This film was so "high-tech analog" but even by today's standards, the view of the red "time remaining until detonation" really gets the urgency across, doesn't it.
shareAnd has the Hollywood mandatory count down voice notification! 😓
shareYeah, the clock resetting with the red pie-slice was a really cool effect and, dare I say, quite high-tech for 1971.
shareYeah. Neat clock. The only thing I found strange was the clock not running back from 5 to 1 but counting up till it hits 5. Maybe it is just me, but it took me out of the movie for a moment..
shareMaking the clock mechanism run backwards for that was probably more trouble than it was worth.
The countdown thing itself was different from the book, though. As I recall, in the book the countdown is stopped at like 2 minutes or something. Which seems like nothing until someone mentions that to make the atomic blast more effective, the air is evacuated starting at 90 seconds or something.
As I recall, in the book the countdown is stopped at like 2 minutes or something. Which seems like nothing until someone mentions that to make the atomic blast more effective, the air is evacuated starting at 90 seconds or something.
Here's the passage from the book:
Hall said, "How much time was left?"
"When you turned the key? About thirty-four seconds."
Hall smiled. "Plenty of time. Hardly even exciting."
"Perhaps from where you were," Stone said. "But down on Level V, it was very exciting indeed. I neglected to tell you that in order to improve the subterranean detonation characteristics of the atomic device, all air is evacuated from Level V, beginning thirty seconds before explosion."
My people skills are fine. It's my tolerance of morons that needs work.
That makes me wonder now, evacuated to WHERE? If they just pump it outside, even with super-filtration it might be possible for something dangerous to have escaped as a result of their "improvement."
shareWait. So, in the book, the guy says the atmosphere in Level V would have been sucked out at 30 seconds. But wasn't the guy who shut off the explosion on a level further up than V? If so, even if Level V's air was gone at 30 seconds, he still would have had that time to get to a shut-off terminal on a different level, wouldn't he?
Since the explosion would seek the weakest area (as in, up through the other levels), I would imagine that the contaminated air from Level V would simply be sucked up it into Level IV. It's all going to be blown up into the environment, anyway.
But, more importantly, the whole nuclear process seems to be flawed for exactly the circumstances that occurred. I guess the thought would be that a nuke would evaporate any kind of dangerous biohazard that had contaminated Scoop. Of course, if the biohazard was nuclear-resistant (or, worse, fed on nuclear energy, like Andromeda), it's a really bad idea.
And the whole idea of doing 'anything' that rendered the emergency shut-off procedure inert at a certain point, even at 30 seconds, was just idiotic. Imagine getting to a level V shut-off terminal at 30 seconds, right as all the oxygen was being sucked out.
OTOH, maybe they had a huge, cavernous area (or lots of tunnels) hollowed out entirely beneath Scoop for the contaminated air and nuclear waste to go. But, man, I would think that would be one huge, hollowed-out area.
Scoop was the satellite program. The lab was Wildfire.
The issue would be that even with Hall up on level 4 - or eventually level 3 - being safe from the air evacuation, Stone and the others plus everyone else still on level 5, would not have been safe from suffocation.
Although presumably even if Hall stopped the self destruct closer to zero, the air would have been returned to level 5 before anyone actually died.
The air being sucked out of level 5 also sounds like the kind of thing they would have mentioned to Hall much earlier, like when it was being explained more than once (at least, in the movie) that he could only STOP the explosion. Rather than saving it for a pseudo-dramatic twist - or a dramatic pseudo-twist - at the end.
Ah, thanks for the clarification. The whole thing still seems highly contrived and less than plausible.
share