target is in the exact place you want it to be. And in this case, the exact place you want that target to be when the mine functions is directly on top of it. And it's a huge misnomer that there's this opportunity to stand on a land mine, stay perfectly still, and then work your way out of that situation. If you stand on it, that's it, it's gonna function. Were he in this situation, with his foot over a pressure plate, I think maybe they are going about this the right way. They're probably limited very much in what their options are. So, what it looks like they're trying to do is they've created two fixed points in the ground. They're gonna tie a string between them to keep the tension down over that pressure plate. How they act, how they respond and stuff, yeah, I can believe that. But unfortunately from an explosive point of view, that's a zero.

Rating: 0/10

"The Hurt Locker" (2008)

[plastic rustles] OK, right now he's just diving straight in there, which is probably not the best approach. Yeah, yeah, of course you'd stroke it, that's fine. When the British Army were working in Iraq, towards the back end, the bomb suit itself was becoming tailored. We would only use the top half of the bomb suit, mainly because of the heat and exhaustion. You're gonna be doing this for about 45 minutes to an hour, in ridiculous heat, so the bomb suit's realistic, that's fine. Approaching without using your robot first, probably less so. Really, you wanna do minimal interaction with the bomb. So very rarely would you just start picking at things, moving stuff around.

[James grunts]

He's identified the detonating cord that's going into the main charge itself, which is an artillery shell. And he's trying to separate that detonator, what we call breaking down the explosive train. So, it's not completely rendering it safe, but it's gonna take that small pop, which is still pretty dangerous, but it's not gonna bring down the entire of that neighborhood. So, fairly reasonable sort of RSP, or render safe procedure, so far.

James: Gotcha.

Lloyd: So, he's just pulling that detonator, or blasting cap, out of the fuse well. Absolutely no looking around to see what else it's connected to or what that wire might be doing.

James: All right, we're done. Good to go.

Lloyd: There are lots of guys watching, recording, and filming what he's doing. That's absolutely realistic. The bomb placer is most likely going to be watching so they understand what we do.

James: Uh, got a wire.

Lloyd: Yeah. We don't do that either. We don't pull at wires to see where they go.

[tense music]

[gravel scraping]

So, this is actually really common in Afghanistan, and particularly in Iraq. They'd do what we call daisy chains. So they'd link multiple main charges, usually along the side of the road. And what he's doing there is he's pulling on the electric wires that are connected to the blasting cap that previously he'd just removed by hand quite easily. Now, those shells are gonna be somewhere in the region of 25 kilos upwards. He's now just dragging around and pulling it out of the dirt. Not something you want to be doing. We're gonna see him run straight to what we call the firing point, which is the two bare wires on the wall.

[James pants]

If this is what we call a proxy bomb, they'll probably have a handler. They'll probably have someone watching, and there'll be two triggers to this particular bomb. There'll be the intended trigger, so a push button or something on the vest itself, something that they're carrying or maybe strapped into, but there are most likely, particularly in Iraq the mobile-phone threat was pretty high, so there'd be probably what we call an RC, or a remote-control trigger attached to the vest as well, for precisely this situation. And we'd call that a chicken switch. So if the bomber decided to chicken out, his handler could detonate him at a moment's notice.

[gasping]

James: Oh, man.

Lloyd: The priority is separating the bomb from the person, not necessarily dealing with the bomb. So he'd be gone as soon as that's been dropped off.

James: I can't get it off. I'm sorry, OK? You understand? I'm sorry. I'm sorry!

[man sobs]

Get down!

Lloyd: As an EOD operator, you feel particularly responsible, and there is very little he can do. There's no point in wasting his own life.

[man prays]

[explosion roars]

It's one of the more realistic Hollywood explosions that I'd say we've seen. There was a sizeable amount of plastic explosive all over that guy. If you can double the distance between you and the device, you actually expose yourself to about a quarter of the shock wave and blast wave that you experience. So, any foot he could have got further away from that would've helped. So, the first scene we saw, for absolute realism, I'd give it about a two or three out of 10. For this scene, probably a seven.

Rating: 7/10

"Mission: Impossible – Fallout" (2018)

Benji: Right, stand by.

[dramatic music]

Three. Two. One

Luther: Now!

Lloyd: I remember watching this in the cinema, and I happened to be there with some colleagues at the time, one of whom was actually tasked with being part of the team that would render safe improvised nuclear devices, and some of the others were special forces operators. And we all had a lot to say about this clip. The bomb itself is quite reminiscent of the bomb in "Goldfinger." There's a really weird mix of mechanical devices clicking around and going on and complicated electronics. You're particularly never going to get two timers, one mechanical, one digital counting down at the same time.

