Why nuking the fridge and not riding the sub?

The main implication of the sub submerging, could be....that it is a sub?!?
It's like showing some killer holding a gun hiding at night in the dark behind the curtains, then a woman comes in the same room unknowingly, then cut to the image of her on the floor dead, bleeding. And then you explain that she was murdered with a knife. Would you say "Yes, I was expecting that. There was no implication that the gun would be used to kill her"?

Everybody watching Raiders wandered the same question I asked. The explainations given here to me make sense.
They are not exactly glaring nor what the movie tells us, though, as the obvious thought you would think is that the sub submerged.

There was no implication the sub submerged , It was pretty unlikely it would do , for a multitude of reasons, as Strntz so eloquently explained.

There was no implication the sub submerged , It was pretty unlikely it would do , for a multitude of reasons, as Strntz so eloquently explained.

Janelsenor, thanks for the info, finally we know the official version of facts.
It's quite bad writing unfortunately, I'm glad they tried to minimize it in the film.
Thanks again!

I recall hearing about that. It is, insane as it sounds, the only way it could be done. Frankly, I find myself imagining something like this... "Captain, the periscope is not rotating freely." "Here, let me try that... Hmm... Feels odd, Let's surface and check. We may have snagged a net or something."
If the sub stayed on the surface there would always be lookouts. Even if it is peacetime and off the lanes of commerce, there would always be two or more guys on the conning tower watching for... anything. (Two guys with binoculars are far better than one guy peering through the periscope.) Ship captains are not in the habit of saying things like "Well, there's no traffic around here and virtually no possibility of floating debris... Full ahead! Now let's all take the night off."

Yes this all makes sense, it's all correct and a great analysis.

I think this whole sub fiasco comes from Spielberg being a dickhead, who, instead of thinking "this is ludicrous, let's have him board a nazi ship", opted for "Subs are cool! So let's put one in my movie, Indy jumps on a submarine chasing the mcguffin, har har har, that is so out there I gotta shoot it!".

What I mean is, while the logic of it follows exactly what you wrote, being totally explicable, for a viewer it makes as much sense as the fridge.
The movie could have explained that the sub never actually submerged, and that in peace time they stay on surface level, or like you mentioned, that it saves time and it's safer to stay on top. Or even better, it could have been just a regular ship so no problems there. Instead, we have this cartoonish action for no other reason than what I wrote in the previous paragraph.

I always assumed that he somehow sneaked inside the sub (perhaps in the top hatch and he got out whenever they re-emerged. But there other possibilities such as tying himself to the periscope as the novelization states; or maybe the submarine just never submerged; the film never really shows it.

I think the key difference is there are POSSIBLE explanation of how Indy did it that even if implausible you can stretch to accept them. Nuking the fridge we are explicitly shown and there is no acceptable explanation for how he survived it.

AS you say, there are ways he could survive the submarine or even the raft out of the plane; no matter what the chances were they could be better than 0%. Surviving a atomic bomb by hiding in a refrigerator has a 0% chance.

What is with people having a pole up their ass these days? Relax dude!
The fridge is total BS and everybody knows it. The sub is never mentioned, even if it's as preposterous an idea to "ride a submarine". I'm just arguing it should have been better explained/written.
Many agree with me. Everybody else is giving a reasonable explaination about why is riding the sub possible. I agree with them. This is called chatting. This is movie CHAT. Go figure....

The sub doesnt have to go under water. In fact it's not seen doing that at all.

Yeah, all true, but there is some elegance the way they put that sub scene there and just moved on to the next scene like it was no big deal.

With the nuking scene instead, they believed it would be just a great cherry on top to the beginning sequence.
It's such a major atomic fail from Spielberg and Lucas it would take them a lead lined fridge to survive it:-)

Yes great stuff!
But doesn't solve much, it adds fodder to the topic: most of those scenes were left out for a reason...thank god they didn't use the one with the periscope!
Holy crap, that looks so stupid it's on another dimension of stupidity than just imagining about it. One thing would be to do that for a half an hour trip around the bay maybe, not for an oceanic overnight sail like they show in the map.
But it's exactly what I mean: they NEEDED to explain it, so they shot that scene. But editing it they realized it looks incredibly dumb and it's probably better left unexplained.
And they were right!