How could a kid running out on the runway and being hit by the plane cause a nuclear disaster? The plane would have squashed the kid and hardly have felt it. Even if the kid being hit by the plane caused the plane to crash, that would not have set off the bomb. I couldn't figure what the big deal was.
shareThe nuclear-armed plane overshot the runway, nearly crash-landed and led to a noisy emergency situation/evacuation on the base, which was covered up in the local press as an 'exercise'. Mullen found the news clipping and realised that this happened on the same day as the boy was last seen alive by his fellow escapee. It's not established whether the boy actually caused the near-disaster or that it was coincidental. Whatever, he certainly was a witness to the event and was therefore swiftly 'silenced'...
Don't forget that in real life, the French Concorde crash of 2000 was found to have been caused by a small strip of metal on the runway.
"Oh look - a lovely spider! And it's eating a butterfly!"
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"I take full responsibility for what happened. That's why the person who was responsible went immediately" - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown
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Well, this film has been one of my favourites for years, and as I have a widescreen digital TV recording, and own a copy of the old 'Carlton' pan'n'scan DVD, the current 'Network' DVD and the US edition ("Defense[sic.] of the Realm") I should have remembered that when I wrote my post. The fact that I have yet to even open the latter two discs is no excuse (frankly, it's shocking)!
Of course that's why they had to evacuate the base! ... The plane was actually nuclear-armed at the time, wasn't it (or we're led to believe it likely would have been)?
Thank you.
"Oh look - a lovely spider! And it's eating a butterfly!"
'' ,,
Problem is, the triggering mechanisms on nuclear bombs are ridiculously complex.
A plane crash and explosion would not have set it off. It's not a firecracker filled with gunpowder.
You see the same thing in Broken Arrow, where we are led to believe that if a stray bullet hits a nuclear missile it might explode.
You would assume so, but many nuclear weapons had shockingly poor safety precautions. The military constantly fought against improving safety as this was thought to encourage the chance of a device not triggering when activated. Check out "Command and Control" by Eric Schlosser. I found it quite horrifying, that only by sheer luck, has a nuclear weapon never been detonated by accident or through poor design.