Luther: Turn the screw counterclockwise.

Benji: Got it.

Luther: When the time comes, cut the green wire. Do not cut it yet.

Benji: OK, we copy.

Lloyd: Another thing is this innate knowledge of the heroes, to have a almost textbook-like understanding of the makeup of these devices and be able to say, "Oh, it's this switch from this area. We're going to do this." That doesn't happen. It's bespoke. There are certain things, the generic makeup of how these things operate, you can't get around physics, but knowing exactly what color wire and things to do, it's just not believable. It's not realistic.

[tense music]

[metal dings]

[Lloyd laughs]

And on cutting that wire he's built in the software to just slowly open up and expose the core of this device. There's absolutely no reason why the bomb designer would design that feature into this bomb. Even if you've managed to render safe the trigger mechanism, all of this, right, there's still a huge amount of work to do to start taking that apart and get rid of the actual radioactive element to this. You've got multiple devices all having to be cut at exactly the same time. You know, they're all synchronized. That just doesn't work. We've tried cutting wires at simultaneous times with multiple people across different parts of the room, or even on the same device, if everything's linked. We've tried it in training. There is just no way you're going to be fast enough to beat switches in an electrical system by cutting things simultaneously. I'll give it a two out of 10, just because the physics.

Rating: 2/10

"Die Hard with a Vengeance" (1995)

Charlie: We found this in a playground. This stuff is cutting edge. It's a binary liquid. Walter: A what?

Lloyd: Yeah, that's pretty common for an EOD tech to completely geek out and get excited about the device he's found or that he's been doing. I'd like to say I've never been to a police station where someone's picked up an IED and brought it into the police station, but unfortunately I have, so that's pretty realistic.

Charlie: Two liquids. Either one by itself, but mix them...

[tense music]

[explosion booms]

Lloyd: So, yeah, binary explosives exist. Well, essentially, any simple explosive mixture is two separate chemicals just mixed together. In this case, he's mixing what would be a fuel and an oxidizer to make an incredibly sensitive explosive, very high-tech bomb, very impressive explosive technology. And you're definitely not gonna get that kind of explosion out of that small amount. This guy being a serial bomb maker, they have existed in the past, they probably will exist again. In a large bombing campaign like that, even Afghanistan, Iraq, when we were there, the bomb maker will develop a signature. They will develop multiple bombs. And a lot of what we did in particularly Afghanistan when we were serving there was try and gather evidence, be it forensics or just bomb style. So the technology exists. So I'd give it a six out of 10.

Rating: 6/10

"Lethal Weapon 2" (1989)

Bomb tech: Then try to dive into the tub.

Roger: I, I can't do it.

Martin: He can't do it, man. His legs, he's been on there for, like, 18, 20 hours. He can't even walk, let alone hop off the can.

Lloyd: OK, so that's actually a really, really good point. His legs are probably numb, he's fatigued, he's dehydrated, he's scared. He's unlikely to be jumping up and running around anywhere anytime soon. He might, however, just faint and fall off the toilet, so I'd probably be physically restraining him and holding him in place at this point in time.

Bomb tech: Now, what he's doing, sergeant, is spraying this thing with liquid nitrogen. That should give you a good second or two before detonation.

Lloyd: Covering something in liquid nitrogen to freeze the switch in place, in theory it's a mechanical attack; you're attacking the physical mechanisms of that switch and holding it in place. It's going to do nothing for the electrics. It's not a good idea. It would not be something we'd do against an improvised explosive device like this. You have no idea what that extreme cold temperature's going to do, how the components are going to react to that. They're pouring it in the wrong place. The switch is gonna be right underneath him.

Bomb tech: OK, get them up, get them out. Let's go. Move, move.

Lloyd: First of all, there's only gonna be one person dealing with this.

Bomb tech: All right, let's move.

Lloyd: Yep, bomb blankets, containment of explosions, all things we try and do.

[explosion roars]

[toilet thuds]

That is one sturdy toilet. The whole side of the house goes out, but that porcelain toilet stays intact. He's probably better off just sitting on top of that rather than jumping in the tub. You know, at the very minimum, you'd expect his eardrums to rupture. All the soft tissues in his body, particularly his lungs and his bowel, are very susceptible to blast wave, shock wave. Essentially, you get a really bad bruise all over those linings. There's lots blood. And you can suffer from what we call dry-land drowning, which is where all the blood vessels in the lining of your lung rupture and your lungs are filled with blood, essentially, over time. Or you get blast bowel, which is slightly less severe, but essentially it's the same thing, your bowel starts filling with blood and you bleed internally. In training I've dealt with a toilet bomb before. The probably weirdest place I've found one was in a bathroom, originally. By the time I'd gotten to it, the landlord had thrown it out the window, it'd been collected by the police, and driven back to the police station. I'd give it one out of 10.

Rating: 1/10

"Juggernaut" (1974)

Fallon: I'm going to cut the blue wire. And my lads will wait. If I go in the wrong way, they'll know what to do.

Lloyd: So, there's so much about this that I really like. So, I think his attitude and demeanor, doing what he's doing, is perfect. The communication back and forth. So that reach back, as we call it, to someone who's not under that pressure, someone who's got the scientific support and support of other people around them, can think maybe slightly clearer or cooler than you are, is very realistic.

Sidney: Cut the blue wire.

[tense music]

Lloyd: It's never gonna be a simple red or blue choice. A bomb is gonna contain at least seven components, from a power source to your main explosives to your initiator switches. It's never as simple, unfortunately, as red or blue. And if it is, you do a little bit more investigating before you decide to cut a wire.

[tense music]

[bomb beeping]

[wire snaps]

And now there's one guiding principle when we're working this kind of job, and if you say you're gonna do something, you do it, for exactly that reason. If you couldn't explain it to your mother as to why you're taking that action, you shouldn't be doing it. So you are 100% sure when you do anything as an EOD operator. No way that you swap between decisions or not do something that you said you were gonna do. So, the vast majority of IEDs that we've experienced, in Afghanistan particularly, are very, very simple. They're very simple, very simple electronics, very simple circuits. If you were to cut any of the wires, you've probably broken the bomb enough to make it somewhat safer. Without having done a full investigation of what you're dealing with, you generally don't start cutting wires and hoping or guessing at things. That's a very surefire way to make sure that you don't survive very long doing this job. He would never've changed his mind at that last moment. So, unfortunately, I can't give it 10 out of 10, but I'm going to go with a pretty high nine on this one.

Rating: 9/10

"Bodyguard" (2018)

Officer: I've laid out what you'll need.

Lloyd: Great, so you you've got the external explosives officer from SO15, counterterrorism police. They're a unit that exists. They're very good. They are all ex-British Army bomb-disposal operators who transferred over to work for the police and with the police. And he's gonna let the hostage diffuse his own bomb, which is probably his first mistake. Could easily have put that small tool bag on the robot to send that down to the hostage.

David: I'm not gonna manage with one hand.

Officer: Well, start by freeing your left hand.

Lloyd: He's holding down what they call DMS. It's not an abbreviation we use. In this case it stands for dead man's switch. Whilst that button may be very light to push, you press a button for an hour and you're gonna feel some extreme pain in your hand. So, he has taped his thumb down onto it already, which is something we would do. Quite lucky actually, that bomb is pretty poorly designed. All the circuits exposed. That's a pretty generous bomb maker, not to just put a cover over all of that. That decision between, is this a suicide bomber or is this a hostage? Maybe if you're entirely unsure and you're suspecting more on the suicide-bomber lines, then, yeah, maybe send a robot with some tools down and try to get them to start doing something to help out. In this case, it would probably be much more exposing the device, showing it to the robot, showing the components. If there's other switches, as I was saying, mobile phones, radios, that kind of stuff on there, you wouldn't necessarily start getting the hostage to start taking the device apart, as you're about to see now.

Officer: Slip the spacer under your thumb, being sure to maintain pressure on the DMS trigger.

Lloyd: That particular action so far is what we call mechanical blocking. So you're basically doing a very risky physical procedure. You're not interacting with anything electrically. All he's doing is replacing his thumb with something to hold that button down in place. Before we leave what we call the ICP, the incident control point, and make that manual approach, or in this case start doing any manual actions, we have a 100% plan of what we're going to do.

[David moans]

Yeah, no one's letting go of that switch. No one is confident enough that they're gonna lift their thumb off that without an EOD operator making them move it. There's a whole load of other things you'd get to before you went anywhere near that. And the last thing I'd do is trust the tape that's been on his hand that's covered in mud, blood, and sweat.

[tense music]

OK, so this is where this scene goes even more wrong for me. Without any diagnostics or understanding what you're doing, trying to just jab electric wires into a circuit board is a really bad thing to do with a bomb. This whole clock speeding up and things doesn't happen. You might do something, and the best you can hope for is nothing happening. So I winced at this the first time I watched it, and I had a lot of people texting me, asking me how real it was. So I'm gonna give it two out of 10.

Rating: 2/10

"The Rock" (1996)

Stanley: Agent Stanley Goodspeed, agent trainee Marvin Isherwood, initiating exam of wooden crate.

Lloyd: Hazmat suits, they're a thing. We use them in certain situations. Hazmat suits are designed specifically for these chemical agents.

Marvin: Hi, there, Stanley!

Stanley: Marvin, don't!

[gas hisses] Shit.

Lloyd: That's kudos to the bomb maker right there. I mean, to make a creepy baby doll that sprays sarin gas. This is not a learning opportunity. All your training is done in a training environment where there's no danger.

Stanley: There's enough C-4 explosive and poison gas to blow the whole chamber and kill everybody in the building.

Lloyd: It doesn't make sense that he's got two main charges, or two payloads. You've got the sarin gas that's a chemical warfare agent, that's a neurotoxin. And what that does is it paralyzes the muscles by blocking what's called ACh. And that's the chemical messaging system between nerves. Totally deadly on its own. There is absolutely no need to put enough C-4 in there to blow up the room.

Lonner: Tell them to take the atropine, now.

Man: Marvin, the atropine, now!

Lonner: Inject it in your heart before your suit melts!

Lloyd: Well, atropine's a real thing. Atropine is the somewhat de facto antidote to nerve agent. You don't have to inject it directly into your heart. You generally go for a large, fleshy muscle area like your thigh or buttocks.

[bomb beeps]

Stanley: 15!

Lloyd: Great, we're now soaking an electrically initiated IED with water, generally a really bad idea. You have no idea what short circuit that's gonna create or what damage that's gonna do.

[metal grates]

Stanley: Really elegant string-of-pearls configuration. Unfortunately, incredibly unstable.

Lloyd: Yeah. So, an incredibly unstable, elegant string of pearls is a terrible weapon design. So, that sits within a rocket that's gonna get launched by a booster motor and is gonna fly over the speed of sound, or however fast this thing is gonna go. Unfortunately, that's gonna be subject to a lot of physics, and one of those forces it's gonna be subject to is setback force, where essentially the acceleration of the rocket increases the g-force of those pearls, and they're gonna get compressed against each other really, really hard. So pretty much instantly as soon as that thing launches, those are all gonna crack, and you're just gonna get melted VX spraying out of this thing as it's flying along.

Stanley: It's a cholinesterase inhibitor. Stops the brain from sending nerve messages down the spinal cord within 30 seconds. But that's after your skin melts off.

Lloyd: That's fairly accurate with how you feel it. What you wouldn't get is the huge blistering and skin melting that you saw earlier in the movie. Fantastic movie, unfortunately not very realistic at all. Not from an EOD or weapons-design point of view.

Rating: 0/10

"Blown Away" (1994)

Jimmy: Disk drive sounds funny. Something's slowing it down.

Nancy: Yeah, I could've told you that. What're we gonna do?

Lloyd: It would take probably more effort than it's worth to set that up, as far as programming goes. If she's been sat there for hours typing that code out, I'd probably get the guy in the bomb suit to start typing the code for her, I'd give her a bit of a rest, let her relax.

Jimmy: Hi.

Nancy: Who the hell are you?

Jimmy: I'm Dove. James Dove.

Lloyd: Typically in a hostage situation like this it is possible, and one of the key things we try and do is build rapport. You've gotta try and keep them as calm as you can. Yeah, you would strip down, or remove the barriers as far as helmets and body armor and the likes, to get on with this.

Jimmy: You like red wine or white wine?

Nancy: I don't give a shit, just do something!

Jimmy: Red, me too.

Lloyd: The truth is, we don't guess at anything. If we don't know, we don't do it. So I'd probably go for a two out of 10 for this one.

Rating: 2/10

"The Specialist" (1994)

Ned: I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. You guys are the experts, maybe you don't need me. This is, um, this is Semtex, am I right? Plastique.

Lloyd: OK, so he's the disgruntled, unappreciated specialist. So far, he's identified some kind of plastic explosive as Semtex. I'm not convinced at this moment in time, but, you know, have I seen stuff laid out on a police table or in a police lockup that probably shouldn't be there and probably should have been dealt with? I absolutely have.

Ned: What else do we have here? Oh, this is a, um, a plunger detonator, am I right? And that's a little mini receiver.

Lloyd: He's talking absolute rubbish at this point. He's waffling about plunger detonators and whatever else. Utter nonsense. So, for technical accuracy, that's basically a zero.

Rating: 0/10